Lawsuits and the Death of My Soap Opera Addiction

No News is Bad News

The news is not good for fans of formerly-ABC-property-but-sold-to-Prospect- Park-and-re-booted soaps, One Life to Life and All My Children. 

In a real-life story line more entangled and convoluted than anything a soap writer could come up with, the production company that purchased the rights to produce and broadcast the two long-lived soaps has thrown in the towel.

I totally blame the greedy bastards at ABC for the
entire situation.

So, first, ABC cancels the two longest-running daytime shows in ABC's history. Then, they sell the licensing rights to Prospect Park. They effectively washed their hands of the two shows they owned, produced, and broadcast for years.

Prospect Park, happy to have bought the right to produce and broadcast two shows with established audiences, took its sweet time getting the shows up and running. They had to line up the actors, crews, and writers; find studio space and set up the sets, get the scripts written, hire the camera men and set decorators and all that (must have been enormously complex); and arrange to have the two shows shown on Hulu. This must have been a logistical nightmare, so they can be forgiven for taking months to get it all done. But they did it.

(While we were all patiently waiting, I couldn't help but scope out the CBS shows, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, where, to my surprise, several AMC and OLTL actors found temp jobs, playing short-lived roles. People gotta eat, after all.)

Looking back, the casual observer--not even an "industry insider" or someone who watches media trends for a living--could have seen the signs that there was Big Trouble in Soap Opera Land.  First, both shows went from 1 hour (really 42 minutes, with 18 minutes of commercials, on broadcast TV) to less than half an hour. Even though there were only three commercial breaks that lasted less than 3 minutes each, that still only gave us 23 to 25 minutes of show. Furthermore, they were only being broadcast 4 days a week, rather than the traditional 5 (and for the record, I never watched that filler-nonsense called "More" that they showed on Fridays. Truly awful.)

Then, they went from being broadcast 4 days a week, to twice a week, alternating (Mondays and Wednesdays were for AMC; Tuesdays and Thursdays for OLTL). Then, they removed the day restriction, and two episodes of both shows were made available for watching every Monday.  This all lasted about 6 months. Then, both shows announced that they had reached the ends of their "first seasons."

Prospect had announced early in the summer that they were being sued by ABC, but they assured the viewers that it would all get straightened out by the end of the summer, and we would see no interruption of the shows, since they had enough filmed and ready to last through the end of the summer, and surely the lawsuit would be settled by then. Well, not so much.

I remember thinking at the time, What in the world? Why is ABC suing PP? Didn't they sell the rights to the shows to PP? Aren't they done with them? Why are they suing? There were no answers to these questions--at least, none that ABC would own up to.

And now, Prospect Park, at the end of its rope, apparently, is counter-suing ABC, for a whopping $125 mil. Here's the latest story:

http://www.deadline.com/2013/11/prospect-park-now-seeking-125m-in-abc-soap-lawsuit/

All the comments on the two shows' Facebook pages are suggesting that PP has chosen to cancel the two shows, and if they win the lawsuit, they will pocket the money they get out of it, putting it in the kitty for new or just different shows--perhaps original programming that no one else claims to "own."  After all, they have had previous success with Royal Pains (a pretty good show). So, why not?

I, like many others devoted to the shows, have been patiently waiting since September for the two media entities to work it out.  I had waited months for the re-boots; I could wait some more. If anything, my commitment to the characters and stories of both shows had been reaffirmed and solidified by the long wait, followed by the excellent production values of the re-boots. I was really looking forward to developing a new routine: I even bought a Roku box for the TV in the front bedroom, and was still trying to find my rhythm for when to watch and how to work the new format (at first, I thought I couldn't fast forward through the commercials--but then, I found out that I could, and was ready to try it, when ...). The whole thing just fell apart.

I blame ABC for the entire situation. I think they sold the rights to PP, believing that they would either never get them off the ground (knowing how difficult and expensive it is to launch TV shows), or that the re-boots would be rejected by the fans, or that it wouldn't work to show them on Hulu. Whatever. They were, obviously, dead wrong in that belief. Once PP actually got the shows up and running, Hulu was actually broadcasting them, and fans were actually watching, then, all of sudden, ABC must have said, "Oh, crap. They succeeded, dammit! How can we stop this?" And the lawsuit appeared, and they stubbornly dug in their heels, refused to compromise or negotiate, until PP had no choice but retaliate.  How churlish and mean-spirited can they be? They are setting new lows in an industry already known for its lowest-common-denominator philosophy and unrestrained greed.

The bottom line is that fans of the two shows are left out in the cold, and know have no other choice but to develop a taste for General Hospital (on ABC, which I really want to boycott), or switch to CBS' Y&R/B&B.

Looks like Genoa City and Victor Newman's nasal snarl are in my future.  What else is a Soap Addict to do?