Fans are going to be getting a little less of “One Life To Live” and “All My Children.”
On Thursday, The Online Network’s Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz announced that they would slow the output of four episodes a week, per soap, on Hulu, HuluPlus and iTunes to twice a week for each show.
New “AMC” episodes will be available on Mondays and Wednesdays, while new “OLTL” episodes will drop on Tuesdays and Thursdays, beginning this coming Monday, May 20.
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The changes come from the data TOLN has collected since “OLTL” and “AMC” returned via the Internet in late April. According to TOLN, people have been binge watching. Frank and Kwatinetz also noted that the way people watch the soaps, now that they are online, has changed.
“During their ABC runs, viewers watched only 2-3 episodes on average a week and picked up with whichever day’s episode it was. Our viewers seem to primarily start with the first episode and then continue forward episode by episode,” their TOLN statement noted.
With the way people are watching the shows online, TOLN believes they “have been expecting our audience to dedicate what has turned out to be an excessive amount of time to viewing these shows.”
Additionally, while audiences often watched both shows when they were on ABC, TOLN said that hasn’t proven to be the case now that they are online.
“The majority of our viewers are watching one show or the other, not both, and they aren’t viewing the shows when they did before,” TOLN noted.
By cutting down the amount of episodes available each week, TOLN hopes to give soap lovers a chance to catch up.
“This allows us to introduce a new episode of quality television every Monday through Friday and gives the audience a chance to catch up as we continue to build awareness and excitement around these new shows,” their statement noted.
But, there is some good news for fans — because of the changes, Hulu is keeping all episodes of both shows on Hulu.com for free, so people can catch up.
TOLN insisted that the scheduling changes won’t have an impact on production.
“We will be filming new episodes through mid-June, continue editing throughout July and until we go back into production in August. It’s a frenetic schedule but all of us are up for the challenge and excited to continue to deliver great shows,” the TOLN statement read.
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