Winning a Soap Opera Digest award is apparently as easy as ABC. All four ABC soaps --- Port Charles, All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital --- won at least one award at the 2000 SOD Awards. Combined, the network won thirteen awards. Five of those were General Hospital wins.

It was a bit of an embarrassing night for host network NBC. The network executives watched as award after award went to the competition. The network's only win on the night was Josh Ryan Evans, Passion's Timmy. The actor was named Outstanding Scene Stealer. Though Passions won only one award, it was a special moment because this was the new soap's very first award win of any kind.

For CBS the news was not much better. David Tom (Billy Abbott, The Young and the Restless) was named the Outstanding Newcomer of the year gone by. If the name looks familiar to you, it should. David's big sister is Emmy Award winner Heather Tom (Victoria Newman, Y&R). A giddy Kim Zimmer (Reva, Guiding Light) accepted her second award in fourteen nominations as the Outstanding Lead Actress.

The awards ceremony started and ended with ABC victories --- and in between there were, well, more ABC victories.

This marks the 25th anniversary of the soap opera publication, which has now become a weekly publication. Throughout the ceremony there were numerous attempts to provide a youthful appearance to the soap opera industry.

A montage of soap clips paid tribute to the teenaged characters on daytime television. Additionally, the magazine added a new "Favorite Teen Star" category to its Outstanding Younger Actor and Actress categories.

Upon accepting her award for Outstanding Younger Actress, All My Children's Kelly Ripa (Hayley Vaughan) mused that she was honored to be "good enough and young enough to be in this category." When the audience began to laugh, the actress puckered her lips and scolded them for laughing a bit too long.

Sarah Brown (General Hospital's Carly Quartermaine), winner of the Favorite Female Star award, said that she was honored to be in a category with such wonderful actresses. The competition, Days of our Lives' Kristian Alfonso (Hope Brady) and Y&R's Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki Newman) smiled approvingly. "I admire you both," said Brown. "I've been watching you both since I was a really, really little girl."

There was more levity from the folks at ABC. One Life to Live's Mark Derwin (Ben) took to the stage to accept the award for Favorite Couple. The other half of the pair, Erika Slezak (Viki). Toting a framed photograph of his co-star, Derwin stated that there was a reason why Slezak was unable to attend the ceremony. "The terms of her parole," he mused, did not allow her to leave New York. It was Derwin's second win. He won back in 1993 for his work as A.C. Mallet on Guiding Light.

Fashion-wise, GH's Genie Francis takes top honors. She wore a low-cut, see-through black dress. On the flip side, AMC's Mark Consuelos' (Mateo Santos) choice of a silver and black paisley-esque suit jacket raised some eyebrows.

Related Information

The Winners: Review a list of this year's winners and nominees.
More Awards: Check out other SOD winners.
News and More: Return to Soap Central's FrontPage.

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