The 2010 Daytime Airhog Awards

ABC

Who hogged the most airtime in all of 2010? Steve Burton slips out of the number one slot due to competition from a relatively new co-star’s record-breaking year.

As the year 2010 came to a close, so did a years worth of tracking appearances of contract and recurring actors on daytime’s remaining soap operas. “General Hospital‘s” Dominic Zamprogna (Dante Falconeri) and Steve Burton (Jason Morgan) top the list of appearances in 2010 as the male duo from the ABC soap respectively appeared in 234 and 224 out of 249 episodes. Those totals denote a noticeable rise from the amount of episodes 2009′s leaders Burton (208) & “Days of Our Lives” Arianne Zucker (Nicole Walker; 207) appeared in. In 2010, airing in 234 episodes, Zamprogna also beat the record formerly held by “All My Children‘s” Alicia Minshew (Kendall Hart Slater) and Lindsay Hartley (as Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald on NBC’s “Passions”) for most appearances in a year; Hartley appeared in 233 episodes in 2006 and Minshew appeared in the same amount of episodes in 2007. Enjoying an eight month long maternity leave in 2010, Minshew missed the list this year. Meanwhile, swapping from NBC to ABC and the time off in-between kept Hartley off the 2010 list, as well. ABC, CBS and NBC produced between 249 and 252 episodes of soap opera hours for each soap (except for the canceled CBS sudser “As the World Turns“) last year.

ABC: Although still the home of daytime’s most overexposed stars, the network of “All My Children”, “General Hospital” and “One Life to Live” lost four spots from 2009 on the Top 20 Airhogs list for 2010. This year ABC held only 11 positions. “GH” and Zamprogna, who just beat out last years winner Burton, led the way as the soap took up 6 positions on the 2010 list. In a surprise, “OLTL” edged out long-time airhog front-runner “AMC” for the second most airhogs on the network. “OLTL” held 3 slots – up from just one slot in 2009. “AMC” held just 2 slots, down four slots from 2009.

CBS: The network with the most balance, CBS, was led by “The Bold and the Beautiful” stars Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke Logan Forrester) and Ronn Moss (Ridge Forrester), again. In 2009, “Y&R’s” most worked star, Billy Miller (Billy Abbott) would have landed at spot #27. This year the number one soap in the country held two spots in the Top 20; Eric Braeden (Victor Newman) had top showing for the soap placing 14th with 172 episodes. CBS Daytime gained two slots this year and had a total of 4 daytime actors dominating the airwaves.

NBC: James Scott (E.J. Wells) led the way for the popular “Days of Our Lives” in 2008, ranking at #23 in airtime. Since then, “DAYS” has made their presence felt on the Top 20 list. In 2009, Zucker (#2 in 2009), James Scott (#7 in 2009) and Alison Sweeney (Sami Brady; #12 in 2009) landed on the list. For 2010, Zucker fell off the list due to a maternity leave but “DAYS” still managed to pick up 5 slots. Picking up the slack for Zucker were Galen Gering (Rafe Hernandez), Molly Burnett (Melanie Kiriakis) and Crystal Chappell (Dr. Carly Manning).

Memory Lane: The Top 20 for 2007, 2008 & 2009…

The 2008 Daytime Airhog Awards
Winners

The 2007 Daytime Airhog Awards
Winners

Our thanks goes out to those contributors who along with the Soap Opera Network staff have helped compile this information throughout the years at the SON message board. Thank you to jcar03, jhc2010, y&r_fan, JAS0N47, dmarex, Adam, alexisfan07, etc.

Until next year…