Gossip - Week of August 14, 2010 by Lynda Hirsch on Creators.com

Recently

LYNDA HIRSCH ON SOAPS -- SUMMARY BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL: Steffy turns to Taylor for comfort when she tells her mother about Ridge trying to talk her into signing annulment papers so Hope and Liam can get married. Ridge secretly informs Brooke that he doesn't think that Hope and Liam …Read more. LYNDA HIRSCH ON SOAPS -- GOSSIP In the mid 1980s, I received a press release from "As the World Turns." The show was trumpeting that the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston and the niece of Dionne Warwick was going to appear on the show. Who was she? I thought. In …Read more. LYNDA HIRSCH ON SOAPS -- Q AND A Q: How did the fundraiser that Bradley Bell, the producer of "Bold and Beautiful," held for President Obama go? — Arleta in Mill Valley, Calif. A: The event was held on Feb. 15 at the main Spanish style house of the Holmby Hills …Read more. LYNDA HIRSCH ON SOAPS -- SUMMARY BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL: Fresh from liberating himself from Steffy, Liam and Hope promise to spend the rest of their lives together. Steffy has not lost hope of a future with Liam, thinking that he just needs time away to realize she is the one for him. …Read more.

Gossip - Week of August 14, 2010

Jane Badler who created the role of "One Life to Live's" Melinda Cramer Jansen in the mid-'80s, has signed on as a recurring character on ABC's primetime show "V." Badler played Diane on the original "V" when it debuted 20-plus years ago. When she returns to the updated series, she will be playing the mother of the character she created.

One of my favorite "I can't believe this story!" moments is about Badler. The day she exited "OLTL," Jeffrey Pomerantz, who played her long-suffering husband, Peter, on the show, decided to send his leading lady roses. Pomerantz then decided to give Badler an in-person visit. When he walked into the living room of her New York apartment, he noticed a bowl filled with rose petals. He asked Badler if something was wrong with the roses. She replied no. So Pomerantz thought it might be a religious custom. Again, Badler said no, and added that the tag on the flowers said "cut stem." Badler thought this meant totally cut the stems off the roses.

There is an interesting story for Pomerantz's character: When Peter first came to town, he was from Scandinavia. For several years, he spoke with a Swedish accent. One day, Peter's accent disappeared. One of the characters asked, "What happened to your accent?" Pomerantz had to respond, "Well, I decided since I live in America, I should no longer have a Swedish accent."

I know people who have lived in this country for 40 years. Your accent doesn't just disappear in one day; you still keep it. I vote this to be one of the goofier soap opera explanations.

It seems soap opera jobs are very fleeting these days. Stacy Haiduk, who played Emily/Patty on "Young and the Restless," was hired to play a prison warden on "Days of Our Lives." It has now been announced that the actress is being replaced. No word on why. There was the standard press release that said, "We hope to work with her in the future; she is a fine actress." She is a fabulous actress, as she proved with her work on "Y&R." Why in the future? They could have worked with her now!

An article in Advertising Age explains why some soap ratings have been falling.

Blame it on the feminists and the need for two-person incomes in order to run a household. In 1956, about one-third of women in the United States held full-time jobs. (Yes, we know — being a housewife is being more than a full-time job.) Today, the number of women in the workforce is about 56 percent. I would have thought it was even higher. Unless a woman is retired, I don't know any woman who doesn't work.

Many women I know are looking forward to retirement. Not I, which is a good thing. I figured out that I can afford to retire two weeks after I'm dead.

Yes, there is the ability to watch the shows on DVR or over the Internet. The problem is that women who work and take care of a family don't have the time to watch the shows. Sometimes, they do watch cliffhanger Fridays and Monday for the resolution. Soaps have tried to do away with the cliffhanger on one day of the week so that viewers will feel that "miss a day, miss a lot." That strategy does not seem to be working.

I also believe that the soaps have not appealed to the younger viewer. I know one young lady whose mother watches the soaps. Her mother works so she has paired down her soap viewing to one show. Interesting enough, the daughter refers to the soap operas as her mother's shows, while she has her own shows like "Gossip Girl" and "Project Runway."

Soaps continue to try and snag younger viewers by having these teen story lines during the summer. That pushes the older characters off the canvas. The problem with this is that no one wants to think they are four times older than whom they are watching. It is bad enough for me when I go to the movie theater and realize not only am I the oldest persons in the show, I am older than any of the cast members. Nothing wrong with youth, but mixing it up would be great.

To find out more about Lynda Hirsch and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.