Gays of our Lives (June 23, 2009)

Stephen Uppal (Ravi, Hollyoaks) and a pair of his co-stars took part in the U.K. edition of this month’s Cosmopolitan magazine as part of their annual Naked Centerfolds edition. The centerfold spread was designed to raise awareness of prostate and testicular cancer for Everyman, the U.K.'s leading male cancer charity. June is Male Cancer Awareness month.

Hollyoaks stars Anthony Quinlan (Gilly), Kent Riley (Zak)
and Stephen Uppal (Ravi) bare all for male cancer awareness

Hollyoaks is starting an online spin off-series featuring some of the characters off on an adventure in Manchester called Hollyoaks: The Morning After the Night Before. The first episode will air July 6^th on E4.com.

The cast of Glee

The season premiere of Glee is Sept. 16^th … The updated Melrose Place debuts Sept. 8^th … The third season premiere of Gossip Girl is Sept. 14^th. The show also moves to an hour later and will air at 9 PM EST next season, swapping with One Tree Hill … As The World Turns sources continue to insist that Forbes March’s Mason will not be the third in a Luke/Noah triangle (which means they’re either lying or they are stupid).

Keir Gilchrist (Marshall, The United States of Tara) will appear in the June 25^th episode of NBC drama The Listener… Happy birthday to bisexual actor Ferry Doedens (Lucas, Good Times, Bad Times), who celebrated his 19^th birthday June 19^th … Andrew Langtree, who will play Leon, Sean’s new love interest on Coronation Street, debuts July 3^rd.

RATING S AND RANKINGS
Last week’s season premiere of True Blood garnered huge numbers, scoring 3.7 million viewers. That’s the most watched HBO program since the final episode of The Sopranos. It’s also up 157% since the show’s debut and 51% higher than the show’s first season finale … Nurse Jackie continues to do well. Its second episode had 8% more viewers than its first. As previously reported, Showtime has already renewed the series for a second season … Raising The Bar’s ratings remained solid with 3.5 million viewers. They lost only 150,000 viewers from the show’s season premiere.

In New Zealand, Shortland Street topped Coronation Street for the second week in a row. The New Zealand-based drama scored an average of 614,000 viewers, while the U.K. drama had an average of 605,000 viewers.

In the U.K., Coronation Street averaged 8.3 million viewers, EastEnders was second with an average of 7.8 million viewers and Emmerdale was third with an average of 5.8 million viewers. While Emmerdale remains a distant third when up against the other two big U.K. sudsers, it is still one of the top-rated shows in that country. Meanwhile, teen soap Hollyoaks, continuing to struggle, managed about 1.6 million viewers per episode last week.

Can someone tell me how the brass at As The World Turns keep their jobs? Last week was another horrendous week for the show as it hit a new low in the ratings for the third time in about a month. The show shed another 42,000 viewers and is barely hovering above already cancelled Guiding Light. As for number one soap The Young and the Restless, it lost 71,000 viewers from the previous week, but is still only 10,000 viewers off from this time last year; ATWT has lost nearly 400,000 from a year ago. Meanwhile, One Life to Live gained 40,000 viewers (maybe that’s where the ATWT viewers went) and became the 5^th most watched soap.