The niche potential for streaming classic soaps

[Contessa Donatella]

Marketing by storyline sure would appeal, wouldn't it? However, it automatically requires much more in curating it & that is overhead. 

[soapfave06]

It does require more curating but I don’t think it would take long to do a previously on. Looking at Days of Our Lives for example, you still have the 80s leads in stories today and they had a ton of adventures: the plane crash in ‘84, the ice skating prism climax and Miami in ‘85, the KGB/Roman climax and Stockholm in ‘86, Cruise of Deception, Maison Blanche, Possession, Aremid, Lady in a Cage in the ‘90s that would be very easy to market. I would definitely pay to see that in high quality. And the unfortunate truth is we have lost many stars over the last year and it would be great to see them in their prime and the production values of then sure beats what we have now. 

[Faulkner]

Soaps are tricky. The types of people who adore soaps to the level that we all do, that would watch episodes and episodes of random characters we’ve only read about in some cases, are VERY few and far between. I would think curated, DVD-collection-style series focusing on the history of one character or couple (say, Sami Brady or Carly/Sonny) would be more viable but even those would require digging deep into archives that are probably collecting dust in a lot of cases, especially with the cancelled shows we’d all want to see. My guess is that even the minuscule window that classic soaps had to go to SVOD streaming is closing more and more each day with all of the belt-tightening that’s happening at the major streamers. Even the FAST channels over on Pluto won’t go that far back into classic Y&R and B&B. Hopefully some union deals will give writers and actors more residual money, but the result will be that it might become more expensive to host series.

[j swift]

As it turns out, even 30 years ago when the average soap ratings were 80% higher than today,  @Faulkner was correct that the audience for this type of nostalgic content is very small, and efforts have never been profitable.

For example, in 1993, when ABC edited and released the VHS for the Greatest Wedding Series.  They each sold for $65, which was 28% less than the average price of a tape at that time (distributors preferred the margins in tape rentals, so they kept the purchase price high to encourage rentals).  According to the Wall Street Journal, ABC sold 17,000 copies of the series.  By comparison, Twin Peaks sold 185,000 tapes that year and Aladdin (the top seller) sold 3 million copies. 

Thus, the title of this thread is fallacious because actually the potential is little to none.  No matter how many times we try to have this discussion.  The demand has never proven to be worth the cost or effort.

Edited September 15, 2023 by j swift

[Contessa Donatella]

And I think Amazon being in the business of it, with Neighbours is a good sign, and I don't think they will stay in the business of it, if it doesn't work out. 

When Roger Newcomb curated DVDs for ATWT & GL how were those sales? It didn't break the bank to buy them. They were competitively priced with all manner of DVDs of that same time. 

[Faulkner]

Yeah, I think YouTube curation from dedicated fans is our best bet, and we’ve gotten to see a lot of gems that I never thought I would see. Yeah, the quality of the clips are mostly sh!t but it’s better than nothing. (Maybe eventually AI will be good enough to marginally improve some of the clips. Right now, clips have to be basically good quality for Topaz to enhance them. A horrible staticky VHS rip would look a mess.) It’s just a shame that certain soap clips are subject to takedowns (especially the Sony shows and Santa Barbara) when the corporations aren’t making any efforts to extract value from them.

 

[Soapsuds]

I bought all of them!

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Now they are being sold for $500 plus. That's ridiculous!

[j swift]

Hell yeah!

The Guiding Light historian is making awesome videos, and we'd never get that content if the owners of IP thought they could still make a profit off of it.  I find all of that curated content, including the short scenes on Instagram and TikTok, preferable to slogging through whole episodes of old shows.

I can only imagine that they were below expectations, given that the project was shut down midstream.

[Contessa Donatella]

I bought about 80% of them. I watch them. And from a fan I've bought Doug & Julie's first wedding, the last 3 days of GL, Victoria Wyndham's anniversary, Roger raped Holly, ... 

$500 plus, huh? Geeze, have you thought of selling yours? Of course I didn't sell my copy of Anne Heche's first book either. 

That reminds me. There was more GL on YT than any other show until there was a purge. "Bandstand Mike" had full episodes for years & he sold them as hard drives. People believed it was a good deal because everyone knew he actually had all those full episodes. But, he was scamming people. So, beware. 

I thought that they went to a completion point & were going to decide whether to expand & do AW and EON next. Not so? 

[Soapsuds]

I was sent duplicates on some sets. I called and they told me just to keep them. I don't plan on selling them.

[Contessa Donatella]

Well, for the dupes, maybe you'll find some worthy soul to give them to! Not selling the original set, sure, I get that, completely. It's so weird. I can't find CARJACK. 

[te.]

In all honesty, the only old soaps that I could see being moderately "successful" on streaming are Passions and Sunset Beach; in Passions case it obviously has that cult factor going for it and the fact that it's very "meme" worthy (for better or worse) that could draw people in. Sunset Beach mostly because it was so popular in parts of Europe, again a bit meme worthy and had a limited run so that it doesn't feel like you're never going to finish it. 

The others... well. Maybe doing arcs could work, but then again would anyone outside the established fanbase want to watch those? I feel any few "casual" viewers would be turned off by the fact that they couldn't continue beyond it.

[Contessa Donatella]

The others is what I see people clamoring for. 

But, I don't see people being phased at their having endings. No, I would fear people would be daunted by how many years existed. 

Common things fans talk about are DAYS when written by Bill Bell. Sunset Beach, Santa Barbara & PC to see a show beginning to end. Lots of fans say they want to see (or vote in polls) AW, EON, revisit GH 80s & 90s. Many say they want to see, like, the last 6 years of OLTL. Of course, I think you could market the first tenure of Malone/Gottlieb/Griffith's OLTL easily. Nuke, Otalia, all of Bianca would be niche marketed to gays. 

[te.]

I think the issue is that you're basing this on what people on niche soap forums (which in itself is a dying format) are saying, rather than would could concievably cross over at least a bit to a more casual audience beyond that. It's unfortunately obvious that "soap fans" aren't a big enough group to sustain these shows being uploaded, or else they would've been already.

[Contessa Donatella]

It's certainly true that online fans are most aware of other online fans & what they say or vote when they are self-selected & no one even knows what percentage of already existing fans they make up. Sure. To be successful there would have to be offline fans & totally new fans. 3 groups.