EVENT: "Day of DAYS"

BURBANK, Calif. - October 2, 2008 - The stars of NBC's daytime drama DAYS OF OUR LIVES will meet fans face-to-face at the first "Day of DAYS" fan event on Saturday, November 1 from 10 a.m.- 4 p.m. at CityWalk at Universal Studios Hollywood. This complimentary event for loyal DAYS OF OUR LIVES viewers will offer fans the chance to meet and greet Salem's favorite Brady, DiMera, Horton or Roberts family member during autograph signings, a Q&A session, a trivia challenge and much more. DAYS OF OUR LIVES stars planning to attend include Blake Berris, Nadia Bjorlin, Darin Brooks, Molly Burnett, Shawn Christian, Bryan Dattilo, Kevin Dobson, Mary Beth Evans, Galen Gering, Deidre Hall, Shelley Hennig, Drake Hogestyn, Leann Hunley, Jay Johnson, Renee Jones, Lauren Koslow, Eric Martsolf, Joe Mascolo, Rachel Melvin, Stephen Nichols, Thaao Penghlis, James Reynolds, James Scott, Alison Sweeney and Arianne Zucker. The event schedule includes: 10-10:30 a.m. "Day of DAYS" Introduction 10:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. "Meet & Greet" with the cast of "Days of our Lives" 1-2 p.m. Lunch Break 2-3 p.m. Q&A Panel with the Stars 3-3:45 p.m. "Days of our Lives" Trivia Challenge 3:45 - 4:00 p.m. Event finale including the selection of a grand-prize raffle winner and a sneak peek of future "Days of our Lives" story lines Throughout the event fans will also have the chance to win raffle prizes, be selected as a "DAYS" star look-alike and win exciting DAYS OF OUR LIVES merchandise. For more information on this exciting event, fans can log on to www.nbc.com/days. For more information on CityWalk at Universal Studios Hollywood go to http://www.citywalkhollywood.com/

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS Returns Tonight

1 The best show (and soap) on television, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, returns tonight to kick off its third season on DirecTV's The 101. The show will air 13 episodes on the satellite provider before moving to NBC for "reruns" early next year. In Season 3, Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) has a new boss — his wife. Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) is the principal at Dillon High now. Smash has graduated. Tyra and Landry are now split, and Lyle and Tim are together. Here is a news and review roundup about tonight's episode: Bright ‘Lights’: Fans will go wild as Panthers kick off new season (A-) LIGHTS cuts a laserlike focus on the dreams and aspirations of those in Middle America. This is an admirable kickoff to what looks to be a championship season. A Return to West Texas for Another Football Season In its third season FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS still charges along with so much to recommend it. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS scores a touchdown FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS brought in a star out-of-town quarterback once before - Voodoo Tatum - and Matt survived. But maybe there's a second agenda now. Maybe the producers are thinking that if the show comes back for a fourth season, they'll need replacements for the seniors. It's a dream. But hey, dreams are what Friday night lights are all about. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS kicks off season on DirecTV tonight If you have DirecTV, enjoy “Lights” now. If you don’t, be assured the wait for it to hit NBC will be worth it. FRIDAY NIGHT survivor ...the creative challenge remains the same as it has been from the beginning: Convince high school football fans -- a subculture so huge and fervent in some regions that the term superculture would be more accurate -- that the show gets their lives right while at the same time convincing everybody who spent high school hiding from football players that an hour with the Panthers won't spark convulsive flashbacks. LIGHTS stays brilliant despite downsizing There's no denying that the show looks a little worn, a victim perhaps of budget pressures that may have moved the series from cost-efficient to cheap. But even a reduced LIGHTS is better than most TV series, and a reduced LIGHTS was all we were going to get. 'Friday Night Lights' deal may herald a new era TV funding Basically, in exchange for getting first dibs on new "FNL" episodes now being shot on location in Texas, DirecTV is subsidizing the series' costs to the extent that it's still a worthwhile proposition for NBC, which plans to run slightly different versions of the same episodes on its broadcast network early next year. The producers have had to trim between 5% and 7% from the show's previous per-episode budget of approximately $2 million. But they promise that hard-core fans -- which "FNL" has in large proportions relative to its puny overall audience, which averaged 6.2 million total viewers last season, according to Nielsen Media Research -- won't notice a difference.

