Disney TV Chairman Dana Walden Praises GENERAL HOSPITAL’s Success Handling COVID

Dana Walden, chairman of entertainment at Walt Disney Television, had lots of praise for GENERAL HOSPITAL during a recent virtual chat at the Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business Conference where she was given a lifetime achievement award from the organization. During the discussion, Walden discussed the impact that COVID-19 has had on the entertainment industry, especially Walt Disney’s television operations. She praised the cast and crew of GH for getting back up and running so quickly and paving the way for all other productions going forward.

“I’m deeply indebted to the team at GH,” Walden expressed. “They put their show back into production very early after the start of quarantine. We got to learn so much about what the best practices were, how many times a week we needed to test, how many people could be together in the same room as we were producing, what the distance that we had to keep people away from each other, again, to keep our teams and our employees safe. We learned so much.”

Walden also credited THE BACHELOR franchise for being a “trailblazer” along with GH and expressed her pride that even as Los Angeles saw a dangerous spike in coronavirus transmission in recent months, these productions were able to continue working with their safety precautions helping them achieve a COVID transmission rate of under one percent.

Like the other three daytime dramas, GH suspended production in March during the initial coronavirus lockdown. But by July, they were able to get back in business and began airing new episodes again in August, after over two months of reruns. So congratulations to GH (and the other soaps who are also all back in production) for showing everyone how it’s done!