Soap Operas

DRAKE HOGESTYN Actor John Black -- the mysterious, amnesia-prone spy -- has been shot, stabbed, strangled, in a plane crash, ejected from a submarine, trapped in a gas chamber, stalked by a serial killer and, of course, attacked by Satan. It's been the role of a lifetime for Drake Hogestyn. Essentially, it's been his only role since he arrived on "Days of Our Lives" 23 years ago.

Ellen Wheeler knows a thing or two about reinvention and survival. In the 1980s, the Emmy-winning actress portrayed twins Marley and Vicky Love Hudson on the soap opera "Another World." She moved to "All My Children" as one of the first characters on TV with AIDS. In the late 1990s, she reprised her role as Marley Hudson on "Another World."

Daytime soaps are in peril and it just may be that prime-time is riding to the rescue. While soap opera audiences continue to dwindle, SoapNet, the Disney-owned cable channel devoted to sex-and-suffering serials, is embarking on a mission to revive the genre in the evening hours.

"Passions" is heading for outer space. OK, not quite outer space. Just that Earth orbit where satellites live. NBC's "Passions" becomes DirecTV's "Passions" this September when the satellite service rescues the daytime drama the peacock network is cutting loose. Can "Days of Our Lives" be far behind?

Late at night in a college classroom, Liliana Hung opened her laptop and adjusted her Chanel eyeglasses. She took a swig of Rockstar energy drink before tackling her assignment, which was to write a synopsis of one of three scenarios for a television show: A man learns that his long-lost mother is working in a strip joint. A woman seduces a young man, then realizes that he is her son. A transvestite called the "Queen of the Night" discovers his father dancing onstage at a club. At Telenovela U.

Recently, Steve Blackwood of "Days of Our Lives" was caught up in a four-car accident on Vine Street in Hollywood and walked away without serious injury. The next day, Blackwood's character, Bart Beiderbecke, was far less lucky: In baroque soap-opera fashion, the bumbling henchman for the wayward DiMera family was killed in a sword fight. His demise ended Blackwood's nearly 10-year run on the NBC series.

When veteran soap opera writers heard ABC's official statement about the post-strike future of its daytime dramas -- "We will continue to produce original programming with no repeats and without interruption" -- they knew it was bad news. If history repeats itself, it meant they would be replaced, as soon as necessary, by strike breakers, non-union writers -- or maybe even the producers themselves.

When talks broke down earlier this month between the studios and striking writers, it began to hit home that scribes could be jobless for many months to come. One of those writers finally made the agonizing decision to stop picketing and go back to work. The writer's show, a daytime soap, had run out of scripts. To this writer, the moral choice lay in keeping the show on the air.

Three nights a week, aspiring actors at the International Actor Formation Center Luz Columba gather to run through scenes filled with adultery, prison escapes, romance and revenge -- the kind of drama you'd only see in a soap opera. That's because the scenes they're running are from soap operas, Spanish-language ones to be exact. The school, which opened in 2004, is dedicated to grooming aspiring actors to become stars in the fast-growing world of U.S.-made telenovelas.

CBS' "The Young and the Restless" earned a leading 18 Daytime Emmy nominations on Wednesday, including best soap opera, although no one from its cast was nominated in the lead acting categories. Ellen DeGeneres, whose hit daytime series won best talk show for the last two years and who also was named best talk show host last year, has a chance to repeat in both categories. Her show earned 11 nominations overall. After many years of being held in New York, the Daytime Emmys are moving west.