Why No Classic Soaps On Any Streaming Service?

[tommie]

The reruns of EON episodes that I saw on 'regular' TV back in the late-1980s (which ultimately ended up on youtube) are very good quality prints--much better in fact than a lot of Ryan's Hope and Dark Shadows episodes that were/are considered good enough to air. EON would be their best chance at getting one of the classic soaps. There would not be as many problems with music clearances, since they did not use popular music for background noise as much as the other soaps. Even when the show had subplots at the video-disco that Preacher and Jody hung out at, they used non-descript "crap" music like that stuff they used at the Blue Whale on DS.

But hey, we can't force the P&G kids to share their toys.

How diplomatic!

 

[Daniel Avery]

...or maybe P&G decided they did not want some royalty check to end up in the pocket of Lori Loughlin, since they knew she'd blow that 73 cents on bribing college administrators to admit her airhead daughters into their school.

 

[shaqattaq32]

It is frustrating that there is all this content out there which is, at best, just sitting in a vault somewhere. And at worst… I don’t even want to think about it.

It’s just not profitable for P&G to do anything with its library. In fact, if anything it would be a huge liability to them because a lot of things would not be PC today. I wish the government would do something to compensate companies to release historically significant footage that is not profitable to release otherwise.

I’ve accepted that we’re likely never getting the P&G library released, at least not in my lifetime. Still, it’s sad to think about.

 

[Carrie Fairchild]

It is frustrating that there is all this content out there which is, at best, just sitting in a vault somewhere. And at worst… I don’t even want to think about it.

It’s just not profitable for P&G to do anything with its library. In fact, if anything it would be a huge liability to them because a lot of things would not be PC today. I wish the government would do something to compensate companies to release historically significant footage that is not profitable to release otherwise.

I’ve accepted that we’re likely never getting the P&G library released, at least not in my lifetime. Still, it’s sad to think about.

You never know what is going to happen when it comes to soap reruns on streaming services. If you compare the rise of cable TV to the current streaming boom. Cable/satellite TV went mainstream in the US and the UK in the 80’s but it was quite a number of years before they got dedicated soap channels (Sky Soap in the UK in 1994 and Soapnet in the US in 2000). Streaming is in its relative infancy, so who knows when we’ll get a soap channel or add on, on one of the streamers but I do think it will happen at some stage.

Similarly, in the time since this thread was started, we’ve seen FAST channels launched in the US featuring the Lorimar soaps, and in the UK, soaps like Eldorado, Brookside and Howards Way, which hadn’t seen the light of day in 20+ years, are now available on streaming services. Plus, we’ve seen P&G get back into the soap game with Beyond the Gates. So, I’d be hopeful that we’ll see more classic soaps on a streamer/s in the future.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Yes, I admit I was floored when P&G signed that deal with CBS to basically re-enter the soap business. P&G had spent so many years (and upset so many viewers/consumers) trying to get out of the soap business that I assumed they had long since given up on TV. I'm sure there is a very different business model this time around, and one can only hope that their intellectual property library is viewed as part of this dip back into their heritage. If they can make BTG profitable (or at least break even) then the folks in charge of P&G Studios may entertain the idea of branching out, likely something along the lines of when they sold reruns of certain soaps in their library to AOL.

PlutoTV, which is owned by Paramount/CBS, already has a dedicated channel that reruns BTG episodes, and previously had a channel that reran older episodes of Y&R and B&B. So it's easy to picture Pluto becoming the home of any such efforts to re-purpose the P&G soaps. I know "history" means little to business owners, but the relationship between P&G and CBS goes at least as far back as the late-1940s, and the majority of P&G soaps were produced to air on CBS.

 

[shaqattaq32]

I don’t know if I believe the whole “P&G wanted out of the soap business” thing. It’s been stated over and over on the internet since the internet existed, and it’s just become one of those things that everyone says but nobody has any real proof of. And the facts just don’t support it. P&G created the soap business and did it better than anyone else.

NBC canceled Another World and CBS canceled Guiding Light and As the World Turns. If P&G wanted out, they could have chosen to either stop making their shows or sell their shows — it was rumored in the early 2000s that CBS wanted to buy ATWT and GL.

