1 hour ago, te. said:

I mean, we know this simply isn't true. Due to the nature of it being a Corday / Sony co-production they actually did keep them. Cady McClain of all people casually dropped that the entire shows run exists except "season 2" as it was destroyed in a fire.

Exactly. 👍 When the "Facebook guy" kept insisting that he "knew for a fact" DAYS does not have any archival material saved, I pointed out it's fairly well known Sony/Corday is one of the few entities that DOES preserve past episodes. In fact, if nothing else, the huge number of ancient flashbacks DAYS trots out on special occasions, from all eras of the show, confirms the existence of the archives.  But he said that those flashbacks are either newly  "recreated," or else the studio tagged a few scenes here or there over the years to use later, and wiped everything else.

This is nonsensical. No show could or would predict, in 1970, that scene 54321A  needed to be saved in order to use as a flashback in 2022.🙄

1 hour ago, te. said:

It wouldn't surprise me at all if there's a lot of shows that are currently digitizing their archives (hence why Cady would randomly have information on the DOOL archive), but the older the format is the longer time and effort it takes to getting them digital, and that's not taking any upscaling / remastering into account. I assume that the reason why BEYONTV started with 90s episodes of AMC is that those were faster to get to digital and to acceptable quality to put up on streaming. I'd assume episodes from the late 70s/early 80s exists for all soaps at the very least, but it's just more work to transfer those and they might not be great in terms of visual / audio quality. 

Right. The vast majority of reports that have covered this subject over the years contend that all soaps started saving their episodes in the late 1970s/early 1980s, even the ones that had wiped everything previously. Getting those episodes digitized and ready for streaming would just take time and work.

4 hours ago, vetsoapfan said:

No show could or would predict, in 1970, that scene 54321A  needed to be saved in order to use as a flashback in 2022.🙄

As if they would know for certain that DAYS (or any show) would still be on the air 42 years later, right, lol?

4 hours ago, Khan said:

As if they would know for certain that DAYS (or any show) would still be on the air 42 years later, right, lol?

Right, LOL. But folks who are determined to feel important and "in the know" hate to admit their assertions could be mistaken.

I had a very busy (both for good and bad) September, but the BeyondTV thing brought me here.

I've quickly scanned the discussion but still have questions...  Have any Canadians tried this?  Is this an ap one can get on their TV or only watch online (I still prefer streaming to my TV if this makes any sense?)  And... yes, it seems kinda expensive if they hope to get a lot of subscribers--you buy credits, but does that mean one episode is like $4.00 Canadian??  And is this a rental cost--if so how long do we have them for?  

(Yeah these are questions to ask BeyondTV themselves but they aren't answering me lol)

I get the reasoning given to start in 1995 but for those same reasons I would have started in 1990 (I mean ideally I would start in, say, 1980, but...)  Still, why not then start in January 1995 with the week of anniversary episodes with all those characters visiting the Martins new house (I had been watching for four years by this point, but was so thrilled to see those characters and clips I had only read about before.)  

Also I believe May 1995 is when McTavish's stuff stops airing, right?  Then we have Hal Corley as an interim HW (when I interviewed him for my MA he confirmed that this was the role he played--with plenty of 2am phone call story input from Agnes herself) while they get Lorraine Broderick, who Felicia Minei Behr wanted badly, into place though her work doesn't really start till Fall.

So it IS a very interesting time of transition for AMC and one that I wouldn't mind rewatching in full in good quality (as many know my MA project was mostly about the long "gay" umbrella story under Broderick that started with the introduction of Michael Delaney and essentially morphed into the Kevin Sheffield story and didn't really end until McTavish returned in 97...  When i was working on that I watched dozens, maybe hundreds of episodes and clips from this era to refresh my memory, but...)

I should add that, while I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to pay and if the cost is worth it,  I do like the model of dropping 20 episodes a month.  I sometimes feel like a bad fan, but sometimes when episodes of a soap appear all at once (or of any show) in larger quantity I find it overwhelming and never get around to watching them, but keeping up with watching 20 each month (ie the actual rate) is much more manageable.

On 9/25/2025 at 7:02 AM, te. said:

I mean, we know this simply isn't true. Due to the nature of it being a Corday / Sony co-production they actually did keep them. Cady McClain of all people casually dropped that the entire shows run exists except "season 2" as it was destroyed in a fire.

