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In which Prospect Park continues to degenerate from heroes of the soap genre to mustache-twirling villains: yesterday Variety reported that Prospect Park is still shopping One Life To Live and All My Children. The kicker: "one of the options Prospect Park is said to be considering is bringing in an overseas firm to turn the shows into a co-production. That may or may not allow the shows to circumvent the unions, which couldn't come to terms with Prospect Park on compensation for talent on both sides of the camera."

I.e., Prospect Park may be hoping to do some union busting. This would be 1) disgusting and 2) stupid, because none of the actors, writers, crew, etc. for these shows would opt for a non-union deal. For a great, scathing take on these developments, here's a post by Lana Nieves: Occupy Your Conscience.

Meanwhile, as OLTL hurtles towards its final episode (which airs on January 13th), it is engaging in some awesome meta. On Tuesday there was a brilliant and hilarious episode in which the whole town watches Fraternity Row, the soap within the soap which originally appeared on OLTL in the eighties. Various OLTL characters reel at the show's plot twists. Then, at the end of the episode, Roxy (Ilene Kristen) reels to discover the soap has been canceled! On yesterday's show, Roxy begs Clint Buchanan to resurrect the show, but he mouths ABC's party line that the show's time has come (even though he was watching the show with the rest of the town the day before, delivering my favorite line of the episode: "These damn writers are messing with my Brianna!"). Roxy tells him not to be so condescending and storms off to save her beloved show.

I can hardly believe that All My Children is going off the air at the end of the week, after forty-one years (to be replaced by what looks like the world's least interesting cooking show). I'm glad it will resume in some form in January on the web.

In the lead-up to the end of AMC's ABC run, there have been some notable guest appearances, including Sarah Michelle Gellar, who made a big splash in the '90s as Erica Kane's daughter Kendall. Since another actress has played Kendall for many years, here Gellar plays...Buffy, sort of. Only she's a Buffy who thinks she's Erica Kane's daughter!

So a couple of weeks ago it was confirmed that One Life To Live and All My Children are going to be cancelled. Despite fan outcry (and Hoover pulling its ads from ABC in protest), the cancellations appear to be going forward.

Now there are rumors that ABC will be replacing General Hospital with a Katie Couric program next year. Unlike OLTL, GH has not been a good show for awhile now. Mostly it's been treading water, writing-wise, despite a very good cast. Occasionally there will be an amazing episode or two--as with last week's stunning episode focusing on alcoholic Luke Spencer's intervention--which makes it even clearer how lacking the show is on a day to day level.

But I don't want GH to be cancelled--I want it to get a new head writer who isn't burnt out (as Bob Guza obviously is). Now I'm wondering if ABC has kept Guza on because he's burnt out, so it won't hurt as much when the plug is pulled. It looks like the brass at ABC have their hearts set on the end of scripted drama on their daytime lineup.

David Rasche, who played Wes Leonard on Ryan's Hope, is joining the cast of All My Children as Tad's evil uncle! Between this and the return of Angie and Jesse, I may have to start watching AMC again...