All My Children
Soap pundits speak on state of soaps to ABC National Radio Australia!
Photo Credit: JPI Studios
The ABC National Radio news program, Future Tense, out of Australia late last week had a segment led by series host, Anthony Fennell, who interviewed a diverse cross-section of panelists including American soap journalists and pundits. The segment included soundbytes from The Red Room’s and US- based soap critic, Lynn Liccardo, and Sam Ford, Director of Digital Strategy for Peppercom Strategic Communications, a research affiliate with MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium, and co-editor of the book The Survival of Soap Opera.
Many issues were brought to light including: the social impact of soaps worldwide, the state of the storytelling, the demographic of the audience, and where soaps went into a downward spiral. We particularly found some of thought-provoking comments of Liccardo of interest. See below!
Liccardo addressing the demographic of soaps and the stigmas attached to them: A significant portion of viewers of soaps have always been men. Last time I looked at the numbers it was 24%. That notwithstanding, soap opera’s always been seen as something attached to women. And in the US culture anyway, anything that’s tagged as feminine is valued differently than what’s perceived as masculine. As an example, a few years back a woman I didn’t know especially well, but who knew that I watched soaps, turned to me and regarding nothing we were talking about, she just asked, ‘Who’s Dotty Thornton’s mother?’ And I replied, ‘Edna.’ I didn’t have to think about it. A bystander overheard, turns around, and says, ‘What are you two talking about?’ And we said, ‘All My children.’ And he was like, ‘Ugh! I can’t believe you two remember that kind of detail!’ And was dripping sarcasm and contempt. So I decided to try a little experiment. I said, ’56 games.’ And he shot back, ‘Jo DiMaggio’s hitting streak’ (baseball player). It still stands after 75 years, so the value is really in the eye of the beholder, and as I say, if it’s attached to women it tends to be valued as less important than what’s tagged as masculine. But the fact of that marginalisation and the reason behind it is a lot less important than understanding the insidious impact it’s had, both on how soaps have been perceived and what the genre has become.
Liccardo addressing, as the show calls it,The Enemy Within! “The self-loathing — and I actually prefer the term internalized marginalization, my editors like self-loathing — but you have the grandmother: she never misses an episode of Young and restless but when she’s watching with her grandson she reminds him that this show is ‘utter trash’. A newspaper reporter, a television critic, mocks soaps in her articles consistently but in ways that make it clear she has been, and possibly still is, a viewer.
And for those who make soaps: there’s Harding Lemay, before he became Another world head writer in 1970, he was an author and a playwright. Yet, he finds out that his editor’s wife is a fan, and he wonders why she’s wasting her time watching the show that he’s writing. But kind of the granddaddy of all of it was in 1978, Anthony Geary is asked to become part of General Hospital by Gloria Monty, the producer, who revitalized the show, and he says to her, ‘I hate soaps.’ Monty replies, ‘Honey, so do I. I want you to help me change that.’ Which they did, with enormous success. They introduced these adventure stories and comic books — fantasies like The Ice Princess. And what happened was other shows tried to replicate the success. They jumped on what came to be known as the ‘We’re not your mother soap opera anymore’ bandwagon. They pushed veteran performers aside, undermined the multi-generational storytelling that had been the heart of soaps and, in doing so, reinforced the idea that in order to survive, soaps had to abandon their roots.
Liccardo on how the state of soaps is driven by the bottom line…dollars! A big part of it’s driven by money. You know, scripted storytelling is very expensive to create, especially when compared to reality television, which is extraordinarily inexpensive to create. And episodic shows, which is to say shows that have a beginning, middle and end, shows where you don’t need to know what happened before to understand what you’re going to see in the next hour or so — they are very lucrative for producers because they’ve worked in syndication. I mean in the States you can sit down and watch 12 hours of Law and Order in a row, just one after the other. And they make a lot of money for the producers. You can’t do that with serialized television. They just don’t attract the kind of audience because you have to make that commitment to watching the whole thing. Money’s always a big part of this.
You can listen to the complete segment featuring all the guests, or read the transcript by clicking here!
Alan Dysert, who played Sean Cudahy on ABC’s All My Children has died. He was 75-years-old. The news of his passing came from his wife Michele who shared via a Facebook post that Dysert died back on October 23.
“My heart is broken as I share that my beloved husband, Alan, passed away on October 23, 2026. While I am struggling to imagine life without him, I am forever grateful to have experienced what so many people spend their lives searching for — the love of a lifetime,” Michele expressed.
While a cause of death was not made public at this time, Michele admitted that Alan, “faced more than his share of health challenges over the years, yet he continued to approach life with determination, humor, and gratitude.”
