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Plans to move One Life to Live and All My Children online are dead in the water.
Prospect Park’s plan to bring All My Children and One Life to Live online has come to an end. Citing economic difficulties and guild demands, the production company states it will not be moving forward with either project. This is a sad day for fans, actors and the crew involved who have been hoping for the best.
Prospect Park’s statement:
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.
My POV: I’m very disheartened to hear this news but not very surprised. Getting OLTL and AMC ready for online was a massive undertaking that unfortunately required a lot more time (and money) than was expected. There were important questions asked soon after the initial deal with ABC was announced that unfortunately still remain unanswered.
I don’t think it’s fair for Prospect to imply the unions are to blame for this deal falling through. AFTRA, WGA and DGA’s first interest is that of their clients. No one wants to create a deal that will in the end negatively affect those involved. The livelihood of the writers, cast and crew was at stake, and I’m sure the guilds were more than willing to negotiate provided the deals were fair and ensured their people would be taken care of.
There were great mishandlings by Prospect Park that in hindsight could have been avoided. Giving deadlines when nothing from funding to contracts had been secured was a huge mistake. Announcing a late quarter 2012 start would have been in their best interest, as the company would have been given breathing room to work out all the details. Prospect could have used said time to hammer out deals with the guilds, while also keeping interest from fans over the course of the negotiations.
I’d like to know exactly what deal the Prospect offered to the guilds and what they countered with. Lay all the cards out on the table so those searching for a deeper conspiracy can see exactly what was in place.
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