Sunday, April 28, 2013

New York Times On ALL MY CHILDREN & ONE LIFE TO LIVE: $80,000 Per Episode Budget, 25-Minute Episodes

The New York Times published a story on Sunday about the April 29 launch of ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE. Below are some interesting excerpts including the $80,000 per episode budget and Prospect Park owning the rights to GENERAL HOSPITAL should ABC cancel the show.
On Monday the soap operas ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE will start their second lives, and Jeffrey Kwatinetz and Rich Frank will start to find out if they’re right.

The two men have poured money and nearly two years of their time into an Internet revival of the soaps. They’ve done this because they believe, as Mr. Kwatinetz puts it, that “this is the inflection point for online television.”
Prospect Park is paying an $8.5 million annual license fee for the shows and ABC will share in any profits made by ONE LIFE TO LIVE. Prospect Park also owns the rights to GENERAL HOSPITAL in case ABC ends that one, too.
On ABC the soaps had an hourlong format — roughly 40 minutes of storytelling, 20 minutes of commercials. Each episode cost about $175,000 to produce. Prospect Park has cut that down to about $80,000, partly by switching to a half-hour format, with 25 minutes of story. Paying actors a weekly rate, rather than per performance, and filming both soaps at the same studio in Connecticut, which provides a 30 percent tax incentive to producers, has also helped pare costs.

"The gold standard online is the combination of a passionate, engaged fan and a show they love and want to watch day after day. That combination means great results for viewers, content owners and advertisers," said Andy Forssell, the acting chief executive of Hulu. "You can’t find a better example of this than ALL MY CHILDREN and ONE LIFE TO LIVE."
RELATED:
- How To Watch Free Episodes of ALL MY CHILDREN & ONE LIFE TO LIVE (Video)
- ALL MY CHILDREN Day-By-Day Preview For First Three Weeks [SPOILER ALERT]
- ONE LIFE TO LIVE Day-By-Day Preview For First Three Weeks [SPOILER ALERT]

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