Photo: ABC
Dysert wrote about his battle with a rare, aggressive and incurable cancer in his 2023 autobiography, Lights, Camera, Cancer! He spoke of having undergone four major cancer-related surgeries, and many rounds of chemotherapy and CT scans.
SEAN CUDAHY WAS ‘BAD GUY’ PERSONFIED
On All My Children, Dysert played Sean Cudahy, the con man villain to his brother, good guy, Tom Cudahy played by Richard Shoberg. Dysert played the role between 1980 and 1990 returning for multiple story arcs, which included being revealed to be the murderer of Sybil Thorne. He was also involved in several affairs including with the impressionable Devon McFadden (Tricia Pursley).
THE LIVES HE TOUCHED
Alan’s longtime agent Melinda Eisnagule told PEOPLE his death is a “loss to our community and to the acting community at large. He touched so many lives and made the industry and the world a better place every day with his positive energy and kindness.”
Dysert leaves behind his wife, Michele and his two sons Cody and Cooper and will be remembered by those who knew him for a career that spanned the theatre, film, TV and performance coaching, and of course being a part of the legacy of All My Children.
Share your remembrances and condolences on the passing of Alan Dysert, All My Children’s Sean Cudahy, via the comment section below.
All My Children
Mark Consuelos Celebrates Kelly Ripa’s 56th Birthday on ‘Live,’ But Remember When Wendy Williams Outed the Couple as Married Before Anyone at ‘All My Children’ Knew?
On the Friday, October 2 episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, the morning talk show marked the 56th birthday of Kelly Ripa (ex-Hayley Vaughan Santos, All My Children).
During the opening segment, Mark Consuelos (ex-Mateo Santos, All My Children) humorously comparing his wife to both Gandhi and Groucho Marx, reflecting on both her comedic ability and peaceful ways.
Later, they went on to discuss the origins of her name and the most popular picks to name babies back in the year she was born, 1970. They were Kimberly, Lisa, and Jennifer for girls and Michael, David, and James for the boys.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Ripa recalled that she learned she was almost named Kim. However, their neighbors at the time had two daughters Kelly and Kim, which is what her parents wanted to call them, but they settled on Kelly and and her younger sister, Linda.
At the conclusion of the episode, Mark rolled out a huge cake for his wife. It was, “Happy birthday from all of us here at Live and at home.” Next, he cut the cake, and Ripa grabbed his face and gave him a “thank you” kiss.
Photo: JPI
KELLY AND MARK TRIED TO KEEP THEIR VEGAS WEDDING ON THE DOWN LOW
All of this brings back memories of how Kelly and Mark’s Las Vegas wedding ceremony went public in 1996 while the two were still on All My Children playing Mateo Santos and Hayley Vaughan. In essence, they were outed by then radio host Wendy Williams! They discussed it on the talk show back in 2024.
In fact, the duo hid their marriage from their All My Children castmates for months, until they found out Williams got wind of the nuptials and spread the intel on the airwaves.
The two recalled their secret wedding on a 2024 episode of Live! “We’d eloped. It’d been a few months at that point. We’d been married for three months, nobody at All My Children knew we were even dating, much less married to each other. We’re brushing our teeth and we’ve got Wendy Williams’ radio show on. We’re listening, and she’s like, ‘I’ve got celebrity dish!”
EYEWITNESS
Next Ripa continued, “The celebrities,’ I guess they had a broad use of the term back then, was the fact that ‘two soap stars from All My Children, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos eloped in Las Vegas.’ There was this eyewitness that worked in the Clark County courthouse that said we eloped, and the news broke, and we had to tell everybody we were married.”
Live With Kelly and Mark airs weekdays in syndication. Check your local listings for times in your area.
Share your birthday wishes for Kelly in the comment section, and let us know your thoughts on how Wendy Williams broadcast the news, unbeknownst to the All My Children newlyweds, that they tied the knot in Vegas? Check out Mark and the ‘Live’ studio audience singing ‘happy birthday’ to Kelly in the post below.
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All My Children
‘All My Children’ Movie Writers for Lifetime Revealed: Ron Carlivati, Jamey Giddens and Leo Richardson
This week began and as reported with a spotlight article on Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos and how their production entity, Milojo, has been teeing up the All My Children reboot with Lifetime.
The L.A. Times featured the married couple, co-hosts of Live with Kelly and Mark, and former All My Children cast members (where they met and fell in love) about their plans to bring two All My Children movies to Lifetime and how they are working with the Agnes Nixon estate to make it come to fruition,
On Wednesday, it was revealed by Daytime Confidential, that All My Children reboot producer, Andrew Stearn handpicked none other than Ron Carlivati (ex-head writer, One Life to Live, General Hospital and Days of our Lives) and Jamey Giddens (who is the new co-head writer of The Young and the Restless, following his tenures on the writing teams of Beyond the Gates and Days of Our Lives), as the two scribes who will bring the first of two of Kelly and Mark’s All My Children movies to the page.
