One Life To Live - Abandoned Transition With Prospect Park

Abandoned Transition With Prospect Park

On July 7, 2011, ABC announced that it had licensed the rights to One Life to Live and All My Children to television, film and music production company Prospect Park, allowing both series to continue producing new first-run episodes beyond the conclusion of their television runs on ABC, with the series moving to a new Hulu-style online channel currently in development by Prospect Park; as a result of the company's acquisition of the two soap operas, One Life to Live and All My Children, would become the first soap operas to transition their first-run broadcasts from traditional television to internet television.

On September 16, 2011, executive producer Frank Valentini was retained by Prospect Park for that serial as well as All My Children when both shows would move to The Online Network. On September 28, 2011, Prospect Park confirmed that One Life to Live would start on its The Online Network internet channel in January 2012, but without specifying the exact date. On September 30, 2011, it was announced that head writer Ron Carlivati would be also heading to the internet version of the show.

Since the agreement made between ABC and Prospect Park was not limited to internet television and did allowed One Life to Live to be broadcast on traditional television, there was an announcement on August 3, 2011 about a possibility of One Life to Live airing on a cable channel. On October 5, 2011, the project to bring One Life to Live to cable was reiterated in a New York Times article, where it was revealed that Prospect Park planned to first air episodes on The Online Network, then make them available on television on demand and, then weeks later, on cable television.

On November 23, 2011, Prospect Park officially suspended its plans to continue the show after its run on ABC. Reasons given by Prospect Park included funding problems and poor negotiations with the unions representing the cast of One Life to Live. WGA and AFTRA, which respectively represent the writer and the actors, have expressed disappointment over Prospect Park's decision. Though not one of the reasons given by Prospect Park, Deadline.com suggested that the company's lack of success in finding a cable network to carry the show may have been instrumental in the company's decision to not pursue the project.

Despite its fruitless attempt to save the series, Prospect Park had succeeded in retaining 13 actors to sign for the online venture, compared to only two actors for All My Children. Matriarch actress Erika Slezak was among the 13. The 12 other actors were Melissa Archer, Kassie DePaiva, Michael Easton, Shenell Edmonds, Josh Kelly, Ted King, Florencia Lozano, Kelley Missal, Sean Ringgold, Andrew Trischitta, Jerry Ver Dorn and Tuc Watkins.