At the end of the day, the demographics of the P&G soaps just weren’t great for the last 20 years they existed. They skewed older. They skewed Midwest/Southern (though my Northeast family was a diehard P&G soap family going back to the 50s on my dad’s side and back to the 80s on my mother’s side.) By 1995 all the remaining P&G soaps were in irreversible ratings decline barring some kind of miracle, and the fact that they lasted as long as they did shows someone at some level at P&G was dedicated to keeping them alive.

 

[Carrie Fairchild]

NBC canceled Another World and CBS canceled Guiding Light and As the World Turns. If P&G wanted out, they could have chosen to either stop making their shows or sell their shows — it was rumored in the early 2000s that CBS wanted to buy ATWT and GL.

As someone relatively unfamiliar with the production history of these three shows, was there a concerted effort by P&G to keep the shows going in their dying years or was it a case of P&G not caring about them anymore and running them into the ground? I know Another World got that opening sequence upgrade in its final years that sounded and looked like ER while Guiding Light started filming with I think handheld cameras on location (although that may have been budgetary).

The reason I ask, is that in the UK, there was a theory that the producers of classic soap Crossroads (ATV and later Central) had lost interest in it by the early 80’s and effectively started running it into the ground through a number of production changes, in order to have it axed (the producers were reportedly embarrassed by its lowbrow image and they wanted to be known for prestige drama). They fired the show’s matriarch, burned down the titular motel, initiated a revamp in the mid-80’s which proved successful, so they fired the producer who’d initiated it, brought back an old producer who proceeded to undo a lot of the good work done during the revamp and then started making moves towards dropping the Crossroads name altogether and rebranding it Kings Oak. Throughout it all, the ratings remained relatively consistent and good, so in the end, they just axed it anyway.

 

[shaqattaq32]

As someone relatively unfamiliar with the production history of these three shows, was there a concerted effort by P&G to keep the shows going in their dying years or was it a case of P&G not caring about them anymore and running them into the ground? I know Another World got that opening sequence upgrade in its final years that sounded and looked like ER while Guiding Light started filming with I think handheld cameras on location (although that may have been budgetary).

The reason I ask, is that in the UK, there was a theory that the producers of classic soap Crossroads (ATV and later Central) had lost interest in it by the early 80’s and effectively started running it into the ground through a number of production changes, in order to have it axed (the producers were reportedly embarrassed by its lowbrow image and they wanted to be known for prestige drama). They fired the show’s matriarch, burned down the titular motel, initiated a revamp in the mid-80’s which proved successful, so they fired the producer who’d initiated it, brought back an old producer who proceeded to undo a lot of the good work done during the revamp and then started making moves towards dropping the Crossroads name altogether and rebranding it Kings Oak. Throughout it all, the ratings remained relatively consistent and good, so in the end, they just axed it anyway.

I think the difference is that the ratings for the P&G soaps didn’t remain good. AW was very popular in the early to mid 70s, but basically spent the last 20 years of its existence in the ratings basement — they were also constantly changing creative teams in that time, so the show’s quality was not consistent — that’s not to say it didn’t have some good years in that time, but it never sustained its quality for long.

ATWT and GL continued to have good ratings throughout the 80s, and ATWT remained steadily in the middle of the pack until the early 2000s, but ultimately they had a reputation as the “old people’s soaps.”

I think GL’s Peapack experiment was never going to work, but I respect them for trying something different. The problem was, it looked like dogs**t and was never going to attract new viewers. ATWT tried some unconventional things too like touring universities with its younger cast, and doing the “inTurn” contest to get a role on the show, but it was too little too late. They were both circling the graveyard.

P&G said they shopped Another World to other networks after NBC brought the axe down; IDK how hard they tried though. And it’s also hard to imagine anyone would have been interested, seeing as how AW had spent two decades with both creative and ratings struggles. With ATWT and GL, there wasn’t really any place to shop them to. ABC owned its soaps outright and wasn’t interested in airing a production company’s soaps. NBC was almost out of the soap biz as its only remaining show was DAYS by that point, which had become the cat with nine lives itself in constant danger of cancellation.

Plus, P&G’s own history with shows switching networks hadn’t been great. The Edge of Night had switched from CBS to ABC and Search for Tomorrow from CBS to NBC, neither very successful in its new home.