Photo: IMDb
RON CARLIVATI AND JAMEY GIDDENS CONFIRM THEIR BOARDING THE ALL MY CHILDREN MOVIE PROJECT
The second installment is said to be written by primetime writer Leo Richardson whose credits include: Star, Katy Keene and more recently the Penn Badgley (ex-Phillip Chancellor IV, The Young and the Restless) starring series, You.
Richardson also wrote for three years on the U.K.’s long-running soap, EastEnders. All My Children revival fans will recall Richardson’s name was attached as the writer for the first incarnation of the All My Children movies, entitled, Pine Valley.
Ron Carlivati took to X and confirmed he is indeed boarding the All My Children movie project. Carlivati shared, “So excited to share this news! Thanks to Andrew Stearn, Kelly Ripa, Mark Consuelos, Albert Bianchini and the Agnes Nixon estate for entrusting Jamey Giddens and me with the first of two planned All My Children movies for Lifetime! Stay tuned!”
Photo: Jeremy Smith/imageSPACE
Jamey Giddens confirmed DC’s announcement by taking to his account on X and expressing, “I’ve been booked and busy in 2026. Thanks to Andrew Stearn, the Agnes Nixon estate, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos for entrusting Ron Carlivati, and me with the first of two planned All My Children movies for Lifetime!”
Some fans seemed to question how Giddens could be writing for the first All My Children movie at Lifetime, when he is the new co-head writer at The Young and the Restless with Dan O’Connor. Jamey answered that head on via X and explained, “We turned in our All My Children script months ago. My sole focus as of this past Monday, is Genoa City, Wisconsin! #YR”
ERICA KANE, MARIA SANTOS AND HAYLEY AND MATEO SANTOS TO APPEAR IN THE ALL MY CHILDREN MOVIE REVIVAL?
In the planned stories, Susan Lucci’s Erica Kane and Eva LaRue’s Maria Santos will be two characters whose lives we will get to see for the first time since the series was canceled by ABC back in 2011 after 41 years on the air. As well, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos confirmed they will make brief appearances on-screen; one could assume as Hayley and Mateo Santos.
“It’d be wonderful to give the fans something that they’ve been yearning for so many years,” shared Mark Consuelos to the LA Times. “All My Children gave me my family. I met my wife there. It gave me my start in the business. It gave us so much. It would be a dream to be able to give back.”
So, what do you think of Ron Carlivati and Jamey Giddens getting nod to write the All My Children movie #1 script and Leo Richardson #2? Weigh-in via the comment section below.
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This article is so right on the money when OLTL & AMC got cancelled my sister sent a sarcastic message saying what is the world coming to? I responded with all the actors that have come from soaps who now have Academy Awards.
What was said about soaps being perceived as feminine and by turn less valuable in our male patriarchal society is so true. It amazes me how consistent this message is. Being a vegetarian, I see a persistent and controlled message on tv and popular culture about vegetarianism being a feminist trait. In turn, this must be a bad thing and mocked at all times. Every character on tv that becomes a vegetarian (usually a girl) is mocked, and the meat eaters all decide that soy or tofu tastes like nothing and then eat meat. An entire philosophy called feminist vegetarianism has sprung from this. I believe soaps are suffering the same patriarchal stigma. It is so pervasive that even its viewers and those in the industry have little respect for it. There is still perception that all viewers are 70 year old women who do not buy things, and do not know how to use the internet. Reality shows that as much as 20% of viewers are men. People grow up watching the shows with their grandmas. They develop loyalties. The go to school and get jobs. They can’t watch at 1 or 2 pm, so they have to watch online. There are more than 2.5 million viewers daily for OLTL, Neilsen just isn’t able to capture who watches them. There is no fight about the show being taken away, because patriarchal society views them as outdated mindless, terribly acted trash to occupy Grandma’s time. I think there is potential for OLTL to find a bigger audience online then daily airings on ABC at 2pm. I just wish ABC wasn’t still going to profit from the shows. If OLTL continues in the quality of the writing, acting, and social storytelling it has been telling….then the future is not bleak. There are concerns about the costs……but I pray there is a way to make it work. I keep up with all my shows on Hulu now. I would gladly pay for a soap channel that aired episodes online. They could save money on the expensive sets. I do not tune in for fires….guns….tornados…and explosions. I tune in for dramatic explosions like the big reveal at the twin Buchanan girls wedding. We fans were waiting for that moment for months. It was better than the Super Bowl. NOw we have the Tale of Two Todds. I would not miss their meeting nor the fallout from that big reveal if my life depended on it. And by the way, I am a man…..and a vegetarian.