I honestly feel like most (if not all) soaps that were produced by larger Hollywood studios kept their episodes. For instance, "Bright Promise" was produced by Bing Crosby Productions, which also made "Hogan's Heroes" and "Ben Casey." Would they have kept the masters of their primetime series while junking their (AFAIK) only daytime series? I think it's UCLA that holds all of 60s GH (up until either 1969 or 1970). Besides the big three California soaps (GH, DAYS, and Y&R), it would just be shorter-lived 60s soaps, but it makes me wonder if the likes of "The Best of Everything" and "Return to Peyton Place" were saved.

And Dan Curtis, of course, kept Dark Shadows which has paid dividends.

And Agnes Nixon always says she was very jealous of (she seemed to follow Dark Shadows, or at least its success, with some interest.  I can't think it's coincidence that *she* chose--and this is confirmed--its top writers to go to OLTL and eventually take over.)

UCLA has quite a few soap gems in their archives, and last time I checked they still hadn't been transferred to currently viewable (or even archived in a stable format) media.

I find it interesting that the international rights to All My Children are held by Agnes Nixon’s estate or her production company, Dramatic Creations. The estate also owns both the domestic and international rights to Loving/The City, which BeondTV has said it plans to offer at some point. (I came across this information in an Instagram comment BeondTV posted.)

1 hour ago, EricMontreal22 said:

And Agnes Nixon always says she was very jealous of (she seemed to follow Dark Shadows, or at least its success, with some interest.  I can't think it's coincidence that *she* chose--and this is confirmed--its top writers to go to OLTL and eventually take over.)

I'd always noticed that. Lela Swift, I think, did the directing rounds at a few ABC soaps too, as did Henry Kaplan I believe.

I could swear the original Llanfair foyer (or the one since the '70s til '91 anyway) is actually the Old House foyer from DS as well, but don't quote me...

When I'm feeling up to it I need to check out UCLA's archive. I'm not far away.

4 hours ago, All My Shadows said:

I think it's UCLA that holds all of 60s GH (up until either 1969 or 1970). Besides the big three California soaps (GH, DAYS, and Y&R), it would just be shorter-lived 60s soaps, but it makes me wonder if the likes of "The Best of Everything" and "Return to Peyton Place" were saved.

If Corday Productions kept DAYS, you'd wonder if they kept Morning Star and Paradise Bay? I guess there was that fire mentioned, so they could've been unlucky. 

3 hours ago, Jonathan said:

I find it interesting that the international rights to All My Children are held by Agnes Nixon’s estate or her production company, Dramatic Creations. The estate also owns both the domestic and international rights to Loving/The City, which BeondTV has said it plans to offer at some point. (I came across this information in an Instagram comment BeondTV posted.)

I did always find it interesting that ABC never owned Loving/The City (I think Dramatic Creations was her second company--AMC and OLTL were by Creative Horizons, or do I have that background?)  But that's great news.  At this point I still think they need to find a better purchasing model but I guess I should break down and at least buy one episode to test it out myself.

52 minutes ago, te. said:

If Corday Productions kept DAYS, you'd wonder if they kept Morning Star and Paradise Bay? I guess there was that fire mentioned, so they could've been unlucky. 

We have several full episodes of Morning Star at least but they are B&W kinescopes whereas it always aired in colour so that implies they didn't have the video masters and only saved some on kinescope, but... who knows?

3 hours ago, Vee said:

.I could swear the original Llanfair foyer (or the one since the '70s til '91 anyway) is actually the Old House foyer from DS as well, but don't quote me...

When I'm feeling up to it I need to check out UCLA's archive. I'm not far away.

Knowing how much Agnes Nixon loved Gothic storytelling (as we've discussed, something she's not often credited with when people discuss her style) it's not all that surprising she might be interested to see what was going on with DS (and surely was also aware that it was attracting a young audience which she smartly tapped into.)

I am sure you're right about the Llanfair foyer--because now that you say it, I remember hearing that too.

I always assumed you were on the East Coast!  Yes go down to UCLA and see what's what!

47 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

I always assumed you were on the East Coast!  Yes go down to UCLA and see what's what!

I was for most of my life until the last ten years. Not by choice, lol!

I remember hearing that too.

I'd never heard that, but it just looks very much like the Old House to me.