So I just don’t think facts are on the side of the “P&G wanted out” myth. The sad thing is, these beloved institutions just couldn’t be saved.

 

[Daniel Avery]

I think an entire book could be written on P&G and their relationships with the networks and the soaps, so it would be easier (on you and me) to just discuss what was brought up. The "Too Long/Didn't Read" version is that yes, P&G was an active participant in the dismantling of their production company, though obviously there were others participating in it.

P&G created the soap business and did it better than anyone else.

Television is much more of a "What have you done for me lately?" type of enterprise. The network execs P&G dealt with were not the type to let them use their past glories to excuse present-day failures. But the networks were also guilty of micro-managing to the point that it became hard to figure who caused the failures. In the earlier decades there was very little interference in day-to-day stories and projected storylines, which I think was why those years were so much more creative and had production teams that stayed in place for decades. In the post-1980 era, the networks began sticking their noses in and making it harder to tell if personnel decisions (in front or behind the camera) were network-dictated or something the show actually decided on its own. P&G as a corporation always had a reputation for keeping their secrets in-house; some have likened the company culture to a cult. This made it hard to tell who was making decisions that impacted the shows as we saw them, since the employees of the shows were under pressure not to blab to the press about what was going on behind the scenes. Of course some things did indeed leak out over the decades, but you had to do a lot of "reading between the lines".

NBC canceled Another World and CBS canceled Guiding Light and As the World Turns. If P&G wanted out, they could have chosen to either stop making their shows or sell their shows — it was rumored in the early 2000s that CBS wanted to buy ATWT and GL.

In AW's case, P&G did a disastrous "producer shuffle" in the mid-1990s for no apparent reason where Jill Farren Phelps, the dreaded and dreadful EP at Guiding Light was moved to AW, while AW's EP ended up at As the World Turns and theirs at GL. It later became apparent that Phelps had been moved from GL to AW because she was causing grievous harm to that show, and that P&G cared more about their CBS shows since they were not as challenged, ratings-wise. The newly-installed producers at GL and ATWT were not ideal, either (ATWT especially fell into its worst creative period in its history), but Phelps inflicted even more damage on AW than she had at GL. Was it intentional? Probably not; never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. But it was P&G who let Phelps make the mess at GL and then kept her in the 'family' rather than firing her, then did not hire better EP's (or move the old one back) to pull AW back together. It was the 1996-99 period (when AW slipped away) that it became increasingly clear that P&G had given up on AW and was not fighting for it any more. This feeling seemed to resurface when GL and ATWT began their mid-2000s declines.

I was not a daily viewer of GL or ATWT after about 2003. I admit I was mostly following their fates from a distance because I could see the writing on the wall. Yes, ATWT had a great period in 2000-2003 under a good Head Writer, but Chris Goutman (the EP) showed all the signs of burnout (many said he "just lost interest") around 2005 and rather than replace him with someone who could re-invigorate the show again, they just left him in the job all the way to the end. The soap world still had many talented people who could have been hired by P&G to overhaul ATWT but they simply chose not to. Over at GL, they had the opposite issue: a highly motivated, creative EP named Ellen Wheeler ready to do new, exciting things who was saddled with an ever-decreasing budget. Her decision to transition to that (admittedly awful) new production model was her solution to the budget given to them by P&G, when many in the soap press were saying that the budget had been intentionally set that low so that everyone would throw up their hands and give up on the show. Wheeler tackled the problem rather than walking away from it, giving the show an additional few years of life P&G and CBS probably did not expect to get. In Kim Zimmer's memoirs she recounts how she barged into Wheeler's office to complain about some issue and found Wheeler in tears from all the pressure brought to bear on her (and everyone else) just to keep it all going when it felt like no one from P&G or CBS wanted them to succeed. Unlike most cancelled soaps that got a two- or three-month period to wrap things up, I recall ATWT received their cancellation about a year ahead. This could be construed as "a license to give up" from that point forward, which was a(nother) mistake.

