AMC and OLTL Will Move Online!

[Wizzerkat]

For subscription, I think the price has to SOUND cheap in order to get people to buy. Most people also I think would rather pay in small increments than one lump sum. $3.99 per month is $47.88 a year. Cheap sounding means VOLUME which in the end makes more money. I would balk at almost $50 a year but $3.99 per month is very doable for me and I think most people.

[chyti]

I don't mind paying for what I want, I have amazon prime which is $80 a year upfront and pay for netflix on an as needed basis but like some have already said their content is extensive.

If they charge a subscription fee it is going to have to be much lower than what I pay for netflix

[John]

According to a poster on soap central, PP has a company website up. Has anyone seen it?

[John]

From Wall Street Journal

http://filmguy76.blo...is-mystery.html

Direct Link to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204443404577050313745551858.html

[Vee]

Of course we're going to say "save our soaps" in 2011 when our soaps were cancelled. It's not like there weren't efforts to save the shows that have gone before. They just never got anywhere. It's not OLTL or AMC fans' fault that PP took an interest in OLTL or AMC instead of a Procter & Gamble soap or any other, and I see no reason to apologize for it.

[Max]

Saying "save our soaps" is OK (I guess), because that is being (somewhat) honest. (Perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree, but I still feel that is being sort of murky, as it implies that the who genre needs saving. A much more honest approach would be to simply say "save AMC/save OLTL.") However, saying things like "save the soaps" or "save the genre" comes across as completely insincere, because if that was really the #1 priority, then these same people screaming bloody murder after AMC/OLTL got cancelled would have acted in a similar manner when every other previous soap got cancelled. Do you see the difference here?

I have yet to see one person explain to me why the cancellation of these two soaps is any bigger of a tragedy than the previous cancellations, or why AMC & OLTL "deserve" to remain on the air despite the fact that replacement programming is likely to be more profitable. In short, I fail to see what makes these two soaps so "special" (compared to all the others) to the point that they need saving. (I really hope that any responses to these questions will be answered based upon the merits, as opposed to just dismissing me as somebody whose "bitter" that his own soaps didn't get saved; and as I stated previously, I'm glad the P&G soaps ended when they did, because I certainly wouldn't want the incompetent executives at PP to get their hands on them.)

[marceline]

Slightly off-topic but not related...

Netflix will be resurrecting the TV show Arrested Development with online episodes in 2013. (That sound you heard was me squeeing!)

http://news.mornings...F10170_univ.xml

I think this is interesting for a couple of reasons: 1.) I'd put the AD fanbase up against soap fans for sheer devotion any day of the week, 2.) Netflix isn't giving specifics like frequency or episode length so that's still all up in the air and 3.) wouldn't they have the same union considerations as PP?

[DRW50]

I kept hearing AD fans say how bad the show was by the end. For that reason I'm a little surprised it's back.

[marceline]

Things got crazy at the end but that has never stopped the fans from demanding its return in one form or another.

[dragonflies]

THIS!!

[~bl~]

It is possible that some were screaming bloody murder when other shows were cancelled. You just may not know them or they aren’t in leadership positions within SOS. The difference is years ago, (like when Another World got cancelled in 1999) that it meant that within a few years there may not be any soaps on daytime network television.

When it comes to why these shows should stay on the air (meaning AMC and OLTL) compared to any other is subjective. There are still people hurting and wishing their favorite show was still on and they’ve been gone for years—like fans of Santa Barbara or even Edge of Night.

With GL, people were expecting it to be cancelled years before it was (in the 90s). So there was no surprise or shock when it happened. For years, P&G supposedly wanted out of soaps, but they wouldn’t sell. CBS even offered to buy GL around 2000, but wouldn’t let it go. When GL went it was inevitable that ATWT would, I can’t recall who it was, but one of the ATWT cast members said as much. Also I think especially with GL, they did a “wonderful” job alienating viewers. They lost a lot of their fan base that would have fought, but did fight over the show’s poor decisions, and weren’t listened to by them. These people finally gave up and moved to other interests.

[DRW50]

The rumor was that P&G had wanted out of their soaps for a long time. CBS also made less profit from them because P&G owned them. The idea was that since ABC owned their soaps, they would be more likely to want to save them. So taking that away did represent a fatal blow.

I'm not glad that ATWT left. I can say, well, maybe GL, although I would like to see what Grant Aleksander and Crystal Chappell would have done if they'd been able to buy it, but ATWT, it still could have run for years.

[marceline]

Speaking as a "bad soap fan" I don't think the cancellation of AMC/OLTL is a bigger tragedy. I think that the ABC viewers simply thought their shows were safer. Once the reality came down, everybody lost their [!@#$%^&*]. Also I think it was a matter of a tipping point. It was one thing to go from nine soaps to eight. Totally different to go from six soaps to four.

[dragonflies]

Yep I remember reading from many soaps fans that "the ABC soaps are safe cause ABC owns them"

[Eric83]

I agree with this. Once the soap Susan Lucci was on got canceled, it became a reality that soaps really were dead.

And Max, nobody is on here saying that AMC and OLTL deserve to continue on over other soaps. Why do you keep trying to talk about it?