lynn liccardo's Blog
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Jul.18.2011
recent adventures in online research...
While researching a longish piece on The Killing (delayed by breaking news in daytime soaps, along with the final episode of Friday Night Lights and the cancellation of Men of a Certain Age), I was scrolling through IMdB to find out when Michelle Forbes...
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Jul.07.2011
I was recently interviewed for the Australian radio news show, Future Tense (listen here, about halfway in). The topic was soap opera as a force for social change. I had hoped the show would have room for my longstanding concerns about the ramifications when fans point to the importance attached to...
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Jul.06.2011
and a sad goodbye to one of soap opera’s most enduring villains...
As the late Michael Zaslow had with Roger Thorpe on Guiding Light, Anthony Herrera infused his portrayal of As the World Turns’ James Stenbeck with layer upon nuanced layer of emotional depth. When I heard that he died late last...
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Jun.21.2011
maybe...
Now, I should begin by saying that it’s been a good long while since I watched General Hospital on a regular basis. So, I don’t really have a horse in this race. But, after watching Christopher Goutman and Jean Passanante render As the World Turns virtually unwatchable in its final...
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Jun.20.2011
check out my new blog at open salon:soap opera elegies and the future of serialized storytelling...
from my first piece, never say never...
At the risk of overstating the obvious, the past couple of years have been tough ones for soap opera fans. I grew up with the Procter & Gamble shows,...
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Jun.07.2011
When ABC announced the cancellation of All My Children and One Life to Live in mid-April, the network seemed to have all its ducks in a row. When AMC left the air in September, it would be replaced by Chew; OLTL would air until January 2012 when The Revolution would take over. But ABC was committed...
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May.09.2011
Fans of All My Children and One Life to Live are certainly not letting their shows go quietly into the good night. And they’ve been quite savvy about their tactics – targeting advertisers. Shortly after last month’s announcement, Hoover pulled ALL their advertising from ABC (and likely sold a...
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Apr.18.2011
metaphorically speaking...
today, hoover's vice president of marketing, brian kirkendal, announced that effective friday, 22 april (sooner if possible), the venerable vacuum company would be pulling ALL its advertising from abc.
"My wife and mother are both passionate viewers of All My...
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Apr.17.2011
about last week’s announcement that ABC is canceling both All MY Children and One Life to Live other than TV Guide’s Michael Logan has really good sources.
What I find even sadder than the actual loss of these shows is that for the third time in as many years heartbroken fans are working...
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Apr.04.2011
Or maybe it’s just that April Fool’s Day fell while Mercury’s retrograde, but this item from Michael Logan last Friday about the likely cancellation of both All My Children and One Life to Live was an ironic and painful reminder of April Fool’s Day 2009, when CBS announced the cancellation of...
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Mar.14.2011
When Irna Phillips died in 1973, the final pages of her unfinished memoir, All My Worlds described the 1964 creation of Another World. After her death, the book contract with the publisher was cancelled, and according to Irna’s daughter, Katherine, “all known copies of the manuscript were...
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Jan.24.2011
not to mention a dry spell, at least for a while…
TNT’s Men of a Certain Age won’t return until summer. (Co-creator, Mike Royce, explains the rationale for splitting the season here.)
NBC has yet to announce when they will broadcast the final season of Friday Night Lights, which has already...
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Jan.03.2011
As regular readers know (perhaps, too well), I’ve long believed that the elements of early soaps contained in shows like Friday Night Lights and Men of a Certain Age, to name but two, are one of the reasons – arguably, the reason – these shows are so celebrated by critics. But, describing those...
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Dec.22.2010
Along with a profound disdain for housework and her lifelong attachment to Guiding Light, and for many years, As the World Turns, my mother also shared with me a love of baking. For my mother, Christmas cookies were a way to say thank you to everyone – neighbors, the mailmen, garbage men, oil...
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Dec.20.2010
My focus, of course, has been on the relationship between daytime soaps and primetime scripted dramas – hence the title of my essay for Survival… – “The Ironic and Convoluted Relationship between Daytime and Primetime Soap Operas”. So, it’s no surprise that as my daytime soap viewership came...
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About lynn
critical observations about soap operas – their content, the industry that produces them, and the culture that both loves them and loves to ridicule them...
I love WomenArts' pithy and succinct description of my work.
I began writing about soaps in 1990, and...
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