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AMC: The Prospect Park Era (old production thread)


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Ughhh.. this really sucks. My heart truly goes out to you OLTL and AMC fans.

I know I may catch some slack on this.. but IMO...soaps just don't do well with drastic change.. I think part of that is that we (the audience) get so set in our ways that we do not embrace change.. part of it is just that soaps are not profitable enough to produce outside of the major broadcast market..Look at history here

1) In a last ditch effort to save itself Passions moves to DirecTv after being cancelled by NBC -I applaud the efforts to sustain the soap in a new environment but eventually the show isn't profitable enough and we got an extra 11 months.

2) In a last ditch effort to save itself Guiding Light transitions to crazy-cam in Peapack, NJ - again, I applaud the efforts to sustain the soap in a new "environment" but eventually the show (continues) to not be profitable enough and we got an extra year and a half maybe?

3) In a last ditch effort to save itself All My Children and One Life to Live TWICE go through this entire ordeal with PP - again, I applaud the efforts to sustain the soaps in a new environment but again, they aren't profitable enough and we got an extra 40 episodes each.

Broadcast soaps are still profitable (as all 4 remaining soaps are proving) but at least for now.. transitioning to a new medium or platform just isn't working. I really hurt for AMC and OLTL as they (once again) are left without a proper series finale.. At least GL, ATWT, and even Passions (albeit on DirecTV) got to wrap up their shows with a proper finale. AMC and OLTL at least deserve a true finale that they now have been robbed of twice!

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I truly believe that if ABC had adopted some of the changes PP enacted, it may have been able to sustain the shows for a few years. Certainly more than PP was able to keep it together. Not only does it have to do with lack of funding, it had to do with a lack of business savvy. But it is what it is. I'm glad we got the PP episodes, I enjoyed them infinitely more than the majority of what we got on AMC and OLTL in the last few years on ABC. I definitely have to buy all the iTunes episodes now, even if just as a keepsake of this special time. :(

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GH is not going anywhere. It's doing great as abc research shows the chew surges half hour to half hour because of GH. Vicki drummer is happy with GH and the chew has done very well. Katie on the other hand huge bomb that's their priority in replacing Katie. Abc will never bring back Amc or oltl it's way too costly and it's just over. At least we are getting an announcement it's over instead of playing with the audience. The writing was on wall two weeks after they premiered. They were experiments that didn't work because they couldn't adapt these shows to online viewing, most fans didn't show up.

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It's good for them because it makes them feel special. PP did not get their approval, nor did it court their approval. They don't care about soaps. Most of them never have. If they did, they stopped a long time ago. They care about fiefdoms. Logan, who has been irrelevant for decades, gets to feel a little jolt when he can kiss up to Braeden or Geary. SID can cobble together thinner and thinner material until they're left with covers asking if Victoria Rowell will show up on The Chew, but at least it's what they know. And DC is left with increasingly empty pages and content, lucky if they get 1 comment on their amazing review of Trophy Wife, but they still feel giddy and happy, because the writers they anointed won out.

None of these people care if the lifeboat is sinking, just as long as everyone else drowns first.

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Maybe you're onto something... American soap operas produced for foreign markets with online or U.S. cable availability. This includes non-English speaking countries where the shows would be dubbed with their original English available on an alternate audio track (like B&B's Spanish simulcast). I've been trying to learn Spanish so I decided to sort of follow Tempestad that airs five nights a week on Univision. I put on the English subtitles. On Mundo Fox there is what I presume is a Brazilian series in Portuguese that is dubbed in Spanish. Instead of OWN, I wonder how the 40 episodes of AMC and OLTL would do dubbed in a primetime novella spot. Capitol of all American soap operas was a major hit dubbed in Italian, getting multiple runs.

But a first run American serial produced for a Canadian or a U.K. network, is that really so far-fetched?

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Sad. I feel like we're just walking around a ghost town. I'm going to take my cue from Vee (words I never thought I would ever type in my life) and just check out on this drama for a little while. I'm supposed to be doing Nanowrimo anyway and I'm woefully behind.

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