Despite excitement from the soap community and soap fans, All My Children and One Life to Live will not move online after all.
There has been much speculation about the union negotiations involved in moving a television show into new media. One of the main factors in the cancellation of soaps from television is the cost of a long-running production with a large cast and crew, all of which are union. It has been insinuated that these issues could not be resolved even under a new media contract. However, it seems more complicated than that.
Prospect Park is a management and production firm led by Jeff Kwatinetz that took on the responsibility of continuing the legacy of the two most recently cancelled soaps, All My Children and One Life to Live. The firm surprisingly announced they would keep the show in its same format, length and frequency, an admirable attempt considering these soaps aired hour-long episodes five times a week.
According to Kwatinetz (via the Los Angeles Times), “While we narrowed in on a financial infrastructure, the contractual demands of the guilds, which regulate our industry, coupled with the program’s inherent economic challenges ultimately led to this final decision. 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.”
Would the scope of this been more manageable if they focused on shorter episodes and smaller casts and crew? What do you think?
ADDENDUM: See AFTRA and WGAw’s response via WE LOVE SOAPS, who as always, is ON IT.
AFTRA was deeply disappointed to read that the executives at Prospect Park have decided to suspend their efforts to produce the long-running and popular daytime serials, ‘One Life to Live’ and ‘All My Children,’ via online distribution. Despite initial progress in our negotiations with Prospect Park toward resolving a fair agreement to cover the performers appearing on these programs, we were perplexed and disappointed that for the past month Prospect Park has not responded to our repeated inquiries to resume those discussions. We now conclude from the press reports that Prospect Park faced other challenges unrelated to our negotiations, which prevented continuation of those discussions. We remain hopeful that an opportunity to revive these two popular series will emerge in the future, and remain ready to resume discussions should that opportunity arise.” AFTRA
“We were disappointed to learn that Prospect Park’s financing fell through. Prior to the end of last week, we were close to a fair deal for the writers.” WGAw
This makes no sense. Didn’t they calculate these figures BEFORE??? To state this now, the day before Thanksgiving, just shows you the type of company Prospect Park is. In addition to clearly being poor planners and financial analysts, they have showed no heart or consideration for the actors who chose to be part of this endeavor. Shame on you Prospect Park!