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‘One Life To Live’ And ‘All My Children’ Won’t Continue Online
The WGAW and AFTRA just issued statements in response to Prospect Park’s decision today not to proceed with its plans to continue to produce canceled ABC soaps One Life To Live and All My Children for online distribution. In its statement, Prospect Park stated that “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.” Now the WGA, which represents soap writers, and AFTRA, which represents actors, each put out a statement claiming that their negotiations with Prospect Park were not the reason in the 2 soaps’ demise. Here are the statements:
“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.”
“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.”
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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Of course, they are disappointed. Their members are out of jobs.
That’s the paradox of the unions. They are designed to protect jobs for their members but, oftentimes, they do so to the point where they actually lose jobs for their members.
It just came down to funding. I still don’t understand why NY’s tax rebates don’t apply to soaps. OLTL employed six hundred people consistently throughout the year. No primetime show does.
In the last 3 years, 3 other NYC based soap ended. That’s an additional 1,800 jobs lost in NYC. Throughout this period, as the press reported, actors and writers did take huge pay cuts, halving production costs. Wouldn’t the tax rebates been a huge financial boost?
I find it telling that Prospect Park chose the day before Thanksgiving (usually a slow news day) to dump the news about the suspension of their efforts. Perhaps they thought that fewer people would be around to notice?
Again nobody wants to take responsibility. Winning is more important than jobs anyway.
Lisa, IMHO that is exacty why they choose today. Many are distracted, traveling and not around to ask the questions they would otherwise ask. Then of course we have the holiday, then Black Friday, then the weekend. And they know that by Monday this will be considered old news in the industry.
Just another unprofessional move by a company that done far too many of them. I’m glad AFTRA clarified it was NOT financial problems with union deals as PP implied in their press release. They sure seem busy pointing their fingers trying to blame others.
I want to know if the rights to AMC/OLTL return to ABC or who can negotiate for the shows. After all, ABC said they had MANY OFFERS and chose PP. So if this is legit, it should be on to the next one, right?!!!
If audiences expect to get programming for free and producers don’t want to pay people to create it, where does all the money go that we keep reading about?
I was wondering when they would jump in. From experience in new media, the unions make it easy to negotiate contracts in this space.
Funding: When it comes down, to funding it’s like pulling the rug right underneath you. And this happens all the time, in show business. And if you can’t find the funding. It’s like you can’t put, on a school musical I know how that feels. And I have been involved, in the performing arts. For a while, dance recitals for the longest time. And in NYC it’s even harder, and crucial to do something without, the money(funding). Especially on broadway and in hollywood, that’s why I wasn’t surprised. But I was emotional, when I found out. Then I bounced back, from the news really fast.
not surprised the unions are disappointed for all their work and willingness to make sure their clients rights under the prospect park deal were protected only to then learn in the end propsect park is not able to go forward. though given how the idea was a new thing. figured sadly that the costs of moving the soaps and starting on a network from scratch may yet doom the whole thing in the end.
F orget the job killing guilds.
Not surprised and I’m fairly certain, this “suspension” was the desired intent. Cancel AMC/OLTL (anger fans), offer’s series online (pacify fans), debuts hack replacement shows. Prospect Park recants (angers fans, as venture company, no one really takes blame), “The Chew” finds an audience, while “Revolution” awaits it maiden voyage and hopes it’s a success. At least GH has 9 months left to leave the air in style.
They just couldn’t make the deal, guys. It happens.
-RnsW
You writers still thrilled you pay your hard earned dues to the WGA? Suckers.
I will miss these shows,but more important than that,I feel really bad for everyone who lost their jobs.Good luck.
Extremely unfortunate….
In this present environment the soap fans and the workers have suffered another setback…Maybe another door will soon be reopened….I guess Prospect Park Production was only capable of talking the talk but they couldn’t walk the walk….
I guess the big networks and the big Production companies remain supreme in controlling show business in the USA..
Reality shows,Game shows,and talk shows are their offerings to us at the present moment,barring these productions we can turn off our television sets….”Happy Thanksgiving to one and all”.
Well, there it is. Pro-merger vs. anti-merger alternate realities: pro-merger SAG and AFTRA people will say “See? We shouldn’t have gotten the deal Rosenberg and company were holding out for – there is still not business model on the internet.”
And anti-merger people will repeat the same sad reality that was staring us in the face in 2008: we needed to get a protective deal, a “piece of the pie, whatever the size of the pie” deal, as the monetization of the net shakes out.
And then we, SAG members, would have been protected, no matter what. It was not only worth striking over, it was irresponsible not to, and had we stayed fiercely united, we probably would have gotten that deal with the full support of the A-list. Then, the deal could have been adjusted when it was necessary to adjust it. But, no matter what, we needed the deal then, to protect unionism for screen actors.
Nevertheless, here is the sad reality. I’m no fan of soaps, but they are a large source of work for actors, or were, but for these people to think they could have the same budget and pay, say, Susan Lucci, let alone the union minimums, on a web-only version of these two soaps, is mindless.
Bottom line? SAG, if it survives, HAS to get a protective deal in new media. HAS to. Actors futures are inseparable from a fair deal in new media. Right now we are naked, and new media is the delivery system of now and the future. And what are the producers accomplishing with this precedent UFS and AFTRA agreed to: they have set themselves up in perfect position to screw actors out of a MAJOR chunk of what we used to be paid, when you get down to the “their gross yearly receipts vs. actors percentage in salary, residuals, and P&H contributions OF those yearly gross receipts” – very rough equation.
