I keep thinking about that year when they gave a soap award to Tatyana Ali, who had appeared in about a half-dozen Y&R episodes the entire year. After that it was tough for me to take it seriously.

The "Ashley off Fresh Prince is doin' her thing on the stories now! Go 'head, Ashley!" Award.

REALLY ABC FRIDAY THE 13TH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.deadline.com/2011/11/abc-sets-premiere-date-for-revolution/

ABC Sets Premiere Date For ‘Revolution’

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Monday November 28, 2011 @ 10:00am ESTTags: ABC, The Revolution

With One Life To Live slated to air its final episode on Jan. 13, ABC has set a Jan. 16 launch date for the soap’s replacement, one-hour daily lifestyle talk show The Revolution. The show has tweaked its concept since first being announced in April. It will sill chronicle one woman’s personal journey over the course of five months, but its focus will now be on a team of experts including Ty Pennington, Tim Gunn, Harley Pasternak, Dr. Jennifer Ashton and Dr. Tiffanie Davis Henry giving viewers tips and tools to transform their lives. The final episode of OLTL was taped on Nov. 18, a few days before Prospect Park announced it won’t proceed with its plans to continue the soap online, so it’s unclear if the network would make changes to the series’ final episode.

Edited November 28, 201114 yr by Scotty Baldwin

Is there something offensive about the last episode being on Friday the 13th? That's when RH aired its finale...

Right. If they're going to end up putting the show on a cable channel, then why not start it on cable to begin with?

Because every cable channel rejected AMC and OLTL.

If an actor gets the minimum AFTRA wage, around $150,000 a year, then 6 minimum paid actors already cost about $1 million a year. There is no way that a web based soap with AFTRA restrictions can afford that. Also, an ensemble soap would require more than 6 actors.

Consider popular amateur Youtube channels which draw millions of views for each video, more than any web based soap would receive. Youtube pays the channel a few thousand of dollars of month. The Youtube channel costs far less then the hundreds of thousands a month that a web based soap would cost with AFTRA restrictions.

Edited November 28, 201114 yr by GregNYC

The Revolution will "chronicle one woman’s personal journey over the course of five months"??? That better be one hell of an interesting lady.

The Plan is more on ABC Not PP But They want to sue on two grounds:

1) Canceling an americain institution aganist the wishes of soap fans

2) Age discrimination because ABC saying that only people over 49 watch daytime drama & thats not the demo they want.

Wasn't there a Boston Legal plot that involved something similar to #2 -- not in conjunction with soaps, but TV programming in general?

I actually think there is some merit to a class action suit against organizations that are licensed to operate on public airwaves and/or use publicly subsidized utilities, and don't program to senior citizens. Then again, since seniors will soon be the largest demographic group, and the only group with any real money in this country, advertisers might change strategies on their own and we could see an influx of Murder, She Wrote-type shows in the near future.

If the networks cared so much about 50 plus demo then Murder She Wrote would be back on the air.

Perish the thought.

That's the most batshit thing I've ever heard since fans of Evangeline on OLTL tried to mobilize the NAACP when the character was written out.

Say what?

Oh, no they didn't!

Edited November 28, 201114 yr by Khan

The Revolution will "chronicle one woman’s personal journey over the course of five months"??? That better be one hell of an interesting lady.

Wasn't there a Boston Legal plot that involved something similar to #2 -- not in conjunction with soaps, but TV programming in general?

I actually think there is some merit to a class action suit against organizations that are licensed to operate on public airwaves and/or use publicly subsidized utilities, and don't program to senior citizens. Then again, since seniors will soon be the largest demographic group, and the only group with any real money in this country, advertisers might change strategies on their own and we could see an influx of Murder, She Wrote-type shows in the near future.

I don't see any basis for a lawsuit. The networks are not subsidized by the government. THey are fully funded through advertising

Then again, since seniors will soon be the largest demographic group [...] advertisers might change strategies on their own and we could see an influx of Murder, She Wrote-type shows in the near future.

That should make the Hallmark Channel feel very nervous.

Wasn't there a Boston Legal plot that involved something similar to #2 -- not in conjunction with soaps, but TV programming in general?

