News Round-up: Zach Gilford, Jennie Garth, HOLLYOAKS

The Great Auto Dealer Closure Debate
With General Motors closing 1,100 dealerships and Chrysler cutting 789 franchises, many industry observers believe this is yet another punch to the chin of the beaten-down station business. But there are also those who don't anticipate much fallout, and even see some long-term upside.

TVB's data for the fourth quarter of 2008 ranks Chrysler as the No. 3 ad spender with stations. The company's ad spending was down 29.2% from the year-ago period to $88 million. General Motors Corp. ranked No. 11 and had increased its spending by 10% to $63 million, while its dealer association reduced spend by 69.4% to $38 million.

INTERVIEW: FNL's Zach Gilford (Matt)
"I got super lucky. I auditioned in New York and then went to L.A., and a month after the fact, I ended up getting the part. I like the show a lot. We don't play into a lot of cliches. You think about high school football and how I play the quarterback, and you'd think I'd be this stud-superstar kid, but what makes it interesting is that he's kind of this shy, unsure-of-himself kid who has to overcome that in order to step into this position that has an extreme amount of pressure on him."

Fountain and Manning exit HOLLYOAKS
Chris Fountain and Stuart Manning's final scenes on HOLLYOAKS will be aired next week. Chris's character Justin Burton leaves the village after the police issue a warrant for his arrest in connection with the fire at The Loft. And Stuart's alter-ego Russ makes a swift exit after kidnapping his baby son Max.

SABC boss adds fuel to indie fire
Hostilities between the SABC and the country's unpaid independent producers heated up several degrees this week, with producers planning a picket and the broadcaster publicly threatening to produce up to 40% of its content in-house. This week independent producers reacted vehemently to the veiled threat by chief executive Gabs Mampone that the broadcaster might begin to sideline their sector.

Levern Engel, managing director of Endemol South Africa, which recently threatened to pull its soap opera, ISIDINGO, off air, this week called Mampone's statement "ludicrous and against the public broadcaster's mandate".

Maroulis stole his skinny jeans from B&B
After a recent performance of his Tony nominated show, "Rock of Ages," Constantine Maroulis finished autographing Playbills and emerged in T-shirt, J. Lindeberg skinny jeans (“I totally stole these from THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL,' ” he said, referring to the soap opera where he used to appear), Yohji Yamamoto tennis shoes and his signature dark tresses.

VIDEO: Jennie Garth reveals heart ailment
"I've been affected by heart disease practically my whole life," Garth, 37, told ACCESS HOLLYWOOD's Tony Potts at an American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women BetterU Program event. “My father has struggled with heart disease since he was 50 and I lost him a year ago.”