AMC and OLTL Will Move Online!

[John]

Possible New Studio For OLTL?

http://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/couric-oltl-studio

[R Sinclair]

I kinda figured as much, since that's the only way I could think of that would keep it NY based (either that, or go out to Long Island City)... but didn't want to "speculate." But since you brought it up...

She's great, she's fabulous! She's spectacular! She's SUPERB....!!!

Kendall is still played the f out.

[jimmyk311]

Has anyone read the recent sara bibel article?

http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/blogs/2011/deep-soap/prospect-park-negotiating-union-deals-for-abc-soaps/

[R Sinclair]

Sara Bibel? I'll pass...

[Eric83]

Is that in Brooklyn or where ATWT was filmed when it was in Manhattan?

[R Sinclair]

Brooklyn. The former home of the Cosby Show (before it moved to Queens) and Another World. When ATWT was in Manhattan, it was at CBS.

[SFK]

I hope those JC Studios rumors are true, I would love for OLTL to stay in New York. There's also Silvercup and Kaufman Astoria, as R. Sinclair was referring to. Years ago, we went to a taping of Cosby (the one with Madeline Kahn, though she was already ill and not in the episode we attended) at KA.

[dragonflies]

Prospect Park Reaches Out to AMC Cast

By SOD • Posted: Jul 27, 2011 Share Multiple sources tell Digest that Prospect Park, the company that will produce AMC and OLTL after their ABC finales, met with the cast of AMC this week following the show's three-week hiatus. Company execs explained to the cast that overtures cannot be made to them regarding continuing on in their roles until the show resolves the union and guild issues it faces in transitioning the series from TV to the Web. Word is that the execs confirmed that they are not expecting to launch the new AMC until December at the earliest and that they made a good impression on the cast.

http://www.soapoperadigest.com/content/prospect-park-reaches-out-amc-cast

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that ABC will be giving Katie Couric use of ONE LIFE TO LIVE's New York City studio for her new talk show. Soaps In Depth has learned that while it is a possibility, nothing has been decided in regards to where Couric will tape her show. OLTL is scheduled to cease production for the network in January 2012, with Couric's new syndicated talk show set to launch that September.

http://abc.soapsindepth.com/2011/07/couric-moves-in-on-oltl.html

[marceline]

I can't even keep track of all the "rumors" being proved wrong day after day and even this one still says "Word is..." Of course this "word" makes a lot more sense.

I think December is still being overly optimistic.

[Max]

SON is normally a very optimistic place (with myself being the obvious exception), but all of this pessimism is completely justified. There are just so many things that can go wrong here, and one would have to be delusional to pretend otherwise.

While I concede that this Prospect Park deal could be good news for the genre, it is most definately bad news for the ABC soaps. The fact of the matter is that AMC and GH are not even salvageable due to nearly a decade of Frons' constant meddling having turned those shows into s#it. While OLTL is on a creative upswing (due to the fact that Frons neglected it), you have to realize that its quality will likely decline under Prospect Park since that show will be losing RC & FV. Thus, all this deal accomplishes is robbing OLTL of going out on a high note and robbing AMC and GH fans of getting decent television finales.

Although the ABC soaps won't be able to make a successful transition to the internet (in part also due to the fact that this deal seems to be so hastily put together), I believe the Bell soaps do stand a reasonable chance of successfully making the transition (due to higher ratings and the fact that they have a couple of years to carefully work out a similar deal). While DOOL's ratings are just as terrible as the ABC soaps' ratings, you'd have to be an idiot to count that show out since it has such a long history of avoiding near certain death.

Of course, because of the AARP demographics of the P&G soaps, any possibly of them surviving on the internet would have been a guaranteed failure.

In my opinion, what Prospect Park should have done was to create a new spin-off soap that featured certain characters from AMC, OLTL, & GH. However, I believe that this was not done due to business reasons. (Despite all the whining about saving the soaps, most people want "their soaps"--and not "the soaps"--to be saved.) By launching a revamped AMC & OLTL, Prospect Park gets the benefit of having two established brand names on their new internet network (as opposed to a soap title that nobody's heard of). And by allowing AMC and OLTL (and later GH) to continue on the internet, ABC greatly reduces the amount of venom directed towards The Chew, The Revolution, and Katie Couric's talk show. (Obviously, the launch of these three shows is what is really important at ABC.)

