Re: Just When You Thought That We Would Never See "AMC" & "OLTL" Again...
Deadline and Daytime Confidential have more info:
- Plan is to film in Stamford, CT to take advantage of tax breaks. This wouldn't affect OLTL too much, since it was based on NY. However, AMC had moved its taping to Los Angeles at the end.
- Both shows will be 30 minutes in length; both shows had been 1 hour since the 1970s.
- The shows will air 4 episodes per week, with a Friday recap show.
- Plan is to air new episodes for 42 weeks out of the year, to produce 168 half hours per year.
- Though unannounced, the hope is to have a cable outlet in addition to the online outlet Prospect Park has planned. However, at this point, there has been no announcement of a secondary outlet for either program.
ABC has agreed to extend the license agreement with Prospect Park until February; PP has until the end of the Feb to begin production, or they lose the license and the rights revert back to ABC.
One wrinkle to this will be the impact on General Hospital. Several characters moved over from OLTL to General Hospital this year; according to several sources, Prospect Park could ask for those characters back at any time.
While PP seems further along this go round - they apparently have agreements with SAG-AFTRA, DGA, and plans to use non-union writers, it still seems like a huge task to get everything up and running by the end of February. Some fans are speculating that this is a ploy to get money from ABC, given there have been rumors of interest in both properties within ABC recently.
