What would the old-time soap manufacturers who created the soap opera think of this newfangled thing called “the internet”? ABC is going to try to answer that question by airing a 10-episode web series that asks the question “what if characters from the three ABC Daytime series; General Hospital, All My Children, and One Life to Live; crossed over into each others series and interacted with one another?”
Beginning this July, this is exactly what is going to happen. Directed by One Life to Live executive producer Frank Valentini and airing on Soapnet.com and ABC.com, shorter versions of the episodes will also air on ABC and SOAPnet. This will be an interesting experiment on whether this will promote click-through to the longer episodes online.
The soap opera fan community has traditionally been extremely open to web series. The 1st Annual Indie Soap Awards honored several web dramas including Compulsions, Anyone But Me, and Buppies. Web series that feature soap stars end up with voraciously loyal fans, such as Poor Paul has experienced with having Kevin G. Schmidt (Noah Newman on The Young & The Restless) a part of the series, not only as an actor, but as a writer, producer, and director.
Clearly it’s no surprise that ABC would be willing to take on this ambitious crossover experiment. According to Soapnet.com, the following are the pairings soap fans will get a chance to experience:
All My Children‘s Greenlee Smythe (Rebecca Budig) and General Hospital‘s Jason Morgan (Steve Burton)
General Hospital‘s Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) and One Life to Live‘s Viki Banks (Erika Slezak).
All My Children‘s Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) and General Hospital‘s Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard).
All My Children‘s Ryan Lavery (Cameron Mathison) and General Hospital‘s Carly Jacks (Laura Wright).
One Life to Live‘s Tess (Bree Williamson) and General Hospital‘s Dante Falconeri (Dominic Zamprogna)
One Life to Live‘s Todd Manning (Trevor St. John) and General Hospital‘s Damian Spinelli (Bradford Anderson)
General Hospital‘s Maxie Jones (Kirsten Storms) and One Life to Live‘s Rex Balsom (John- Paul Lavoisier)
All My Children‘s Angie and Jesse Hubbard (Debbi Morgan and Darnell Williams) and One Life to Live‘s Starr Manning (Kristen Alderson)
One Life to Live‘s Blair Cramer (Kassie DePaiva) and All My Children‘s Tad Martin (Michael E. Knight)
One Life to Live‘s John McBain (Michael Easton) and General Hospital‘s Sam McCall (Kelly Monaco)
Personally, I want to see Erica Kane and Sonny Corinthos meet in a Laundromat, where they will discuss their sordid pasts over frozen yogurt and then inexplicitly break out into song, but that’s just me. Share your dream soap opera star mashup situations in the comments below.
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I used to work on soaps and this is definitely an interesting experiment, though cross-overs in daytime are fairly regular occurances because many of the remaining soaps share creators, executive producers and owners. ‘Bold & the Beautiful’ is a spin-off of ‘Young & the Restless’ and ‘All My Children’ and ‘OLTL’ were both created by Agnes Nixon and they’ve shared characters and storylines for years. When NBC canceled ‘Another World’ they brought some characters across networks to ‘As the World Turns’ because they were both owned by P&G.
Frank’s a smart guy and this is a good idea but I’d love to see the producers of canceled shows like ‘Guiding Light’ or soon-to-be shows like ATWT use the web to extend the characters and stories past their broadcast expiration date. Look at a show like ‘Venice,’ which starred Streamy nominee Crystal Chapelle playing essentially the character ‘Olivia’ she played on Guiding Light when that show was axed but with a different name because CBS and P&G wouldn’t allow it to be an extension of the actual show. Many of GL’s vocal and web-savvy fans followed but think about how many more would have if Venice had the familiarity of their canceled show. Factor in daytime soaps continued decline in ratings and ad money with their still respectably huge existing fan bases and it makes one wonder why networks like CBS and NBC can’t throw the fans, cast and crew some love by creating short-form web series to extend or supplement their daytime programming.
ATWT will end soon but why not keep the characters alive in web series form? It’s not like the fans who are already online won’t hop over to CBS’ own TV.com on their lunch breaks to keep up with what’s going down in Oakdale. They won’t even have to leave their desks or laptops.
I recently saw a screening of Jack Ferry and Melissa Schneider’s ($99 Music Videos) excellent, sudsy new comedy web series ‘Written Off’ which stars real soap opera stars with their own huge fan bases. Now THAT’s a smart show and a smart move.
Ha! This should be interesting. Last ditch effort to save their dying soaps?
This is going to be awesome. I can’t wait!!! :D
Would like to know what time will this air..is it just July 12th or other days..I am not clear on how they will show these episodes..Please clarify ..love all the actors and I am a big fan of soap operas for almost 20 yrs…have a nice day :)
what if michael and cole meet