care of the surrogate and all the rest that came along with that so my head wasn’t there. When she was born, people started setting me up on dates… but it was just so weird to go out on a date and have a 2-month-old at home. It was weird trying to get my groove on being a mother to an infant and hardly sleeping and everything. I remember one day I went on a date and I told this guy that I’m a mother and have a baby and he just said, “Oh, OK,” and he didn’t even react! “C’mon dude, you have to react! You must have questions,” I thought! Maybe he was being super sensitive and sweet but I remember being stunned that he didn’t ask about the father, etc. [Laughs]

  And it didn’t help when CBS WATCH MAGAZINE erroneously stated that your “uterus was atrophied!”

  [Laughs] I know! So funny! When you’re explaining the female reproductive system to someone, it’s like white noise. I shouldn’t have even gone there, but it was very funny.

  I think they confused your uterus with mine! CBS WATCH did a feature on Michael Muhney and made a mistake by titling the feature Daytime’s Sexist Man instead of Sexiest!

  [Laughs] Omigod. Really? Oh, no! That’s hilarious! I love that!

  I joked to Muhney that even Sexiest would be wrong! [Laughs] Oh, Muhney!

  Oh, Muhney! I love my Muhney! You can’t get me to say anything bad about Muhney. That’s Josh [Morrow] and Muhney’s little game.

  I love scenes between The Stafford and The Muhney. You guys are Y&R’s best actors. It’s obvious you both challenge each other in your scenes together and — dare I say it? — raise your game… if that’s possible!

  It makes him better! [Laughs]

  Good one! Michelle: 1 Muhney: 0 I asked that sexy bastard Joshua this: Do you think Y&R would ever dare pair sworn enemies Adam and Phyllis together romantically or sexually? The Adam/Phyllis/Nick/Sharon quad is the best in daytime. You guys are the future of the show.

  Adam and Phyllis? I don’t think they should. I don’t think they think they should, either. I think they should be constantly at odds with each other, and if they have sex, I think it would screw their dynamic up.

  I agree. However, as a fan of great acting, I have to admit it was delicious to see Phyllis pretending to seduce Adam when he was on to her.

  Yeah! I liked that! That’s a great dynamic… I like having that.

  Does Phyllis respect Adam… even just a little bit?

  She doesn’t. There are other characters who were her rivals that she respected in the past. It was like that with Diane and Drucilla. They were adversaries but she respected them because they were smart women.

  Are you happy that Y&R is filling in the blanks when it comes to Phyllis’s blurry back-story? I’m not sure if I’m totally sold but I like that Y&R is at least exploring this complex character’s past.

  I had my own ongoing back-story in my head for a long time. It’s like reading the book and then seeing the movie, and then you’re like, “I liked the book better because you had your own imagination.” Right?

  Right. That’s a great way of putting it. I’ve never heard it described like that before.

  It’s sort of like that a little bit because I had my own back-story created. And then they brought in Avery and her father [George]… so now I aborted all my stuff and just did it. But it was fine, because at the end of the day, it’s my job and it’s a storyline for me. Yes, it didn’t match what I thought up but it’s no big deal. I don’t want to sound like a girl scout… but acting what’s on the page is my job and I do it. [Screaming is heard from the background] Do you hear my kid screaming for me?

  Yes! Do you have Christian LeBlanc tied up somewhere?

  She doesn’t understand why she can’t walk 50 feet to hang with me.

  I can wrap this up soon…

  No, you’re important… this is important…. It’s all good.

  As for Phyllis’s exposition, at least it’s better than some hackneyed, plot-driven story.

  Yes! But again… anything you imagine is always going to be better than what you see and that’s why I said I do my job happily. Also, what they wrote was not that dissimilar from what I thought.

  What was it like working with the great Ken Howard?

  I know, right? How cool! We just laughed a lot. In fact, I think we joked a bit too much. [Laughs] He [regaled] us stories about all the jobs he has done. We laughed so much! We all told him he should be doing comedy. He came in and did all his scenes in one day — and he was great. I mean, he’s Ken Howard!

