Almost a year ago

[Eric83]

Maybe this isn't worthy of a thread but whatever lol .... When the Prospect Park news broke. I thought for the first time we had saved our soaps and that the internet was the future for all the soaps. Man I was so naive. I guess I was just so happy that there was hope for AMC/OLTL that I ignored the obvious signs this would never work. I wish it had never come along. I had already come to grips with OLTL's demise and had to do so all over again. How do you guys feel about it all a year later? 2011 was a wild roller coaster ride for AMC/OLTL fans.

[DRW50]

What depresses me most with this is that the idea that this was all a failure and don't bother to be invested is what turned out to be true. I really did want this to work.

[quartermainefan]

I still think online will be the future, only it won't be called online. There is going to come a point when the TVs are all streaming just as well as receiving cable programming. There will be original content, probably porn at first because porn is always the pioneer in technology and media. Then the shows will follow. I guess Prospect Park was too soon.

[Marco Dane]

I still say that it was a crazy ploy made by ABC to ease some of the heat off of them for canceling the shows.

[DRW50]

I don't believe ABC cared that much to take all this time and effort on some complex scheme. It didn't take any heat off ABC.

[juppiter]

I don't think you should feel stupid; I remember thinking it sounded too good to be true but Prospect Park sounded so confident about it that I figured they knew something we all didn't. Turns out they just didn't know what they had bought and they were speaking primetime lingo. lol.

Anyway, truly a bizarre chapter in soap opera history when you think about it.

[Max]

I knew that whole venture would be a massive failure, but even I didn't foresee it turning out this horrendously. Instead, I thought that PP would put out half-assed productions of AMC & OLTL that would last for a year or two, in an attempt to build name recognition for their online network; once enough people became aware of the online network, those soaps would be cancelled again. (Essentially, I believed--and still believe--that their intention was to pull a bait-and-switch.) Never did I once imagine that PP would even fail to get these shows online.

I seem to recall that only Marceline, Daytime Fan, and myself (though there may have been a couple of others whom I forgotten) had any serious misgivings about the PP venture. Most people thought this was the best thing to happen to the soap genre in a very long time, and sincerely believed that AMC & OLTL would be so much better outside of Frons' control. I certainly can understand why some depressed fans might have felt this way, but I can't understand why so many believed this.

What is most reprehensible is that PP stated that these shows would go online, when they never knew for sure that would be the case. The honorable thing to have done (after the NY Post leaked their plans) would have been to say "no comment," which--ironically--is exactly what they said the day before Thanksgiving (when OLTL officially died). And the press holds a huge deal of blame in this as well: they served as PP public relations staffers instead of asking the tough questions that needed to be asked. (I can't ever recall reading a headline stating that AMC/OLTL might move online, it was always that they WILL move online.)

Though it sucked that the Nixon soap fans were robbed of closure, I'm personally glad that these PP-produced versions of AMC & OLTL never saw the light of day. I have no doubt that they would have made Wheeler's GL look like a masterpiece in comparison.

[Mr. Vixen]

It still makes me sad.

But I think in 20, 30 years when original content on the internet is just the "norm", history classes will look back at Prospect Park as some sort of pioneers....

[Ryan Chamberlain]

I didn't believe this theory at first. But, in time I started to see that it was likely ABC/PP were in cahoots.

[DRW50]

I just don't see what ABC would have to gain from this. Why would they spend time and money when most people still blamed them for the cancellations?

[Max]

I think there may have been some ABC/Disney influence, especially since the PP executives were former Disney employees (whom I believe had close associations with Cartini and possibly Frons as well). At the very least, I'm guessing the fact that there was such a backlash from the AMC/OLTL cancellations led ABC to actively seek out alternatives so that these shows could continue in some form (for a short while longer). (By contrast, the little backlash caused by the GL/ATWT cancellations resulted in P&G doing nothing to save them.)

The ironic thing is that the PP venture didn't do a damn thing to quell anger towards ABC. They were still hated by the fans while PP was hailed as the greatest company ever.

[DRW50]

I just don't think ABC cared. Frons certainly didn't seem to care. Getting involved with some shady party designed solely to lie to viewers, and to investors, would have been a disaster.

[dragonflies]

I think ABC played a part in this given they told PP they had to produce the shows exactly a they were on tv, so they did set it up for failure cause what worked on tv won't necessarily work online

*cough* I did too

[DRW50]

I think most people had misgivings, it's just that some basically said from the start how this would be a failure. Since some of these same posters also said things like sending a thank you ad to AMC/OLTL made fans look bad, it was sometimes hard to take it seriously.

I think ABC probably would have been OK with the shows being a success, if they got any money out of it, and they weren't paying for it. I put most of it on the PP people who seemed to have no ability to come up with anything.

[KMan101]

I think it was a matter of just not having the money in the end and not realizing the true scope of producing a daily soap opera. I think had the money been there the soaps would have gone online.