AMC and OLTL Will Move Online!

[marceline]

Yes, but there weren't that many of them.

[marceline]

Not everything. Just some things.

It's not like I'm claiming to know more than Agnes Nixon about her dealings with ABC.

[DRW50]

I guess I see them as being more the target of the "be careful what you wish for" type of thinking. If he's not talking about them I don't know who he means.

[Vee]

Soaps have certain building blocks which can be maintained while going forward, and yes, that does include lasting characters and families and a sense of history. Some soaps do quite well without all of that - the telenovela format, etc. - but the European soaps have carried on for decades with solid writing and an eye to the future as well as the present and their past. So I embrace the online revolution, I thought it would happen this way eventually for soaps. I just didn't think it would happen so soon, and certainly not with OLTL and AMC, though I did suspect their brands might be resurrected by ABC for a project in the future. As it's so soon, they can and should keep some key characters and families, IMO, and toss the rest out and start fresh with good ideas and good people. The fact is that Erika Slezak and Susan Lucci aren't holding anyone or anything back.

[Jonathan]

An insightful article from FOXnews regarding salary negotiations:

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/07/12/abc-soap-stars-holding-out-for-more-money-in-new-online-deal/

[Soapsuds]

So possibly no Lucci or MEK or WW. Cost cutting and lower salaries...hmmmmm....dont see this working..JMO of course

I knew they were going or might charge a fee to view the shows.

[alexisfan07]

I don't trust Fox News but this basically tells us a lot of things we were already thinking

[Kylie]

You hate SL, wouldn't that make you want to watch?

[marceline]

MEK's interview last month(?) made it pretty clear that he just wanted off the treadmill. I think that's going to be the case for quite a few people. This isn't what they signed up for.

[DRW50]

I can understand why any actor would want to move on. I am just wondering whether they can have a flexible schedule that might entail doing both. For instance, MEK, who has already tried several times - when he was a big draw and popular name - to leave daytime and never quite made it. If it was more of a reduced schedule, would he be consider it?

That's just head-in-the-sand snootiness. ALL writers, daytime or primetime or film, are facing smaller and smaller salaries, and in the case of daytime, extinction. The Internet has had people writing soaps for many years. First the old school websoaps like East Village, and more recently, you've had longtime soap writers like Jill Lorie Hurst getting involved with Venice.

[SFK]

Yeah, that irked me. When you're churning out stellar story after story, then you can diss the bots that can probably write you under the table.

[CCCapwell]

Now that some time has passed since this shocking news of life after cancelation online, I think I would be very happy with OLTL ending its run as planned, write the show as if it was going off the air especially for those characters/actors who won't be going to the online version, then the following Monday when it premieres online, I would have the show jump a year or so in time and simply start over with whatever characters moving to the online series. So fans would get some closure from the television series, and the online chapter is a new start for the series as we suspect it won't be the same show. I just can't see the reasoning in pretending its just another friday to monday transition, especially if there is a big shake-up in talent. I'd rather have OLTL end as a telvision series with a proper finale on Jan 20th and then the OLTL web-series premieres the following week.

[DRW50]

So would I, as that means they can just say most of the show-killing characters left town between the finale and a year or two later.

[marceline]

I really think both shows will end the way they were always going to. Short of the entire town being killed in a nuclear disaster there's no ending so final that it can't be picked up on later. For example, Tad/Dixie and Viki/Clint go off into the sunset together. The new shows start with Dixie mourning Tad's death or Clint mourning Viki's. Everybody can get a happy ending and those happy endings can be completely undone with no damage 2, 3, or 6 months later when the new shows start.

[DRW50]

I'd like to see Tad/Dixie end happy. I'd like to see Viki alone, not needing anyone, putting her demons to rest. I wanted to see Judith Light return briefly and we learn that she's fighting sex trafficking, and Viki decides to join her.