Soap opera characters come back from the dead all of the time, so could the genre be taking a page out of its own book with regards to cancelled soaps All My Children and One Life to Live? A recent comment made by an executive from ABC has sparked hope that the fan favorite shows might get another life Soap opera characters come back from the dead all the time, so could the genre be taking a page out of its own book with regard to canceled soaps All My Children and One Life to Live? A recent comment made by an executive from ABC has sparked hope that the fan-favorite shows might get another life on the Disney-owned network.
At the most recent Television Critics Association tour, ABC Entertainment President Karey Burke praised the strength of ABC's only remaining soap opera, General Hospital, and guessed that the daytime drama will continue to air long after she leaves her position at the network.
The positive news about ABC's commitment to GH was exciting in and of itself. But Burke's comments about the show's canceled sister soaps, first reported by Soap Opera Digest, is what is really creating cartwheels. When she was asked about whether or not ABC is considering rebooting AMC and OLTL, she said, "There might be some conversation about that. There might be."
All My Children debuted on January 5, 1970, and ran until September 23, 2011. One Life to Live began on July 15, 1968, and aired until January 13, 2012. Both shows were given a second life by Prospect Park, a production company that streamed the shows online for a short time in 2013 before canceling them again due to various behind-the-scenes problems.
Soap Central broke the news that ABC won back the rights to both AMC and OLTL in 2016, which sparked rumors that the network would either right its wrong and bring the shows back to the air or at least bring some of the canceled series' popular stars to General Hospital. As fans may recall, GH has already done the latter: before OLTL moved to Prospect Park, stars like Michael Easton (ex-Michael McBain) and Kristen Alderson (Starr Manning) came to Port Charles. And once ABC regained the rights to the shows, OLTL's Nora Buchanan (Hillary B. Smith) popped onto the canvas as Valentin Cassadine's (James Patrick Stuart) lawyer in early 2017.
However, it's not only Burke's comment and the fact that ABC has regained the rights to AMC and OLTL that has fans hopeful that there's a possible renewal for the soaps ahead. ABC's talk show Strahan and Sara -- formerly called GMA Day -- recently hosted an All My Children reunion special that received lots of attention from fans and major media outlets like People magazine. One could argue that ABC was testing the waters in terms of fan interest in the canceled Agnes Nixon soap opera. And if so, the answer was a resounding yes!
Disney is also currently developing Disney Plus, its own streaming service to compete with Netflix and Hulu, and the company will more than likely want to create exclusive content for that platform in an effort to gain more subscribers. Could the future of AMC and OLTL once again be online?
Would you like to see ABC bring All My Children and One Life to Live back to the air? Or do you feel like too much time has passed since they were canceled? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
