DAYTIME EMMY AWARDS 2011

I watched my very first Daytime Emmy Awards exactly 30 years ago, in 1981. They aired in the afternoon on NBC, opposite General Hospital and Guiding Light. Some people may have had remote controls then, but my family didn't. I spent the two hours of the broadcast sitting right next to my TV, manually turning the dial (remember those?) back and forth between the three stations.

I was in soap opera heaven. (Watch the opening below - I was only 11, imagine my confusion when I saw Luke and Laura on the wrong channel.)



I worked my first Daytime Emmys in 1994, when I wrote E!'s arrival show (remember those?) and the post-broadcast wrap-ups.

In 1995, I was actually in New York, field-producing Shelley Taylor Morgan's red-carpet coverage. (Jennifer Aniston came with her dad, John. Friends was big by then, but she wasn't... yet.



Jonathan Jackson was nominated for his first Emmy, and when I told him he was considered the favorite, blinked in surprise and asked, "Really?" Jason Biggs was nominated in the same category.)



In 1996, I was on the production staff of Dick Clark. Our Year in Review montage was set to the cast of Rent singing Seasons of Love.

My two big contributions to the show were thinking to use the shot of B&B's Sly throwing a match over his shoulder to set his club on fire for the line "The bridges he burned..." (another colleague had the brilliant idea to use a shot of Y&R's baby Noah in the incubator for the "measure in inches" line), and coming up with an excuse to have GH's Genie Francis on a live video hook-up from LA. Genie was very pregnant and couldn't travel, but we wanted to have her on the show because we suspected she would win her first Emmy (she didn't). I came up with the idea of doing a quick piece on the 15th anniversary of daytime's most watched event - Luke and Laura's wedding - that Anthony Geary would introduce and she'd chime in to.

I continued to work for Dick Clark up through the new millennium, then switched to As the World Turns and Guiding Light. (A highlight for my husband, a long-time AMC fan, was getting to dance with Cady McClain and her Emmy at one after-party.)

The last Emmys I actually physically attended were in 2007. But, I continued to be involved in one way or another up through 2010.

Last night, I couldn't even muster up the strength to watch. It was all just too, too sad.

My wonderful, thoughtful, considerate husband went ahead and recorded them anyway, without telling me. He said, "You might want to watch... later." (The last thing he did that for was AMC's David and Anna mourning Leora. He insisted the scenes were amazing, I told him I don't do dead babies. "Maybe later," he said.)

I followed along on Twitter, and I congratulate all the soap winners. But, my heart has been broken.