For the record, I've seen multiple soaps announce cancellation and then hear they're "shopping it around" (supposedly). They said it with Edge of Night. They said it with Another World, with Passions....well, you get it. I think the PR people just say these things in an effort to soften the blow of the announcement and to make the upset viewers feel less upset. When bad things happen, you instinctively feel the need to "do something" or to encourage others to do something to feel as if you have some stake in possibly changing the decision....but of course this is all out of our hands. No network executive is going to encourage a competitor to pick up a show they cancelled in the hope that the competitor makes a success of it. They want their competitors to be unsuccessful!

 

[shaqattaq32]

I think an entire book could be written on P&G and their relationships with the networks and the soaps, so it would be easier (on you and me) to just discuss what was brought up. The "Too Long/Didn't Read" version is that yes, P&G was an active participant in the dismantling of their production company, though obviously there were others participating in it.

I wish someone would write it. There are some P&G historians on the Datalounge website who could probably do it. It's the only thing I used to go to that website for -- last time I checked it had been taken over by trolls, but that site had some absolute gem threads about the P&G soaps back in the day.

Unfortunately, the people who would be interested in such a book are aging rapidly. It's a rich history which will probably never be fully told. But I still enjoy discussing it, so thanks for indulging me.

For JFP, I find her underrated -- her GL legacy in particular is mixed. 1992 was undoubtedly an amazing year for the show and she had something to do with that. I know a lot of fans despise her, but actors sing her praises, and there's no doubt she innovated a lot on GL.

Her AW legacy is probably more negative. Of course, I was not watching AW during her tenure, but I've read Eddie Dreuding's contemporaneous critiques of her work and it sounds like he had a good case against her. One thing is that although she accepts credit and apologizes for killing Maureen Bauer on GL, she says killing Frankie on AW was not her fault and she was already on the way out when that happened.

Another interesting thing is the "P&G producer shuffle." They had done stuff like that before. Douglas Marland was writing ATWT (his first tenure) and the Dobsons were writing GL -- and P&G swapped them. Marland was very successful on GL but the tone of the Dobsons' ATWT tenure seems to be more debated among fans (this was before my time, but from what I've read over the years, their tone wasn't entirely keeping with the traditional tone of ATWT). There were a few other times P&G swapped management as well before the 90s but they're not coming to my mind at the moment. I remember reading somewhere (don't remember where -- maybe Eddie Dreuding's page) about P&G's self-stated "long-standing policy" of shuffling management on their soaps.

As for Goutman, he 100% checked out and it's a shame. He arrived at ATWT with a lot of energy and he directed some incredible episodes his first few years as EP there. The episode in particular where Katie was forced by her stalker to admit to her crimes on videotape was a very well-done action episode directed by Goutman. It was clear that he'd burnt out by 2005, like you said, and he actually became somewhat of a downer from what I remember him saying at the time. You could feel the negative outlook and bad attitude. He should have given the reins to somebody else as he was clearly over it.

 

[soapfan79]

BEONDTV have just started streaming All My Children starting from May 1995.

HOME | BEONDTV+

www.beond.tv

 

[Carrie Fairchild]

BEONDTV have just started streaming All My Children starting from May 1995.

HOME | BEONDTV+

www.beond.tv

Interesting to see AMC get a rerun. Was classic AMC ever run on Soapnet?

Looking at the BeondTV platform, they appear to have some sort of FAST channel that either runs full episodes or snippets of the same for free and then episodes on demand, which you can only access by subscribing to some sort of digital payment platform for a fee.

 

[Daniel Avery]

Was classic AMC ever run on Soapnet?

They were more concerned with airing same-day/previous-day episodes of their then-current soaps. Other than occasional "specials" or theme programming, they didn't air old episodes of AMC because a lot of the older stuff was unavailable. Agnes Nixon asked them to start saving copies of episodes in 1976 or 1977 when ABC expanded the show to an hour, but the stuff sits in vaults somewhere as ABC likely isn't interested in digging it up and spending money on restoring/remastering it. This non-US effort is likely relying on reruns that were sold to other countries in the 1990s (since the reruns start in 1995).

 

[Carrie Fairchild]

This non-US effort is likely relying on reruns that were sold to other countries in the 1990s (since the reruns start in 1995).

I saw an article where someone involved in bringing it to streaming said they chose 1995 as it was the show’s 25th anniversary but in reality, it’s likely down to the practicalities of that you mentioned above.