This Yahoo! article caught my eye today:
The prognosis for the medical facility depicted for the past 45 years on ABC’s “General Hospital” isn’t good.
The daytime soap’s long-standing hospital set is flat-lining as part of an explosive story line. Following a fiery crisis, the show’s crew has ignited the clinical den of drama, and producers plan to construct a totally new interior.
“This story really became an opportunity to take a shot at revising the look of the hospital and refreshing it,” said executive producer Jill Farren Phelps. “It felt like the right time to update it.”
Farren Phelps went on to say: “It will have a very different look. We want it to feel like you are walking into a place that feels fresh and modern. It will still be inside the same hospital. It will have the same architecture, but it will no longer be that big round nurses’ station we’ve become nostalgic about over the years.”
The article begets a few questions in my head:
(1) Many fans (and critics and bloggers) have had a hell of a time accepting Guiding Light‘s new sets simply because they aren’t the sets we remember in our heads from the 1980s and 1990s. One wonders how longtime GH fans will react to a piece of the show’s history disappearing…..
(2) ……especially when it’s so clear that Farren Phelps made this change intentionally. In a time where new faces and whiplash fast stories are leaving fans disoriented, why would anyone choose to change a cornerstone of the story?
(3) As usual, the mainstream press is half-assed at best when it comes to reporting. Longtime fans correct me if I am wrong, but the now-iconic GH hospital set has NOT been the same for 45 years, has it? I thought it was last refreshed around the time Gloria Monty came on board (circa 1978).
A | THOUSAND | OTHER | WORLDS 
Jill is famous for building big, new central sets. When she was at AW, she summoned us all to Brooklyn to see her police station megaset, the year NYPD Blue was getting really popular. Its her certain way of getting publicity–and she did it again here, by getting an AP reporter to write a story about GH. Certainly she didn’t mention to him that her show was all about violence and misogyny!
Jill is so, so desperate for attention – Wonder how often (and for what reasons) she redecorates her house.
You’re so right, Connie. The visuals always seem to matter to her more. I remember how much GL and AW changed, immediately, as soon as she came on board.
It’s a shame she didn’t spend that money on a new head writer. Or maybe several months salary for any much-missed vet (Genie Francis or anyone else).