Reaction to Prospect Park’s announcement over One Life to Live future

Yesterday Prospect Park confirmed rumours it was pulling its planned continuation of One Life to Live and there has been quite a lot of reaction to the news.

Actress Hillary B. Smith, who plays Nora Buchanan on the soap, has spoken to Entertainment Weekly about the news. The actress, whose soap credits also include As The World Turns, told EW ’It was a noble attempt and I believe they really wanted to do this. I’m just sad for the fans. I think this was a very ambitious project for a company with no history of the technology. I do wish there had been more communication between the company and those who’d signed on. We were finding out a lot in the press’. The actress revealed she had a tentative deal in place to remain with the soap after its ABC finale in January – joining quite a few OLTL cast members who had agreed to continue in their roles.

Actress Kassie DePaiva, who plays Blair Cramer in the soap, posted a statement on her website about the news. The actress’ statement was critical of ABC’’s original decision to cancel OLTL earlier this year. DePaiva wrote ‘ Words just don’t express how sad I am at hearing that Prospect Park has dropped the deal to move forward with “One Life.” I think what upsets me the most is how this whole deal has been handled from the get go. I wanted more than anything not to have been cancelled by ABC. I find it mind boggling that a company can spend 45 years building the strongest brand in daytime, launch a cable network to support it and then decide to cancel both broadcast, and cable airings leaving the beloved fans with no where to turn for that brand.’

There has also been reaction from two unions who represent, separately, the actors and writers of All My Children and One Life to Live. The Writers Guild of America released a statement in which it said ‘We were disappointed to learn that Prospect Park’s financing fell through. Prior to the end of last week, we were close to a fair deal for the writers’.

Meanwhile the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists released a similar statement ‘AFTRA was deeply disappointed to read that the executives at Prospect Park have decided to suspend their efforts to produce the long-running and popular daytime serials, One Life to Live and All My Children, via online distribution,”. The statement continue ‘Despite initial progress in our negotiations with Prospect Park toward resolving a fair agreement to cover the performers appearing on these programs, we were perplexed and disappointed that for the past month Prospect Park has not responded to our repeated inquiries to resume those discussions,” AFTRA’s statement continued. “We now conclude from the press reports that Prospect Park faced other challenges unrelated to our negotiations, which prevented continuation of those discussions. We remain hopeful that an opportunity to revive these two popular series will emerge in the future, and remain ready to resume discussions should that opportunity arise.”

The news that neither One Life to Live nor All My Children will now continue – in any form it appears – will be a bitter blow to fans of both daily serials. The Prospect Park deal offered them hope that despite ABC’s cancellation both serials would continue and they could still tune in and catch up with all their favourite characters.

(Via Soapcentral.com and Entertainment Weekly)