Vintage Soap Opera

[dtd655]

Does Sony and other companies realize what a gold mine they have with vintage episodes of soaps gathering dust in vaults?  I would kill to see the 4th Season of Days (1968-9) again.     (I was able to watch Days "way back then" because I got out of school an hour before everyone else did.)    Just wanted to know your opinions on old shows that have decades of story to fall back on.

[Chris B]

It shocks me considering how successful Dark Shadows is that they don’t try streaming the older episodes. Days and Y&R not being on a streaming service is crazy. They’re not doing anything with those episodes so why not try to make something via streaming?

 

Then you also have soaps with shorter runs that could be explored like Santa Barbara, Texas, Ryan’s Hope, Loving, Port Charles or Passions. International soaps do this but the US is very behind when it comes to this.  

[titan1978]

Especially DAYS, Y&R, and B&B, because the library of all episodes exists intact.  Corday and Bill Bell both spoke about this back in the day.

 

GH is spotty until you get to the 1980’s episodes.  I remember during the 35th anniversary special in the 1990’s that the people making it were excited when they found a copy of the scene of Laura and Scotty and her wishing for a happy life with a good man under the Christmas Tree star.  Everyone thought it was lost, like most of their older episodes.  All of ABC really.

 

I have no idea what Procter and Gamble have hidden away.

 

 

[vetsoapfan]

 

I have read in various places that the episodes of GH which were produced under its original owner, Selmur Productions, were saved. It's only when ABC bought the show in 1968 that they started wiping/erasing the episodes. So it's possible that those first five years of the show could still exist (unless stupid ABC went back and wiped all those early years too). Maybe they will still pop up one day, the way The Doctors did.

[Chris B]

 IIRC, Procter and Gamble was just as bad as ABC when it came to saving episodes. They didn’t officially start saving them until 1979, which means most of Harding Lemay’s work is lost. What I wouldn’t give to see Another World from his era. 

[jam6242]

The complaint in the Corday v. Sony lawsuit says that Sony had been the problem with making the early years of Days available (or putting Days on a streaming service).

 

"In addition to abdicating its duty to license Days of our Lives abroad, Sony has made no effort to license Days of our Lives in the rapidly growing streaming video on demand (“SVOD”) market.  Despite the rapid growth of services such as Netflix, Amazon

Prime Video, and Hulu, Sony has not entered into a single license for a streaming service to carry Days of our Lives in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa, or Latin America.  Sony has also stopped any efforts to license the over 50 years of back-catalog for Days of our Lives. In recent years, Sony has reported absolutely zero revenues or the first 32 seasons of Days of our Lives. Incredibly, Sony has done nothing to exploit the vast library of Days of our Lives episodes."

 

[DramatistDreamer]

I admit, I haven't been paying much attention to this lawsuit but seeing some of the details more and more, I hope that Corday is successful.  Someone should take these corporations to task for the ways in which they've undervalued intellectual property.  It's a real shame.

I also wish someone were around to sue P&G for the neglectful manner in which they have treated their intellectual property in regards to their entertainment/artist archives.  It's a disgrace.

[Darn]

Seeing all these Nikki clips (and in fantastic condition) that Sony has in their Y&R archives just reminds me that they have ALL of Y&R and WON'T FUKCING SHARE IT! It doesn't make any sense! People would kill to see classic clips from this show and they're just hoarding it for some stupid reason.

[Khan]

I suspect SONY and all three networks are afraid that making past episodes available would have an adverse effect on current ratings -- meaning, fans would stop watching the current episodes and watch the previous episodes only.  To me, though, that's the same as admitting that the current, remaining soaps are trash.

 

Who knows?  Maybe, when it comes to B&B, DAYS, GH and Y&R, they have a point.  I, for one, would drop current Y&R (or DAYS) in a heartbeat if I could have the opportunity to relive their golden days online or via streaming.

 

However, when it comes to the shows that are no longer on the air, the logic doesn't hold.  ABC would lose nothing by making episodes of AMC, OLTL, LOVING and RH available online.  Same goes for P&G and whatever library they still have on hand.

[DRW50]

I think they are probably right when they say that they won't get enough money back to warrant the time and effort. I do wonder about P&G though as the guys who made the DVDs said they sold well.

[BoldRestless]

Is there any idea on the sales figures for those B&B episode DVDs that were released in the US? They went a lot further in Europe, so I assume the US sales weren't great. (Not like they advertised them at all. I don't even think they had a commercial for them during the show. I stumbled across them on amazon).

[BetterForgotten]

P&G doesn't care - CPG products are their bread and butter, the entertainment properties hold little overall weight in their organization. Let's not forget, they only produced soaps to sell their damn products anyway! 

[DramatistDreamer]

 

And it sold a LOT of that damn soap!  They also used ad profits from their daytime soaps in the 1980s to finance a lot of their primetime programming.  The weird thing is that CBS offered to take ATWT off P&G's hands and they refused! If they truly thought these soaps were worthless wouldn't they be itching to unload them to the first interested buyer?

 

 

The SoapClassics people had a dedicated website where they would occasionally stream classic episodes as "teasers" for people to buy the DVDs but these days, it would make more sense to skip the DVDs altogether and just go straight to streaming with ads the way Crackle, (Amazon) IMDB, Pluto, etc. all currently do.

 

The hilarious thing is that Sony already has a streaming service, it's called Crackle.  They have All In The Family, 227 and Who's The Boss? streaming on there and every month they add more episodes.

[BoldRestless]

I didn't know about Crackle. I was going to look up how much it costs, because I'd totally pay to stream Y&R, and it's free! They would drive big amounts of subscriptions if they added soaps...

[Soapsuds]

I know Roger one of SON members explained on another thread about the DVD releases. He was involved in the releases of GL and ATWT.