How've you been enjoying the return of the soaps so far, Soapheads? I have a confession to make: I have yet to watch them. Don't throw tomatoes at me, I can explain! I just haven't been able to watch them on my computer; I'm having a really irritating issue with my laptop where the audio goes out after about 30 seconds and I have to either continuously keep it hooked up with an audio cord or keep muting and unmuting the laptop speakers for the sound to come back. I've tried everything I know how to do and I'm still having the problem, so I usually don't bother watching videos on my laptop anymore. My PS3 only has Hulu Plus and since the soaps are free, I don't see any reason to pay for an app just to watch a free show. The only other option would be to either use my computer tower and plug that into my TV, or plug the laptop into it instead and use the audio cord. Both of these are rather inconvenient to do just to watch the soaps when I've got other things to do on the Internet and so that's left me in a little pickle. But I'll get around to it.
That's not the reason I'm posting today, though. I have to be the bearer of bad news...again...although thankfully it is not as bad as the last time I had to post something negative on here. I'm sure many of you have enjoyed watching your soap the four days a week that it comes on, but Prospect Park has just released a statement announcing that the soaps will each be cut down to just twice a week. The problem came with the fact that people have returned in droves to watch the soaps, but many are only returning to watch one, not both. PP logged that the typical time for fans to watch the soap is usually sometime in the evening, and fans had to dedicate a lot of time to watch these online, so Prospect Park thought it was better to just switch the airing schedule.
The scheduling is now staggered, with AMC on Mondays and Wednesdays and OLTL on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the normal airing of the behind-the-scenes series More on Fridays. This goes into effect on Monday, which is May 20th. Even though PP says this move was prompted by viewer feedback, I do feel like it's an early "one step forward, two steps back" and this concerns me a little bit. If the episodes are already being cut back but the soaps haven't even been back on the air for a month yet, could this mean that despite the various reports, viewership is not as high as PP anticipated?
I'm hearing whisperings now that again, despite the various reports and damage control done by PP to assure us we would not have to pay for the soaps, that eventually both soaps will transition to Hulu Plus (the paid version of Hulu) and we'll have to pay to continue to watch them. What most set me off was that in PP's statement, they kinda sorta alluded to that fact by saying, "....because Hulu agrees with our findings, for the meantime they will keep all of our episodes on Hulu for free to give viewers the opportunity to find us and catch up." For the meantime. If these episodes were going to be free permanently, don't you think past episodes should remain free as well? I think where there's smoke, there may be fire on this one. I don't have Hulu Plus, barely use Hulu and am already paying for a tv subscription service with Netflix. I won't upgrade and have another paid service just to watch the soaps. I understand money has to be made and details like this can't be immediately released or put into effect because people will not be happy and you have to get the viewers back first, but PP specifically said we would not have to pay for our shows. Now they're releasing statements that allude to the very thing they said they would not do. So talk to me Soapheads, if PP ends up transitioning the soaps after a certain period of time to Hulu Plus and making you pay to view, will you upgrade to watch, or will you leave it alone?
No comments:
Post a Comment