ABC's ICONIC SOAPS "ALL MY CHILDREN" AND "ONE LIFE TO LIVE TO PROSPECT PARK

It looks like the hard work from the fans have paid off and ABC has realized the power of the viewers. ABC has licensed its iconic soaps, "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" to Prospect Park, it was announced today by Brian Frons, President, Daytime, Disney/ABC Television Group & Janice Marinelli, President, Disney/ABC Domestic Television and Rich Frank & Jeff Kwatinetz of Prospect Park. The exclusive multi-year, multi-platform deal enables the soaps' stories to continue beyond their finale dates on ABC. ABC will broadcast its final episode of "All My Children" on Friday, September 23rd and will air the final episode of "One Life to Live" in January, 2012.

Additional details of the new productions and tune-in will be forthcoming from Prospect Park but I'm hoping that they do some sort of merger thing with say NETFLIX so that soaps can be cataloged and streamed over the net via the NETFLIX service as well. I do have some concerns on the deal and one such concern is how the older viewers who are not as web savy or who don't have internet will connect to their beloved soaps? Loosing such a group will kill the ratings - or is this all part of a plan to get viewership in a new platform for a few years and then dump the soaps all together (think Passions on Directv) while reaping the memberships?

Why ABC has chosen to go with licensing the soaps to Prospect Park as opposed to selling the rights to SONY and/or any others who inquired is more or less a strategic move on their part. How would it look if both shows did better on another station say CBS or NBC both of which currently have SONY soaps. And let's be honest are any of us really going to watch a show called "The Chew"?

If you ask me I think that might have been a better option since SoapNet is signing off in 2012. So unless we get a virtual "SoapNet" on the internet where will fans of the beloved soap opera genre find their shows?

At least with this announcement fans of General Hospital (GH) can breath a sigh of relief since that soap has been dipping in the ratings recently and many feared it would be axed next. Should that be the case it could be poised to jump over to Prospect Park as well.