News Brief

Jeremy Sumpter tackles QB role on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Jeremy Sumpter has landed a recurring role in DirecTV/NBC's football drama, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS.

The actor, who starred as the lead in 2003's Peter Pan, will play J.D. McCoy, a freshman quarterback who becomes a rival of Dillon High's Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford).

Executive producer Jason Katims told Entertainment Weekly: "J.D.'s a straight and narrow kid who's been bred to be a football player by his father, and lives in the shadow of his father, who's a big personality. There's an interesting story about this kid feeling somewhat suffocated by his dad and starting to look more to Coach (Kyle Chandler) as a mentor."

Buzz vs. Numbers: Who cares how a TV show does in the ratings?
Is that buzzing sound you hear the end of the Nielsen era?

In this brave, new television universe we live in - the one with multi-platform content, DVR, online viewers, iPods and DVD box sets, not to mention hundreds of different channels - there are a whole new generation of TV shows that score high on the buzz factor, but barely register on the ratings barometer, which have traditionally been the way the hits are separated from the misses in TV world. Shows such as GOSSIP GIRL, PUSHING DAISIES and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS are all prime examples of shows that get talked about, blogged about and nominated for awards, even as they pull numbers that on most days would have network programmers sharpening their axes.

Willey's wild comedy gets a soft touch
"I am going to talk about life. That's all I know to talk about. I don't talk about politics. I don't talk about topical issues. I talk about that which we all share."

Like getting older.

"The adjustment to that has been difficult," said Willey, 57.

"Lately I have been getting, 'My grandmother, she loves you on ALL MY CHILDREN. So now I am in a new demographic, but it doesn't bother me because I am still 28 in my head.

"My current show is quite different from my DVD because my son Chance, 13, is opening for me. He does parody songs. He is also writing some stand-up stuff which I haven't seen yet."

Soap Surprises: Five Holy @#%! Moments
Patrick Erwin looks at five examples of fantastic, goosebump-producing, oh-no-they-didn’t moments.

ARMY WIVES Creator Relieved of Duty
ARMY WIVES' top lieutenant has been discharged. Creator of Lifetime's top-rated drama ever, Katherine Fugate, has been shown the door.

FLASHBACK: DAYS vet Bill Hayes "the voice of Oldsmobile"
In the 1950s and '60s, Bill Hayes was known as "the voice of Oldsmobile." He sang and danced with Greta Gray and Florence Henderson as he advertised the automobile. He later became a soap star with his wife, Susan Seaforth Hayes, on DAYS OF OUR LIVES.

New boss for HOLLYOAKS
Chidwall production firm Lime Pictures has appointed a new head of production on hit soap HOLLYOAKS. Ian Hopkins will join Lime in September. He has a strong record in long-running drama series, having worked on EASTENDERS and WHERE THE HEART IS.

Mr Hopkins said: “I am delighted to be join-ing Lime Pictures and am looking forward to working on HOLLYOAKS which is going from strength to strength at the moment.”

HOME AND AWAY actor in serious car crash
An actor on the Australian soap opera Home and Away has been involved in a serious car accident. Todd Lasance, 23, collided with a Honda Civic driven by an 80-year-old woman on Sunday in Sydney. Lasance, who plays Aden Jefferies in the show, was freed from his Toyota sports car and taken to Royal North Shore hospital. His passenger, a 21-year-old woman, and the elderly driver were also taken to hospital with serious injuries.

More Brett Favre soap analogies
If you read the daily news, you will find many stories compared to soaps. Sometimes these use the term "soap opera" used in a negative light which bugs me to no end. No story has been compared to soaps more than the Brett Favre saga this summer which ended with him being traded from the Packers to the Jets.

In today's Lompoc Record, another soap reference is made:
"So the trade is done and Brett Favre is now a New York Jet. Which brings a close to a long, unseemly debacle. Or does it?

Keep in mind that Stefano Dimera has died off 10 times on DAYS OF OUR LIVES only to return. How many people on LOST have croaked, then come back? Bobby Ewing was toast for a whole year until we were told that a whole season of DALLAS was only a dream.

After all that has happened in the last six weeks in the public divorce between Favre and the Packers, you just know something else will come out."

Former AMC star Leo a hardscrabble mom during tough times
Long over the heady joys of besting Julia Roberts for an ingenue role on ALL MY CHILDREN, Melissa Leo has parlayed her brief stab at TV stardom (as the gun-toting detective Kay Howard on NBC's innovative cop anthology, HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET) into a long series of hardscrabble moms.

Jane Badler speaks about days as OLTL's Melinda Cramer
"My character had a lot of fun on the series, even though it was disappointing that as much effort wasn’t made in the writing as it could have been. But I still got to have a lot of fun, with the crazy happenings and the sword-fights and the lizard wedding to Charles…all the seductions."