Watching the 36th annual Daytime Emmy Awards on The CW during the dog days of August confirmed what I already knew: These are dark
days indeed for the daypart overall and for soap operas in particular. And now this! The genre’s biggest night of the year, once a sparkling showcase for the hardest working people in entertainment television, compromised by a hurried, poorly directed show, telecast on a network that carries no daytime dramas during one of the lowest rated weekends of the year. Even the talent in the audience seemed to have been made uneasy by it all. In several decades of award-show watching I have never seen so many sloppy presenters and nervous winners. So many of them were so shaky it was uncomfortable to watch. It all seemed so wrong. From the days of radio thru the digital era, and without ever ceasing production, GL brought compelling entertainment to its fans. It was there during the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the assassination of a president, years of riots in our cities and calamitous protests on our campuses, Watergate, the resignation of a president, multiple recessions and energy crises and natural disasters, the Gulf War, 9/11 and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other national and international hardships and challenges. After that titanic trajectory, the circumstances under which GL was made to take its final bow were insulting to all of the people who ever worked on the show and all who ever listened to and/or watched it. Seriously, Williams’ second song or the fashion show could have been cut and there wouldn’t have been a squawk in the land. And that would have allowed plenty of time for a more fitting farewell for GL and a few words from B&B executive producer Bradley Bell, who deserves a moment in the spotlight for producing a first-class program. It is not for nothing that B&B remains the most popular soap opera in the world. I like to think that the producers of the Daytime Emmys might learn from their mistakes and put on a better show next year. But at this dark time I wonder if there will even be a Daytime Emmy telecast in 2010. If they do endure, I think it’s time to move them back to New York and back into the daypart they celebrate and promote. Still, that would involve the support of the Big Three. Is this really so insurmountable a challenge that CBS Corp., Disney and NBC Universal combined can’t find a way to make it work
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