'Hospital' Policy
ABC has recruited prime-time soap king Charles Pratt Jr. (Melrose Place) to resuscitate General Hospital, which once ranked No. 1 in daytime among women 18 to 49, but now often sinks as low as third place behind CBS' The Young and the Restless and NBC's Days of Our Lives. Gee, could ridiculous plots like the freezing and unfreezing of resident villian Stavros Cassadine (Robert Kelker-Kelly) be to blame? "It could be a little more real," admits Pratt, who actually started his career on GH almost 20 years ago. "Everyone on this show has come back from the dead! I was watching the monitor the other day, and Denise Alexander [who plays Laura's mother, Lesley Webber] appears. I told them I wrote the show where she died! Then somebody says, 'Oh, she came back.'" Pratt plans to liven up GH by looking to Melrose for potential guest stars. "Heather Locklear would never do daytime, but I wouldn't mind going out and finding one or two people from prime time," says Pratt. How 'bout Marcia Cross as an evil Nurse Ratched?