[Jonathan]

Great TV Guide interview with Michael E. Knight.

http://www.tvguide.c...ht-1035787.aspx

[DRW50]

I still don't understand why there is an assumption these shows would have had great finales without Prospect Park, or why they still won't have good finales even with Prospect Park.

The only story generating any positive reaction on OLTL is the story with the two Todds. That story is going to be winding down soon anyway, months before the finale. Prospect Park doesn't change that.

The Ford saga and Rex's revenge are the only other stories on the show, and they both suck horribly. I doubt that they would become any better just because the show wasn't possibly moving onto another format.

The show as it is now basically has months and months of filler and then one or two strong days - that's not what a soap should be, IMO.

[JaneAusten]

Word! And I am still waiting for these huge gains OLTL seems to be getting. Sure there are more viewers or they haven;t dropped but the younger demos are still dropping. Now the advantage may be that in the world of online being so new, that likely won;t matter for a long long time but I also have to wonder when an audience for a show or shows is primarily older skewed, what are the chances of it succeeding online. Could be more than I expect but I still think these shows will need to and should morph into something different. The question becomes is how loyal is the core audience to these shows and what number now is the core audience.

No one is going to get me down. I think there is a lot that will go wrong but a lot they hopefully learn from for the future.

As for OLTL being compelling, one thing I do recognize thats different is that the stories aside from a story over here and there all seem to tie together in some sense across the entire canvas. I think thats one thing RC has done extremely well. Thats not to say the show in many areas is still not incredibly offensive, but there does seem to be a flow and pace to the show that none of the other soaps have seemed to be able to replicate.I am not even sure its a tangible I can intelligently articulate.

[DRW50]

The problem with a lot of the show's umbrella stories in recent years has been that umbrella = psycho of the month. The Eli mess affecting the whole canvas just made the whole canvas suffer.

The Todd story naturally affects a few more stories but even then only the essential core works. Everything with Gigi's death and Rex's revenge has been sick, and once again ruined by JPL.

It's a lack of meaningful stories and characters that cause the constant need to shove everything together. People making shocked faces for one episode doesn't make Austin Peck mugging over forced porn any more entertaining.

[Max]

I apologize for my rudeness, I there are two pet peeves of mine that I have regarding this topic.

The first is that some are spinning AMC's and OLTL's move online as a natural evolution, analogous to GL's move from radio to television. Hovever, this is not an accurate comparasion because GL did not move to television to avoid cancellation (which is the reason why AMC and OLTL are moving online). If one wants to give an example of natural evolution analogous to what happened with GL, it would occur if Y&R (or even B& was to move online, since that show is not in danger of cancellation.

The second pet peeve is that many OLTL fans have been acting like its cancellation was the biggest injustice in soap history. The fact of the matter is that just because AMC's ratings are even worse, it does not take away from the fact that OLTL's ratings are too poor for it to continue on ABC. And the way some act on the ratings threads--that OLTL is on fire just because it outranks DOOL, AMC, and GH--is completely ridiculous; based on some of these reactions, one would think that OLTL is bringing in Y&R-type ratings. (To be fair, I do understand the anger that OLTL fans have over the fact that GH and DOOL have yet to be cancelled. It is completely unfair that those two soaps get to continue when their ratings are just as dreadful as OLTL's. However, it does not change the fact that OLTL deserved to be cancelled.)

Looking back, the most unfair soap cancellations were those of SFT (its CBS cancellation) and Capitol. At the time of cancellation, these two soaps were in the middle of the pack ratings wise. (SFT was ahead of every NBC soap, and Capitol was ahead of all of the NBC soaps aside from DOOL.) Unfortunately, CBS threw both soaps under the bus in order to make room for the new creations of John Conboy (Capitol) and Bill Bell (B&, respectively. And, although AW's miserable ratings certainly merited cancellation, the fact that it was cancelled prior to SuBe (which had about one million fewer viewers than AW and trailed it in the women 18-49 demographics as well) was far more unjust than OLTL's cancellation.