A DAY OF COMPASSION

ABC’s “One Life to Live,” “General Hospital,” “Loving” and “All My Children” along with NBC’s “Days of Our Lives” are among the shows scheduled to participate in daytime television’s “Day of Compassion” on Monday. In keeping with the theme--an expression of the entertainment industry’s concern about and commitment toward dealing with AIDS issues--each soap will air a storyline or scene dealing with AIDS.

Created to spotlight the need for a compassionate response to people living with HIV and AIDS, the idea was conceived last year by actor Neil Tadken after watching a scene from “One Life to Live” in which the real-life AIDS quilt came to the soap’s fictional town of Llanview. Tadken, who played the lover of a hospice patient (Michael Kearns) in an episode of ABC’s “Life Goes On,” thought it would be ideal if all soaps could feature an AIDS-related plot or moment. He eventually expanded his quest to other daytime programs as well, assisted by the Hollywood-based Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation/Los Angeles.

“General Hospital’s” scene, for instance, written specifically for this day, shows nurse Bobbie Jones (Jacklyn Zeman) speaking with a 25-year-old AIDS patient being released after her fifth hospital stay. Bobbie then expresses her frustration at the disease to colleagues; she tells them that she will urge the chief of staff to use recently bequeathed money for AIDS research. On “Days of Our Lives,” Sami (Alison Sweeney) discovers that one of her classmates is HIV-positive, leading to her own enlightenment about the disease.