ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE Will Not Continue Online
November 23, 2011 by Marisa Roffman
Well, this sucks.
More than four months after Prospect Park announced they would bring ONE LIFE TO LIVE and ALL MY CHILDREN online after they aired their ABC finales, the company announced today they won’t be moving forward with their plans and both soaps are effectively done. (ONE LIFE TO LIVE will continue to air until mid-January on ABC.)
Keep reading for an official statement and a little bit of ranting from me. (Sorry.)
“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. 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. 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.
“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.
“In our opinion, new models like this can only work with the cooperation of many people striving to make them happen, and we would like to thank and praise the numerous people who tried to help and showed us incredible support. We are extremely grateful to the fans and media who showed great support to us through this process, to ABC who did everything in their control to help, and we are especially grateful for the support and encouragement from many of the Soaps’ cast and crew themselves.”
Here’s my problem with this — ALL MY CHILDREN aired its series finale in September. ONE LIFE TO LIVE wrapped shooting last Friday. AMC most certainly had a cliffhanger (a character shot a gun into a room full of beloved characters, leaving viewers to wonder who got the bullet), and given how many actors had signed on to ONE LIFE TO LIVE’s online version, odds are there will be some significant loose ends there, too. If this wasn’t feasible and if there were this many problems from the get-go (and I’m certainly not suggesting they should have taken on this endeavor if it didn’t make financial sense), Prospect Park just deprived fans of both soaps closure. (And yes, storylines were changed when they got word they’d be moving online.)
So while Prospect Park may have had the best intentions when they started this up, even coming to this decision a week earlier might have prevented trouble. And right now, because they couldn’t get their act together, everyone who cares about these shows is mourning their loss for a second time.
Anyone else heartbroken by this turn of events?
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Filed under #1 featured, All My Children, One Life to Live
I’m so heartbroken about this. I wasn’t 100% sold on this online move, but I wanted it to be successful. Sigh.
Timing especially sucks. Happy Thanksgiving AMC and OLTL fans! Your shows are officially dead! 🙂
@Laura, I was hesitant, too, until I went to the set a couple weeks back. Many OLTLers truly believed the show was moving online. Everything about this is horrible.
sigh…..so sad.The shame of it all (for OLTL fans ) is that OL ratings are higher than GH. Oh well it was great while it lasted so long Jolie 🙁
I will truly miss OLTL. I watched this show for years and loved it. And I had hoped that the online deal would pan out for actors and the viewers. It now appears if actors want to continue in what is left of the soap world it seems as though moving to LA and another network could be a plan. Brian Frons screwed up big time canceling AMC and OL. He thinks keeping his precious “Loser Hospital” on the air will produce additional ratings. But you Frons, are wrong. I use to be a fan when the show was diverse but NOT NOW and hasn’t been for a long time The storylines were about other people besides your tired mob characters. Shame on the head writer and Frons.
The countdown for cancellation has begun. LOL
I am so disappointed. AMC’s final show was a big disappointment for me. I’ve been watching this soap for 30+ years and felt a show that has been on for 40 years, deserved a better send off. In the final days, the writing and memory montages felt hastily put together, and just plain uninteresting. It was all very sloppily done. And so I kept thinking “well, maybe they will be redeemed when the show continues online”. Guess not. Shame on you Frons. The AMC cast and crew, along with their loyal fans deserved far better.
I agree that a show that has been on for over 40 years deserved a much better sendoff. It wasn’t fair to the actors or the fans. I was really hoping for something great when it came online, and I was willing to wait for the prospect park people to get their act together, because it would have been worth it. So if they need more time, us fans will wait as long as it takes. I’d also be willing to pay a small fee to watch my favorite shows if need be. I know that the guilds and unions were willing to work with them, too. Such a pity.
maybe Agnes Nixon the creator can write a piece on how she would wrap up each of the characters to give fans the needed sense of closure.
I grew up watching AMC and OLTL. I been watching these shows since I was six years old so for bout 14 years now. I stoped watching AMC about five years ago, but I would check in with people to see how my “fav” characters were doing. It sadens me that a show that has been on for so long would just end like this. I know there are some people, that schedules their whole day around these shows. I wish that they could do something about it. I love OLTL, and it’s going to be very sad that I won’t be about to turn the TV on at one each day to watch it.