Wednesday, November 23, 2011

ABC Soaps Die a Second Death

Posted By on Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 2:00 PM

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I wasn't entirely sure how the online saviors of All My Children and One Life to Live were going to manage to produce the shows profitable without the help of some sort of traditional television partner, but it turns out they weren't sure either:


"After five months of negotiations with various guilds, hundreds of presentations to potential financial and technology partners, and a hope that we could pioneer a new network for the future, it is with great disappointment that we are suspending our aspirations to revive 'One Life to Live' and 'All My Children' via online distribution," the duo said in a statement. "It is now becoming clear that mounting issues make our ability to meet our deadlines to get 'OLTL' on the air in a reasonable time period following its January 13, 2012 ABC finale impossible."

[...]

"We believed the timing was right to launch an Online TV Network anchored by these two iconic soap operas, but we always knew it would be an uphill battle to create something historical, and unfortunately we couldn't ultimately secure the backing and clear all the hurdles in time," they said. "We believe we exhausted all reasonable options apparent to us, but despite enormous personal, as well as financial cost to ourselves, we failed to find a solution."

Prospect Park said the economic challenges proved too difficult.

"In the end, the constraints of the current marketplace, including the evolution and impact of new media on our industry simply proved too great a match for even our passion," they said.

All My Children ended on September 23, replaced by the utterly terrible food talk show The Chew. One Life to Live is scheduled to air its last episode in January.

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