The problem is HUGE, and anyone entertaining the naive notion this merger will get that deal, or any truly progressive deal, is kidding themselves. One of the central reasons the producers are supporting this merger, as opposed to the absurd talking point AFTRA President Roberta Reardon repeats “the producers are terrified of this merger!” (boy, they seem terrified, don’t they? I see the terror in all the news articles about their terror, all the hallway conversation of how the producers are so obviously pushing back to scuttle this merger they are SO terrified of…) is to change the way actors are paid, to encourage non-unionism, and to save BILLIONS going forward.
Our union, our futures, are being brazenly stolen, and we stand around watching, the vast majority of the SAG membership having absolutely no idea why merger is a terrible idea, or that this has anything to do with union-busting.
We have to make a HUGE noise, from here on out, when the “plan” comes out January 22nd, and after. The legal track may save us, the exposure of corruption in the Foreign royalties fund, the 20 year theft of actors royalties! The corruption in the SAG P&H Fund, the corruption in the residual system, that has turned Residuals and Royalties into a sort of twin all-purpose “slush fund” for the taking, paying off, any and all uses, actors know NOTHING about – but, there HAS to be a very noticeable public push-back pointing out the things most of us already know: this is a pro-merger SAG, AFTRA driven, AMPTP supported merger attempt, to make things “easier, more flexible, for the producers to experiment” the translation of which is “union busting and a systemic shift in the way actors are paid,” so that this profession is a fraction of what it was for us, and non-union may overwhelm our professional lives UNLESS WE STOP THIS.
“Unions kill jobs?” Totally wrongheaded, unless you are part of the 1%. Unions allow a MIDDLE-CLASS to exist, let alone thrive, and the further we go down the path of this Republican talking point that “unions kill jobs” – the worse the inequality of earnings in this country becomes, and the closer we slide towards chaos.
You know what kills jobs? CORPORATIONS looking to squeeze every last dime out of their U.S.-based costs, while they make their product for 10 cents on the dollar in China. THAT’S what kills jobs. And we better get about the business of stopping the well-oiled lobbyist-enabled, political pay-off support of that system, as it currently exists in this country, and elect politicians who are actually interested in this country first, and how much GE makes in the next quarter MUCH lower on the list of their priorities. Cause THIS aint working.
Do not mistake past corruption and union abuses for the need to kill unions. Unless workers are organizing via Collective Bargaining Agreements via unions and via Federal Labor Law, workers will make less, will receive shittier pensions, if any pensions at all, will watch themselves turn into glorified temps, or not work at all – for a year, three years – never again? What the Republicans don’t seem to understand is – without a strong system to protect “workers” aka, the VAST majority of the income earners in this country, they tempt the inevitable push-back to millions and millions of disenfranchised Americans, unable to work, not working enough, unable to support themselves, their families, on dwindling pensions, or no pensions at all. Desperation leads to civil unrest, as we are seeing, and if that damn of hostility breaks? Well, I wish the 1% the best of luck. The 99% will show them the same kindnesses they have shown the 99%.
Does the Republican vision for this country make any sense at all? Of course not. FDR created a social safety net. People don’t remember anymore that before that social safety net existed and before workers were able to unionize and work in American factories (and Hollywood is a factory town, don’t kid yourself) and make a decent wage and raise a family without both parents working, unless that was wanted by the parents for reasons besides income, this country was a LOT more “survival of the fittest.”
When Ron Paul got a rousing reply of “YES!” from the audience in that Republican debate when asked by the moderator if a 30 year old with no health insurance who ended up in a coma “should be allowed to… what… die?” – THAT’S when the underlying chaos of the anger and hatred boiling just beneath the surface was laid bare for all Americans, the whole WORLD to see.
WE all pay a bit to help each other, we all take care of each other, the strong help the less strong, and the weak and the sick, or, this isn’t a country worth a damn.
Republicanism as currently practiced needs to be snuffed out – before it snuffs out this country.
If there’s one thing I learned from reading these comments, it’s that some people who spent their time watching soaps like OLTL and AMC obviously did so while skipping some much-needed remedial English Writing classes in high school.
My theory is ABC was behind the whole mess. I honestly believe they made sure PP couldn’t get financing because they cancelled the wrong show, GH is the one that should have been axed. ABC isn’t stupid, BS Frons however is and really messed this one up.
AMC and OLTL are both still recognizable to longtime fans, GH is some sort of mafia mess. The announcement of GH’s cancellation next year will not even remotely create the uprising that AMC and OLTL did.
I certainly hope OLTL staff had a clue that the PP deal was in trouble and the show was wrapped up without an idiotic finale like AMC. OLTL has always been the red headed stepchild at ABC and it deserves its time to shine.
It IS the guilds fault. Neither claimed to have actually reached a deal. If they had, Prospect Park wouldn’t have had to drop the project.
If the unions had any effect on this deal, it was as a result of their theoretical demands, not because of anything that actually happened. The reality is that Prospect Park couldn’t get the funding to do this. Period. End of story. There’s nothing else to it (This includes PP”s hope that they could finance the soaps partly by selling a second window for them to a cable network. Not surprisingly, no cable network wanted to pay for the privilege of airing them a week after anyone on the Internet could watch them). There was no big conspiracy. Most Hollywood projects fail before production for the exact same reason. The fact that the economic structure proposed to support this venture was itself experimental made this even more likely to fail. Prospect Park said hopeful things all along because that’s what they have to say – few Hollywood projects would ever get off the ground if the people behind them pay attention to the long odds against it.
As far as One Life to Live, at least they were able to film some alternate endings for the soap – one set for the soap if going forward, and another set for the show if it is ending. The show won’t get the complete ending it would have if PP hadn’t come up in the first place (in that case, fans would actually have had to wait several more months for the paternity secret recently revealed to come out; the original intention was to wait and hold that for the very end), but it’ll be able to come somewhat close.