A Chihuahua’s Perspective on How to Save OLTL and AMC

One Life to Live ends forever on January 20th, 2012

You may wonder what a Chihuahua has to do with TV soap operas. I blame my daddy. He named my website All My Chihuahuas instead of The World of Lucy or some such thing.

My daddy is a soap opera junkie and has been since he was a kid. Trained by his mother, who passed on long before I was born, daddy grew up watching As The World Turns, Guiding Light and Search for Tomorrow. One Life to Live and The Young and the Restless was added to the mix when daddy was still in high school, before the era of VCRs (he’s very old).

That’s a lot of TV watching.

If you ask me, daddy watches too much TV. That’s time that could be spent either playing with me or feeding me. He should be grateful for the extra time being added to his life. After all, he only has one life to live and it should be spent devoted to his Chihuahua.

Options to Save the Soaps

Because my daddy still loves his daytime “stories” I’ve come up with a few ideas on how to either save One Life to Live and All My Children or at least keep the stories going.

  • Internet Only. Find a way to keep the show going online. Probably not a practical idea since the cost of producing a soap is estimated at $50 million a year.
  • Netflix to the rescue. Netflix is currently looking to add more streaming content, perhaps even becoming network-like. They’ve just added films from Miramax and one new series. Why not add a few soap operas which already have an audience of almost 2 million daily viewers or more, depending on how you count. Adding up to 2 million or more monthly subscribers would equal a lot of money. Just saying.
  • Radio Soaps. Let’s go back to the beginning, before TV. Soaps began on the radio, why not bring them back. Money would be saved by eliminating the cost of sets, cameras, makeup, costumes, etc. Actors would have less work to do, meaning less pay. But at least the story would go on.
  • Soap Grafix. If it’s true that people no longer want to watch soaps on TV, then how about a series of graphic, illustrated stories. They could be printed or created as an app for the iPhone, iPad or online.
  • Novels and/or Serialized eBooks. The stories could still go on, if only in the reader’s head. The main cost would be for the writer(s) and perhaps the rights to the characters and story history.

These are just some ideas to help my daddy and others who will certainly miss their “stories”. Have you got others?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.