Passions Finds New Home on DIRECTV

EL SEGUNDO, April 26: The daily soap Passions, which ends its eight-year run on NBC this
September, has found a new home on satellite platform DIRECTV.

The deal with NBC Universal Television Studio will see the daytime
drama entering its ninth season on DIRECTV. Under the new agreement, NBC
Universal Television Studio will produce brand-new episodes to air Monday
through Thursday on DIRECTV's original programming channel, The 101. The
daytime drama, which currently averages 2 million viewers, will end its network
run on September 7 and will resurface on DIRECTV September 17, picking up where
the series left off. The show will remain in its current time slot of 2 p.m.
The majority of the cast and crew are expected to return when the one-hour
series begins shooting the new DIRECTV episodes in August.

"This new arrangement with DIRECTV is truly a landmark
development that allows NBC Universal to extend the Passions brand in a fresh and entirely new way to DIRECTV's 16
million homes," said Marc Graboff, the president of NBC Universal
Television, West Coast. "It will reward the dedicated fans of the daytime
drama who can continue to enjoy it on DIRECTV and also opens up a great new
model for other television programs to find new life on other non-traditional
platforms."