Last night there were rumors, but today we got news. ABC sold broadcast rights to All My Children and One Life to Live to a company named Prospect Park, who plans to make new episodes to air online. There is a press release you can read here at We Love Soaps. While I am excited I also have a feeling of apprehension. What follows are my immediate thoughts, which are subject to change.
I’m curious how this will change things for everyone. Where will All My Children tape, where will One Life to Live tape? If either or both of them move, will the behind the scenes employees still have jobs? Which actors are staying, which are going? Will they make about 250 episodes a year of each show or have shorter seasons making it possible for everyone to do other outside projects? From the press release it sounds like they want to make regular sized episodes, so that isn’t a question. Though they didn’t say how long the contract would be. Also we don't know when they would begin producing or airing these episodes.
The budget per episode is another factor. If they cut the money too much, it may prove to be a disaster. Too many lost cast members may lessen interest in watching the programs. If too few people are watching online, this won’t be viable long term. Is this just a noble experiment that will fail ultimately fail? Is ABC trying to save face by giving another company the rights to tell us see we tried to make the shows successful. If you viewers didn’t do enough to make it work in new media, it is your fault. I hope that isn’t the case.
I have other technical questions, which have yet to be answered. How long the episodes will be available online? Will we have to pay to watch? Will people outside the United States be able to see the show as some services are limited by geography? Will there be a way to get these episodes in another format for people who aren’t online or don’t want to watch on their phone, (like via on demand service from cable companies, DVD releases and the like.)
There are tangential questions too. How will this be handled with the unions, what about the soap opera publications, what about the Daytime Emmy Awards? None of these things are for certain.
This is an interesting time to be a soap opera fan. Hopefully this will work and we’ll get entertaining shows that resemble the ones that air on ABC now. Either way, at least an attempt was made to keep producing these programs, which is more than those of us who love P&G soap operas got.
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