I actually think there is some merit to a class action suit against organizations that are licensed to operate on public airwaves and/or use publicly subsidized utilities, and don't program to senior citizens. Then again, since seniors will soon be the largest demographic group, and the only group with any real money in this country, advertisers might change strategies on their own and we could see an influx of Murder, She Wrote-type shows in the near future.

Beside the fact that the network don't use government money the issue with the demos in that seniors are in the demo that watches the most tv so why would advertisers feel the need to reach them when they already have them. 18-49 is the most coveted because that is the age range that watches the least amount of tv. Majority of seniors are on a fixed income, even if they have the money they are less likely to splurge on purchases

Beside the fact that the network don't use government money the issue with the demos in that seniors are in the demo that watches the most tv so why would advertisers feel the need to reach them when they already have them. 18-49 is the most coveted because that is the age range that watches the least amount of tv. Majority of seniors are on a fixed income, even if they have the money they are less likely to splurge on purchases

With the economy the way it is today less and less 18-49 are spending. Many live with their parents and scrape by. For that reason I keep wondering how much longer the current demo obsessions can last.

Now The FB Group, "Save AMC & OLTL" Tasking 2 call PP and ABC & Force Them Into Selling OLTL & AMC To NBC. NBC May Not Want Them....UGHH....

If There is any potential deal out there to continue AMC & OLTL, stunts like this will kill them dead quick.

Because every cable channel rejected AMC and OLTL.

If an actor gets the minimum AFTRA wage, around $150,000 a year, then 6 minimum paid actors already cost about $1 million a year. There is no way that a web based soap with AFTRA restrictions can afford that. Also, an ensemble soap would require more than 6 actors.

Consider popular amateur Youtube channels which draw millions of views for each video, more than any web based soap would receive. Youtube pays the channel a few thousand of dollars of month. The Youtube channel costs far less then the hundreds of thousands a month that a web based soap would cost with AFTRA restrictions.

If AFTRA had gotten PP to agree to pay the actors their network rate, which is reportedly what they wanted, OLTL alone would've cost them $3,250,000 a month to produce. They said that they thought they could make the project work if they snagged 10% of their current TV audience. PP hoped to charge advertisers 40/CPM, $40 per 1000 views to run ads on the show. 40/CPM is Hulu's basic video ad rate.

This might have sent a message to investors that PP's figures and earnings expectations were unrealistic. PP simply couldn't ask for the same kind of money as Hulu gets, at least not at first. Hulu is an established site with over 20 million hits a month and thousands of TV shows and movies on offer, which brings in broad demographics and keeps people on the site for an extended period of time to watch even more ads. And still, Hulu needed to create a $7.99 per month subscription package in order to afford to provide premium content in HD that can be streamed to TVs. PP's TOLN would've been brand new, would've featured only a handful of programs albeit exclusively, and those programs would have to pay for themselves with ad rates alone. Their overall traffic would be relatively low, especially if they only went with one of the soaps, and their audience demos much narrower.

Assuming they got $40/CPM from advertisers, which was a longshot, and snagged 10% of their TV viewership that would make them $10,000 per ad, per episode. Hulu runs an average of 12 ads per hour-long show. That'd bring in $120,000, only 75% of the production cost. 16 ads and they would break even on cost. If they ran 24 ads per 38 minute show and viewership remained level at 250,000, PP would make $240,000 per episode. $160,000 to pay back production costs. That would leave $80,000 for ABC's licensing fee, corporate overhead, paying towards their $32.5 million dollar start-up debt, and if there's anything left, profit. Even if they put every cent of that $80,000 towards paying back start-up costs, which they couldn't, it would've taken them 400+ episodes to pay it back. Nearly two years where they weren't earning any profit. Even then, that's granting them a much higher ad-rate than they were likely to get and granting them their 10% viewership figure right off the bat and assuming it doesn't shrink.

It's hard to see how it could've possibly worked as planned.

(The $ figures are from Prospect Park co-founder Jeff Kwatinetz's interview with 'All Things D' on The Wall Street Journal Digital Network published on November 3rd.)

Thanks Rose