Judi Evans Selling Cemetery Plots

1 Emmy award winning actress Judi Evans has made a career in soap operas--a talented actress with a great sense of humor, who has the uncanny ability to cry on demand. But work is drying up. CNBC'S Jane Wells works with Judi's husband, who told her that the soaps business is dying off, and Judi has picked up extra work in the "dying" business. Literally. She is selling cemetery plots to bring in extra income and keep herself busy in between auditions. She loves it. Wells asked Judi to write a guest blog on how--and why--she's gone from acting to working for Rose Hills Memorial Park. Only in Hollywood, kids. Here's the blog from Judi: "Being an actress can be a waiting game. For most, it's waiting tables. For all, it's waiting for the phone to ring. I have been lucky, better yet, blessed enough, to have worked on soap operas for over 20 years. With that being said, it has made me somewhat of a workaholic. I thrive when I'm busy, and make myself and my family crazy when I'm not busy. Waiting around for my manager or my agent to call is not my forte. When works slows, I want--no, I need--some kind of job to take on, and fast, before I make everybody crazy. In college at 16, I landed my first contract role at 18 on "The Guiding Light". That left me without a degree. We all know that in this day and age it is truly difficult to find a good paying job without a college degree. I consider myself to be an intelligent and hard working individual creating high expectations for myself. Yet I could not come up with a career path besides acting, no matter how much I wracked my brain. With work slowing down over the summer, I spent a day at the beach with my good friend Carrie. While we watched our sons play, I brought up my dilemma to her. She mentioned that she had had a friend who had worked at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier and just loved it. It was a great job with benefits and better yet, you had the opportunity to help people. Having always shied away from any talk about death, I was for a brief moment hesitant. But then, the thought of helping people through a difficult time truly appealed to me. Well, the seed was firmly planted. I went home, looked up Rose Hills on the computer, and as it happened, they were looking for Pre-Need Counselors, so I applied online right then and there. During the first interview, Jason, the recruiter, mentioned how being an actress could work to my advantage. As an actress you must be in touch with your feelings and the feelings of those around you. As a pre-need counselor the same rule applies. Also, in sales, it's important to believe in what you are selling. Again, in acting, the same rule applies. In order to make the moment believable, you have to believe in that moment. When I began working there I found there were so many concepts to advance planning that had never even crossed my mind. First off, property and funeral are two separate transactions. Having never had to be a part of the funeral planning process I had no idea. Property is property, and like any other property it is subject to inflation. The upside is, with cemetery property, you are not subject to property taxes. The difference is, no matter what the economy, people will always need to be buried. You know the old adage; nothing is for sure except death and taxes. The advantage to pre-planning is to lock in at today's prices because by the time you may need property or funeral, the price will probably be double, or even triple what it is today. And, not to be prejudiced, but Rose Hills is the most picturesque memorial park I have ever seen. It is also the largest, in not only the United Stated, but in the world. To top it off, of all the property Rose Hills owns in the close to 100 years of operation, it has only used about half. In essence, I now have the opportunity to get people thinking about the future, and the future of their families, and help them find a sound financial way to plan and fund their funerals and procure cemetery property. As much as I love acting, and I do, it brings me a great deal of pleasure to interact directly with people and also help them along life's journey. Still new to this business, I often wonder what my reaction will be when I eventually walk into someone's house, and they gasp and call out one of my character names and ask me what I'm doing there. So do I say, "Yes I was such and such character on that show, but now I'm here to help you plan you funeral", or do I offer them an autograph if they buy cemetery property? I haven't quite worked that one out. Seriously though, I've always felt blessed, and now I can pass those blessings along as well."