News Brief

Fans bathe in the limelight of Super Soap Weekend
Hundreds of soap opera fans leaned over the tape snapping photos as the actors danced on an outside stage at Disney's Hollywood Studios.

While he didn't admit to watching soaps, Vincent Irizarry, David Hayward of ALL MY CHILDREN, said many men are "closet" viewers, including businessmen with briefcases.

"We are just people," longtime soap actress Erika Slezak, Viki Davidson of ONE LIFE TO LIVE. "We happen to have high profile jobs."

Advertisers shouldn't fear tuning back in to linear television
Despite what some believe, television content is anything but dead. Earlier this year, Nielsen reported that even in today's digitized world, the average American consumer watches more linear television per week than ever. What is up for debate, however, is the future of linear television advertising. Four experts convened to discuss this matter during the TV 3.0 Power Panel at Ad:tech New York.

In the absence of traditional com­mercial spots, advertisers must be more innovative in sponsorship, noted Stacey Lynn Schulman, SVP of Turner Enter­tainment Ad Sales Research at Turner Broadcasting. “Fans want to engage,” she said. “With DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, fans were connecting with the music. The advertiser could easily sponsor a CD release and have the message associated without disrupting.”

LYNN LICCARD: Fool Me Once, Shame On You
On the recent big soap news including Grant Aleksander's return to GUIDING LIGHT: "There's a whiff of desperation about the whole thing - that they're just making it up as they go along, which begs the real question, 'is doing something better than doing nothing, when what's being done hasn't been well thought out?' If recent history, in the form of John McCain's presidential campaign, is any indicator, the answer, in that case, thankfully for the country, is a resounding 'no!'"

Western New York native lands in Lockport to guide These Working Actors
At 46, Debra Cole (ex-Patsy, GUIDING LIGHT) has progressive multiple sclerosis and now lives Lockport with her significant other, Mike Marion. She is house-sitting and dog-sitting for a friend who is going to medical school in the Netherlands.

“I never expected to fall in love with a guy from Buffalo,” she said. “I left Buffalo when I was a 17-year-old and I would have bet you $5 million I’m never coming back ... I’m starting a whole new round. If people are interested, they should call.” (717-2649)

Former NEIGHBOURS star Kylie Minogue to host 2009 Brit Awards
She will front the U.K. music awards show on British channel ITV in February.

LUCY reaches galactic audience
The first episode of I LOVE LUCY was broadcast sometime on October 15, 1951, more than 50 years ago. About 0.0002 seconds later, the signal glided over the rooftops of the farthest city suburbs, and headed into space. It’s still going. Every day, that first installment passes through an additional 4 thousand trillion trillion trillion cubic kilometers of the cosmos. Given that stars in our galactic neighborhood are separated by about 4 light-years, it’s easy to figure that roughly 10 thousand star systems have been exposed to I LOVE LUCY in the past five decades.

Now, a radio telescope being built to study distant galaxies might also be able to pick up ET’s TV... maybe even their version of DAYS OF OUR LIVES. The telescope consisting of 25 thousand tent-shaped antennas spread across Holland and Germany can be tuned to frequencies under 250 megahertz. This is a spectral range far below what’s usually searched by SETI, but it’s the band in which much of your local television is broadcast - and maybe theirs as well.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The future of soaps! Soaps from another galaxy. That really would be Janet from another planet.