Where did you read that? I can't find anything about them being canceled.
shareNelson Branco of Soaps Uncensored posted it on his Facebook/Twitter feed today.
http://daytimeconfidential.zap2it.com/2013/05/19/report-fx-canada-repl aces-all-my-children-and-one-life-to-live-with-30-rock-reruns
Damn, they bitched out quick. I mean, they could still air the episodes that are coming out. Just air them in the 12p.m. timeslot and then follow it with 30 Rock or whatever else they want to put there. I'm sure the audience is still there. The schedule change was only announced 3 days ago, but if you go to the FX Canada site, they've already deleted the pages for AMC and OLTL. They've completely washed their hands of the shows.
"Damn, they bitched out quick. I mean, they could still air the episodes that are coming out. Just air them in the 12p.m. timeslot and then follow it with 30 Rock or whatever else they want to put there. I'm sure the audience is still there."
I'm guessing that ratings were probably higher with 30 Rock reruns than new episodes of AMC & OLTL. After a few weeks of low ratings, F/X Canada prolly made the decision after Prospect Park changed its release schedule.
I'm a bit confused by the article. Did FX Canada cancel the soaps because PP reduced them to only 2 episodes a week or did PP reduce to 2 episodes because Canada FX canceled the soaps?
According to the tweets, they cancelled them because of the production schedule change. But that is probably just a PC way of saying it in favor of admitting the ratings were bad. They are still available on ITunes Canada, but people aren't going to want to pay for every episode...
Yeah, things don't look good for PP at all. Not even a month in, and they already have these issues? At the pace they are going, PP will be done within a year.
Man, I can't even believe how quickly this all went downhill! Nor do I understand why since OLTL and AMC both seem to consistently be among the highest Hulu shows. What more are they looking for?
share"Nor do I understand why since OLTL and AMC both seem to consistently be among the highest Hulu shows. What more are they looking for?"
If you believe Prospect Park, and their honesty is in question, they were not happy with the fact that the majority of Hulu viewers were not watching the shows the same day they were released, as they claim they would if they aired on television (even though many people record TV shows, too, and watch on a later day). Instead, their research found that most viewers were "binge-watching," that is watching several episodes on weekends in one sitting. I really don't see why that would matter, although someone suggested that the ad rates might be different for same day release vs. later viewing. Not sure.
But IF this is true, Prospect Park shot itself in the foot by promoting the shows as viewers being able to watch them whenever they wanted. Their actual ads said "Watch Anytime." Viewers did watch "anytime" and they supposedly didn't like it. However, I think there's more to the story than what they are telling us.
The way I read it was that PP's complaint was that people were not watching all the episodes, not that they were binge watching. I think PP felt people weren't watching during the week and then only watching a couple episodes on the weekend. Which basically means they were getting low ratings because not all the episodes were being watched.
In regard to the ratings - I haven't read anything about the soaps ratings on Hulu. I know the first few days they were the highest rated on Hulu, but that was because the shows were back after a long time so everyone was tuning in. Are you certain they've kept those ratings up?
The "rankings" on Hulu are misleading, because the shows are ranked alongside shows that have already been seen on broadcast or cable networks. On iTunes, the first couple of episodes of each show ranked well, then both dropped out of the top 100. Prospect Park needs each episode to be viewed online by 500,000 viewers. Clearly, they are nowhere near that, which is why they're reducing the number of episodes released per week, giving each episode longer to get to the magic number. And the ratings on FX Canada must be awful; if they were decent, they wouldn't have taken advantage in the slowdown in release schedule to get out of their contract.
There was an initial spurt of interest, but it's dropped way off. Look at the message boards - you can tell interest has declined from a few weeks ago.
"On iTunes, the first couple of episodes of each show ranked well, then both dropped out of the top 100."
Wow, I had no idea. I knew they premiered well and heard they dropped soon after, as expected, but I didn't expect it to be that low.
This is exactly why PP should have focused on ONE soap - either AMC or OLTL to test out the waters. They had no idea if a soap could succeed online. I know there have been several soaps that were created for online but they seem to have had very few episodes and sometimes only 10-15 minutes long. They obviously haven't been successful either since they're never talked about on the soap websites.