TVSquad

Did you see Mad Men recently? As part of Harry's creating a TV division at the Sterling Cooper ad agency, he was made responsible for screening scripts of TV fare so that the content pleased/satisfied/supported the advertisers' desires. Interestingly, it was Joan -- the office manager/head secretary -- who was given the scripts to read and her main focus of As the World Turns.

She became completely engrossed in the 1962 Oakdale story in which a character came to from a coma with a new personality. Her enthusiasm for the soap story convinced the advertisers to back As the World Turns rather than Love of Life, another CBS soap at the time.

Mad Men was historically accurate about As the World Turns. It was the top-rated soap opera for 20 years -- 1958-1978 -- and in 1962 (the year in which Mad Men is currently set), ATWT had increased its share from 47.7 to 53.7 in just a year. It was the soap on the rise and over half all TVs on in daytime were watching this CBS soap.

I'm sure everyone has already seen the horrifying video of Rosie and Elisabeth going at each other on The View. Now comes word that Rosie won't be coming back on Tuesday to finish the remaining three weeks of her contract.

O'Donnell took Thursday off to celebrate the birthday of her partner Kelli, and today's episode was taped before the battle. O'Donnell posted a video montage of her time on the show on her blog, and it's probably no secret that it's titled "True Colors."

No word from Donald Trump yet, but I'm sure he'll be talking about his "victory" on the gossip shows this evening.

Well, here's a new twist to the never-ending saga of The View: Rosie O'Donnell will leave the show for her own solo talk show later this year.

That's according to TV Week, which cites inside sources as saying that O'Donnell has a clause in her contract saying that after a certain amount of time she can leave for her own show (though the contract also says that she has to negotiate with the Walt Disney Company -- ABC is owned by Disney -- before she goes anywhere else).

So I guess this is a question for both Rosie fans and fans of The View: would this be a good move for both of them? Rosie left her first talk show several years ago in a big way, so why would she want to go back to that? Then again, she did agree to come back to TV full-time on The View, so that's probably not a concern.

Maybe Barbara Walters can get Ivanka Trump to take her place on The View?

(And while we're talking about Rosie, TMZ has video of her dumping on American Idol and Paula Abdul this morning.)

I haven't seen a minute of General Hospital in over 10 years. In the 80s when everyone was talking about how great this soap was, I was busy watching Guiding Light, which I guarantee you was a better show (even though I only saw a few episodes of General Hospital). But Stuart Damon is a fairly well-known actor, and it's interesting to see he's being let go from the show in February (click here if you want to see how his Alan Quartermaine character will vanish from the show).

Damon has been with the show since 1977 (!) but he's been acting in TV and movies for a really long time, way back to the mid-60s. He's been in episodes of The Saint, UFO, Thriller, Space: 1999, Mike Hammer, Fantasy Island, Diagnosis Murder, and Strong Medicine, as well as movies like Star 80, so I'm sure he won't be looking for work for long. I bet he shows up on another soap.