AMC and OLTL Canceled!

[Eric83]

But arent these rumors about Sony buying them? Not a rival network.

[Scotty]

Yeah...and Sony owns DAYS.

[Carolyn1980]

The Facebook/Twitter stuff says Sony is interested, but that has not shown up anywhere on any legitimate site. So I call BS on that.

But Deadline, which broke the news AMC's cancellation was imminent (leading to the explosion all over the news back in March), said yesterday that there were rumblings that NBC, not Sony, was interested in acquiring OLTL to pair it with DAYS. But Deadline said because of the financials, it looked unlikely.

[wingwalker]

While I highly doubt these rumors are true, if Sony, NBC or someone else was interested & Disney could get a reasonable offer, they'd sell. While not exactly the same, Disney canceled Power Rangers said the franchise was dead & something kids no longer wanted to watch, later sold it back to the original creator, & it's now airing on Disney Channel/ Disney XD's main rival Nickelodeon & doing well in the ratings, basically proving Disney's analysis of that franchise dead wrong & Disney hasn't cared or looked back. I think as long as ABC's new shows are doing well enough, I don't think they'd really care if OLTL/AMC were airing on NBC.

[Scotty]

Agreed...and think back to the 1990s when CBS picked up Family Matters and Step By Step from ABC during both shows final season.

[All My Shadows]

Family Matters and Step by Step weren't owned by ABC or Disney, though, were they?

EON and SFT definitely weren't owned by CBS when they switched. There was no sale involved in that. CBS canceled P&G-owned shows, so P&G sought another network and found one in both cases.

[R Sinclair]

They were Warner Bros.

And you're correct. People are getting confused with the fact that no matter what production company/studio buys the rights to the show, they still need to be aired on a network. And... SINCE IT'S BEEN PROVEN that the networks aren't interested in soaps, selling the shows to another production company isn't the answer.

[Scotty]

Per Wikipedia:

Network change

In early 1997, CBS bought Family Matters and Step by Step for $40 million from ABC.^[6] ABC then promised to pay Miller-Boyett Productions $1.5 million per episode for a ninth and tenth season of Family Matters. However, tensions had risen between Miller-Boyett Productions and ABC's parent company, Disney. Miller-Boyett thought that they would not be big players on ABC after recently being bought up by Disney. So in turn Miller-Boyett Productions signed in the $40 million offer from CBS for both Family Matters and Step By Step to be renewed for a 22-episode season on CBS. CBS put Family Matters, along with Step By Step as a part of their new Friday line-up they called the "CBS Block Party". They put up the "CBS Block Party" against ABC's TGIF lineup, where the two series previously originated. CBS cancelled Family Matters and Step By Step after one season, along with the rest of the "Block Party" lineup.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Matters

Family Matters was created by William Bickley and Michael Warren (who also wrote for, and were producers of parent series Perfect Strangers) and developed by Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett (also producers of Perfect Strangers), it was also executive produced by Bickley, Warren, Miller and Boyett. The series was produced by Miller-Boyett Productions, in association with Lorimar Television who co-produced the show until 1993, when Warner Bros. Television absorbed Lorimar (a sister company under the Time Warner banner) in 1993. Starting with season three, the series was also produced by Bickley-Warren Productions.

[All My Shadows]

The lone citation in that paragraph leads to an article that says nothing about ABC buying or CBS selling and deffo not anything about $40 million. And plus, I've never read anything at all about Family Matters or Step by Step being produced by ABC.

FM and SBS were produced for most of their runs by Miller-Boyett, which was absorbed by Lorimar, which was absorbed by Warner Bros. So yeah, IDK if there's ever been a case of a network producing a show then selling into a rival network.

[R Sinclair]

Anyway...

All three networks have eliminated soaps within the past five years alone. For a reason.

[KMan101]

No one should discount the possibility. I'll believe it when I see it, however. We can speculate all we want on "what we know" but folks, we DON'T know. Anything can happen. 5 years ago did anyone really think we'd have lost GL, ATWT, AMC & OLTL in the span of two years? Sony clearly views soaps differently. If they can make a profit and the money is right, why wouldn't they?

Soaps are only dead because that's what the majority is saying. If they had supporters instead of people just quickly brushing them off, they wouldn't be dead.

NBC did renew Days for two years. Which was strange in itself.

Sony and NBC COULD see the chance to shove it to ABC by buying the shows and them doing OK for them.

And, it's called money, foks. I wouldn't put it past Disney/ABC if they can make a quick buck on what they think is a dead commodity. Power Rangers, anyone? It's all about the dollars.

[Vee]

ABC will not allow anyone else to profit off their wares. Even if this were a possibility, I expect Brian Frons would drive an impossible bargain for one or both shows.

[KMan101]

Is it really up to Brian Frons though? ABC owns them, not Brian Frons.

If ABC wanted to profit off of AMC and OLTL, they wouldn't have cancelled them.

ABC seems arrogant enough to call them dead so why would they REALLY care about selling them? They flat out SAID THEY WOULD. LOL. They have clearly washed their hands of them (and eventually GH). Again, it's all about the money.

We can debate it back and forth but we will just have to wait and see. Should fans get their hopes up?

I wouldn't.

[KMan101]

Also, might I point out actors tweeting about "exciting things" happening as well as NBC taking calls about the soaps. Why would NBC take phone calls?

All of this is just really really strange.

[SFK]

I'm spent. From AMC to L.A. rumors to rumors of dual cancellation to fake Twitter accounts to dubiously fake Tweets from sketchy yet ultimately reliable moles to online sources who just make sh!t up... doubt nothing expect nothing. It's just one big fat "wait and see" to me now.