The man who arguably put the final nail in Pine Valley's coffin, former All My Children head writer Chuck Pratt was at the TCA's to promote his ABC Family soap The Lying Game. Fancast's Sara Bibel reported on Pratt's thoughts about AMC getting the axe:

There’s always a little bit of love for every daytime show. There have been others that have gone down that I haven’t worked on. You feel for the actors and certainly the writers and producers. But also I’ve worked on plenty of primetime shows that have done 13 episodes [and gotten canceled]. They’ve had 28, 30 years. I look back and go, ‘That was a good run.

Um, does Pratt even realize AMC has been on the air for 41 years? Did he even know how long it had been on when his pal Brian Frons hired him to wreck the show? Anyway, primetime is a different animal. People go into watching a primetime series knowing it has a limited life span. READ MORE

The first in a highly personal, non-objective series highlighting various aspects of the last episodes of Guiding Light, which will end its 72 year run on September 18th.

These final weeks of Guiding Light have been pure torture to watch. I don't mean "the new production model" (a phrase I never hope to hear again in my lifetime) or Bonnie Dennison's (Daisy) futile attempts to remember her lines. No, what has been extraordinarily difficult for me as a viewer — who vividly remembers when Roger (Michael Zaslow) kidnapped Holly (Maureen Garrett) in the Caribbean and Ed (then Mart Hulswit) threw him off a cliff — is watching the series' stories come to their inevitable conclusions. READ MORE

Is Jeffrey's (Bradley Cole) death a tragic byproduct of Edmund Winslow's (David Andrew MacDonald) murder? Ashlee (Caitlin Van Zandt) seems to think so. Personally I don't think it is a tragedy at all.

TV Guide Canada's Nelson Branco has released his list of Soap's Worst Actors. No surprise, The Bold and the Beautiful— or Passions 2009 as I like to call it— leads the pack with three folicle strutters making the cut.

 

I owe Beth Chamberlin an apology. A few weeks back in my Top 10 Last Ditch Stunts to Save Guiding Light post, I recommended the show toss the actress in favor of bringing back Beth Raines' originator Judi Evans. While I never saw Evans in the role, I heard from my aunts and mother who watched the show during the heyday of The Four Musketeers, that Evans was even more fantastic as Beth than she was as Days of Our Lives' Adrienne or Another World's Paulina, two of my favorite soap heroines, so for me it seemed like a no brainer to bring back Evans with the show in such a precarious state. Then this past week happened. READ MORE

Funny how the universe sometimes lines up and minds think alike, isn't it? Guiding Light is in the thoughts of a lot of people these days. Bloggers, soap journalists and industry watchers — not to mention the writers, cast and crew of GL — are all on pins and needles about this 72 year old institution. The writing has been on the wall among commentators on the Internet and in the soap press for some time regarding GL's maybe/probably/likely cancellation, which would essentially signal the final march along daytime's trail of tears as the end of the genre.

The signs are obvious and ominous: GL has been hovering at a 1.5 rating for the last few months, a situation exacerbated by a genre-crushing free fall in advertising revenues, which have in turn led to massive budget cuts by the networks for all the shows. If GL doesn't get its act together by the Ides of April, as our own Jamey Giddens so aptly put it, the oldest series on broadcast television will bite the dust. However, there is hope. As has been reported here, Guiding Light needs the minimum of a steady 1.8 rating to avoid getting the ax.

Back to minds thinking alike: Just as I was finalizing this list, Mr. Giddens posted his "Top 10 Last Ditch Stunts To Save Guiding Light," followed by Spauldingfield's awesome GL promo posted by Luke Kerr. Because of their excellent efforts I almost decided to not post these recommendations, but the situtation at Guiding Light is so important to those of us who love the show that I felt it was more important to contribute to the call to keep GL on the air and risk repetition than not do so. Therefore, consider these considerations an addition to their efforts. GL needs viewers not tomorrow, but today and here are ten reasons to tune in right now! READ MORE