ABC: ‘All My Children’: Kelly Ripa, Mark Consuelos Developing Primetime Version

[Khan]

I agree.  And if they could somehow get Nancy Curlee or Patrick Mulcahey involved with the writing?  Even better.

[Paul Raven]

Susan and everybody else needs to call it quits with trying to exhume AMC.

[Wilsoky]

Gotcha, hopefully he will pull anyone back that strays from the original concept.

[Khan]

I wouldn't go that far, @Paul Raven, lol.  I'm actually okay with rebooting/reviving AMC, but I think it needs to be done right, by people who "get" the show and its' overall message.  Like @Errol said, it needs to be done either in daytime on a network or on streaming.  Reviving it as a primetime series is not going to work.

[JoeCool]

Now that Disney is buying hulu and combining it with Disney+, I can see Disney reviving AMC but as a 30 minute soap on ABC and then replay on Disney/Hulu +. Disney will need content. Perhaps even OLTL in time. ABC Daytime right now is on shaky ground ratings wise and needs a jolt and All My Children could do that.

[dragonflies]

Nah I don't see that happening at all TBH

ABC isn't interested, GH is on it's last legs and what timeslot would they put it in?

[Khan]

I agree.  I'd be okay with a return to the network OR with streaming, but I do think streaming would be the better of the two options.

Granted, things are looking shaky at the moment in the streaming industry.  In fact, the business itself appears to be contracting, as streamers are merging, dumping a lot of product that isn't retaining viewers and whatnot.  If you ask me, though, I think these shifts will be good for streaming in the end.  Yes, streamers ultimately will adopt a business model that will look an awful lot like cable TV, but I think doing so will create a need for profitable but more "traditional" kinds of programming...such as soaps. 

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Edited December 19, 2023 by Khan

[DRW50]

If Neighbours works out for Amazon, I could see them possibly trying an American soap - not sure they'd revive a soap that ended a decade ago, but it's possible. Either way, I think the days of Erica Kane are past us, unless she makes a few guest appearances. 

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos can stay where they are now - far away from anything I ever watch.

[Contessa Donatella]

I thought Disney had content out the wazoo! Do they not? Or is the current thinking just more more more? (With a nod to the Andrea True Connection)

[JoeCool]

Disney needs good content that is not Marvel or Star Wars - which they are running out of...it is expensive.

[Contessa Donatella]

Who has DUNE? 

[Vee]

Just wanted to chime in the revival of Neighbours has been an extremely educational experience on Amazon FreeVee. You learn a lot watching a soap build or rebuild itself from the ground up, same as with AMC and OLTL 2.0. Similar lessons in some ways, but often more skillful build-up/pacing. I encourage everyone who's a scholar of the genre to check it out, and I'd never really watched it before. They appear to be making it work, unlike Prospect Park (with a lot more institutional support and BTS experience).

I do think FreeVee-style ad-supported streaming is the only way forward for soaps. Was it @DramatistDreamer who always preached about FAST? AMC and OLTL were onto it too quick and had poor management and funding, but they could last if it were today (and probably arc-based with breaks - I don't think anyone over here is going to give the soaps the continued year-round capital Neighbours seems to have). And who knows, in another year or two the networks and streamers may be desperate enough for continued revenue to try. Which Khan said above (sorry Khan, I just need to stop @ing people in this post).

IBut I agree with @Errol that primetime is a cutthroat zone, especially in the streaming era - nothing can be counted on to last, and the pacing of most network dramas is now incredibly accelerated and schizoid as of at least the last decade-plus. We saw that going back to even the first seasons of Empire, or the misbegotten Spelling soap revivals on CW. Letting story breathe is discouraged because they're scared people will turn them off and switch on Netflix.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Vee

[DramatistDreamer]

Yes, for years now, I have been preaching the gospel of FAST and there are many of these platforms out there now, with Pluto TV being one of the most successful and Roku Channel being one of the latest to be successful enough to run independently of the actual device where it get its name. Apparently Tubi is venturing into original documentaries, so it’s not just reruns of classic shows (although I really enjoy that also). I think advertisers are growing increasingly enthusiastic about FAST. I am still consistently receiving reports about its potential in my inbox.

[Khan]

Personally, as far as streaming goes, I think FAST should have been the way to go all along.  Yes, it was nice for streamers to offer ad-free content to subscribers at a premium, but it's as if that side of the entertainment industry had forgotten how shows on traditional networks had made their money so that they could afford to keep producing episodes.  (Like I always say: television exists for one purpose and one purpose only: to do whatever they can to sell you refrigerators and toothpaste). 

Plus, the more the streamers increased the rates for those ad-free plans, the less inclined subscribers were to sign up for or renew their subscriptions to those plans.  Add to that the sudden glut of streamers, with everybody and their uncle launching a streaming service, and all the complaints from subscribers ("[!@#$%^&*], it's like I'm paying for another cable bill!"), and now you understand a little more why the streaming industry has imploded.

Remember: it wasn't that long ago when "binge-watching" was all the rage with subscribers, until the streamers realized there were major drawbacks to allowing subscribers to view entire series or seasons of series all at once, and they instead started encouraging the traditional way of watching a new show one episode per week.  As former NBC and FOX scheduler Preston Beckman says, "Television always regresses to the mean."

Anyways.  You were saying, @Vee?

I agree.  Conversely, or similarly, I think those who write and produce many of the streaming shows are taking too much advantage of streaming, telling stories that drag and drag and dddddrrrrraaaaaggggg to the point where they're becoming ponderous and a chore to watch.  I like character exploration and development as much as the next guy, but do I really six episodes of it before I get that first edge-of-my-seat moment?

As popular as Marvel and Star Wars still are with the general audience, I think there comes a point when too much of that kind of content is too much and potentially could spoil the franchises as a whole.  Same goes for Star Trek and all those related series.  Networks and streamers really don't know when to say when.

I agree.  I'd love to see AMC and/or OLTL revived somewhere, but I'm willing to concede that that's likely gonna stay a pipe dream.

I think it's easy to forget that it took early daytime TV a few tries and more than one brief, failed series before it landed its' first real hit with SFT.  Who knows?  The same trajectory could be happening now with soaps on streaming.

I don't know whether the days of Erica Kane are past us, but I do know that whoever's in charge of any potential AMC reboot should recognize that it's 2023, and that Erica cannot keep acting as if she's still thirty-five years old.  She still can be fabulous!  Just let her be The World's Most Fabulous Great-Grandma!

[Vee]

Star Trek is actually doing pretty well atm, after a rocky start with Discovery; the various other shows since are a lot better (well, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, Lower Decks and the excellent final season of Picard which was mostly a strong victory lap for the TNG cast and will likely get a much-clamored-for spinoff with Jeri Ryan and co). The shows aren't the issue there, it's the platform (Paramount) which has had to repeatedly sell them or the past classic series off to other outlets for cash and is probably going to go down soon and be subsumed into Netflix or something else. The animated all-ages Trek spinoff, Prodigy, has already been ported to Netflix and renewed there. This from Paramount, which proclaimed itself 'the home of Trek' a year or so ago because it makes them their big money - just not enough to stay afloat. That's the streaming crash. I think Trek as a renewed franchise will survive elsewhere, but I don't think Paramount will.

I do hope people look into FreeVee or other FAST platforms like Pluto. That's the key. Neighbours shows it, but no one in the States has the kind of faith in a soap that overseas execs seemingly do in Neighbours.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Vee