  It was great that Y&R hired a great actor to play Mr. Summers… because knowing Y&R’s track record a Kardashian would’ve been cast as your dad!

  [Laughs] Maria had told me she wanted to get someone really good to come in and she had planned that.

  Were you happy that his character died right away? It kind of pisses me off when soaps bring in a character that defines a super character’s psychology and then kills him or her off two days later.

  It would’ve been cool to have him there a bit longer, and he would’ve done it, too; but someone like Ken is expensive. They probably wanted him longer but they’ve got to pay peeps like me.

  You peeps are Y&R’s bread and butter. Are you happy with the Phick reunion? I am, I am shocked to say! I like it because Phick is addressing their issues slowly but surely.

  I like that they are addressing the issues because the audience has those issues. You have to honour how the audience feels… and most important, how you created how the audience feels… and I think the writers got that and are addressing it. I honestly don’t know what they are going to do with Phick. I really don’t.

  For more on Stafford… tune in next week for more on Phick, why she chose her Emmy pre-nom reel, if she owes hairstylist George Guzzman $25, the glory days of soaps, and the depressing soap cancellations sweeping daytime.

  GUEST COLUMN

  THE DVR BLACKOUT HEARD AROUND THE SOAP WORLD!

  By Flo Di Bona

  Pundits were expecting a big ratings bump on March 2nd, 2012 for the embattled Disney/ABC daytime drama GH. Along with it being a Friday cliffhanger, ONE LIFE crossover characters were slated to appear in the Friday episode. This crossover was expected to draw even more viewers from the cancelled ONE LIFE fanbase.

 

  For the past couple of months, fans have been rallying to raise GH ratings in an attempt to save the show from its seemingly inevitable cancellation. Week-ending February 24th ratings were significantly higher than previous weeks and GH easily beat the new reality show, THE REVOLUTION, which replaced iconic ONE LIFE, in ratings. In particular, the Friday, February 24th ratings were significantly higher. Going into the week of March 2nd, there were great expectations ratings and viewership for GH would reach new highs.

 

  Then, on March 2nd, a tweet went out by a soap fan asking if people who recorded the show got Friday’s episode. The response was both perplexing and widespread. Many people across the country, using multiple cable and satellite providers, who had DVRs and Tivos set to record GH on Friday, March 2nd, did not get the episode recorded. Further, a significant amount of people reported that their DVR series programming task for GH was gone and needed to be reprogrammed.

 

  As the investigation into this matter began, a couple of factors emerged. One was that the Friday March 2nd episode had been mistagged with the same episode date and synopsis as the Thursday, March 1st episode in some markets. Second, the week contained an extra day in February due to the leap year. Could these be factors? Or could other factors be involved such as severe weather or the mode the show was set to record in? Or do none of these factors apply?

 

  The March 2nd episode was mistagged March 1st with the March 1st episode synopsis. For some, this could be the reason the March 2nd episode did not record – because the system thought it was a repeat of the March 1st episode. For recording devices that were set to ‘First-Run’ it would have skipped the mistagged episode, thinking it was a repeat. Except that many vi
ewers who had their devices set to ‘First-Run,’ did get Friday’s episode recorded.

 

  While leap years can often cause coding nightmares, in this instance if the leap year was at fault, the issues would have occurred on Wednesday, February 29th, or even Thursday, March 1st. If the leap year were a factor it would also have likely been a global issue affecting every recording device. Not all recording devices were affected.

 

  There were severe storms in certain areas of the country on Friday, March 2nd. Could they have played a roll in this recording blackout? The storms hit in only certain geographic locations and some recording issues can be attributed to weather. However, recordings did not occur in many geographic locations around the country where there was no severe weather.

 

  To understand this dilemma two questions emerge: 1) How did this happen technically - was this purely a technical issue; and 2) If it wasn’t a technical issue, what the heck was it and what could there have been to gain from it.

 

  To troubleshoot the issue we looked at common denominators but the only common denominator was GH itself. Other programs set to record were not affected, multiple service providers were involved and multiple modes of recording (first-run and all episodes recordings) were affected in multiple geographic locations. Weather, while a factor in some geographic locations, was