Proctor & Gamble Has Destroyed Their Library of Soaps

Do soaps have any residual value in streaming? Their library of episodes is MASSIVE for each show. They air new episodes five days a week, mostly year-round, for sixty years or more. That's more hours of programming than a person can bear to stream in a reasonable lifetime.

Plus, today's audiences don't go for the same kind of writing and storytelling. Endless scandals about hunks and tarts with stupid names, plots to take over hospital boards, and Victor Newman's latest Viagra mishap? No thanks.

I was confused, I thought you meant their soap products, at first.

[quote] Colleen Zenk says she has it on good authority that P&G wiped EVERYTHING

Such a dramatic announcement deserves accompaniment

The old addicted soap troll is on another rant.

PROCTER, not Proctor, OP.

[quote] Their library of episodes is MASSIVE for each show. They air new episodes five days a week, mostly year-round, for sixty years or more.

They only started archiving episodes starting in 1979

By the time the last P&G soap went off the air, it would be only 30 years worth of shows.

Prior to 1979, they wiped episodes to reuse the videotape.

There are numerous recordings of vintage soaps on YouTube.

[quote] There are numerous recordings of vintage soaps on YouTube.

That is only because some people would hold on to a Kinescope copy of an odd episode for various reasons, those copies turn up on YouTube.

Well thank God we still have Dark Shadows.

R8, They're obviously VHS recordings from the late 1970s onward.

Some recorded the soaps while they were at work and saved them.

R10 read R6

This is about P&G Soaps - not ABC Soaps

Absolutely nobody cares except for the old soap troll

I doubt they would literally destroy tapes after 2012. Even if they had no interest doing anything with the old material or the rights, they probably would have sold everything. There would have been somebody (if only an eccentric queen from WeHo) to buy even just for a symbolic dollar. So, I'm thinking either the rumor is wrong, or the material has been long gone before content recycling became a thing.

I thouht I heard from a higher up at P &G that everything was destroyed SAVE all footage of Kim Zimmer, because they knew that would be historically significant.

R11, No one is talking about ABC soaps, you moron. Endless episodes of ATWT, a P&G soap, are on YouTube.

R15 the ones that people have in their personal recordings - but P&G continued the practiced of wiping episodes to reuse the Videotape until 1978

I’m just relieved ABC episodes still exist somewhere in an archive. I know they’ll likely never see the light of day, but god forbid they just be destroyed.

By number of episodes. In terms of total duration, As the World Turns has run longer than Guiding Light, at 13,763 hours, versus 3,940 hours and 30 minutes of Guiding Light.

13,763 hours is a little over 573 days

It seems like it would make sense for someone to make a streaming service specifically for soaps. ABC could have its own streaming channel, and P&G could have its own streaming channel. I wonder if P&G would be reluctant to stream its soaps because there might be an issue with paying the actors and writers royalties.

[quote]I wonder if P&G would be reluctant to stream its soaps because there might be an issue with paying the actors and writers royalties.

A good question and might go down to how the original contracts were worded.

Meanwhile, as for old soaps in general, MeTV reruns color episodes of The Doctors from the mid-sixties to good ratings.

P&g toilet paper is great to wipe with

[quote] Roger Newcomb, who had been hired to digitize and get all of those DVDs out in 2012.

[quote] I thouht I heard from a higher up at P &G that everything was destroyed SAVE all footage of Kim Zimmer

Oh, dear.

Very short sighted of them, if it's true. I can understand them not wanting to do anything with it, for various reasons from time consuming and pricy digitizing and remastering to the complicated residual situation if it was streaming somewhere. But there probably would've been takers willing to buy. Even if it was rich fan or group of fans crowd funding to buy it make it available to other fans somehow.

P&G is such a cult. Plus their policy is to pay their vendors (Hi!) twice a year. Worst client I have ever had. I’m not surprised they’re such revisionists when it comes to their own history.

As the World Turns live broadcast Nov 22, 1963

I want to message Michael Ausiello and or Matt Mitlovich at TVLine, since they both wrote for soap magazines and have some modicum of respect for them.....Digest would eat shit if it got them a story from one of the surviving shows, so no use asking them.

Has anyone heard from Brendad Ickson on the issue? Although she probably only has footage of herself saved.

I hope this isn't true. If they don't want them anymore, can't they at least donate them to the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian or one of the television Academies?

Imagine a world where BJ’s heart transplant on GH or Jenny and Greg’s love story on AMC was wiped out forever. I shudder at the mere thought.

R28 makes a good point. Why not give it to the UCLA Film and Television Archive?

Or the Paley Museum. I bet they already have a substantial amount of existing material.

^ The Paley Center for Media.

Maybe it is a case of "I don't want it but I certainly don't want anyone else to own it"

I've known lots of old film collectors, and Broadway boots collectors, who just don't want anyone else to have what they have. Cold and selfish hearts. It's common.

[quote] I've known lots of old film collectors, and Broadway boots collectors, who just don't want anyone else to have what they have. Cold and selfish hearts. It's common.

Can you imagine if someone did buy the entire library - and then made a success out of it? Now it is doubtful anyone can

But if that were to happen, P&G would have major egg on its face. So better to just get rid of it, than risk bad PR for selling

That is why I think the DVD series got canned. There was tons of excitement, and the PR was great, and I'm sure some money was coming in

But it just reminded people that P&G is out of the soap business, so I think that is why they axed it,

Yeah, it's a bummer, I miss Cashmere Bouquet beauty soap since it was discontinued several years back, now I use a local store brand cocoa butter bar soap, it's alright, but nothing like CB, it was the best, I'd been using it since I was 10yo, my Grandmother used it all her life till she died at 89 in 1989. It was featured advertising in the Olson's mercantile on Little House on the Prairie, brings so many good fond memories... :-)

Maybe they just didn't store the material properly, and it got moldy. And then they could only toss everything. Who knows.

I wish a website archived the old soaps and talk shows like those of Dinah Shore and Mike Douglas. I would be willing to pay monthly to see them. It would be an archive of American pop culture in that era.

SoapNet as a streaming service would be a massive hit if it was still around today. It was far ahead of its time.

They were never getting released anyway. If it was possible to make money off them, somebody would have already done it.

I’m in my mid-30s and I’m the absolute youngest of the P&G soap queens. There are few in my generation and none younger than me. These shows die with my generation 🙁

R38, that's sad.

Ed Trach was head of production for P&G for much of the 70s and 80s. He was a big cheerleader for soaps. He understood the value of soaps and how they fit into the larger American culture.

But once Trach retired in 1993, there wasn't anyone else there to go to bat for the soaps. Without him there, P&G began loosing interest in its soaps.

Can someone please post the link to the Zoom ATWT reunion so we can hear Colleen say this.

On Soap Opera Network Board

John James recently said he wanted to buy (P&G Library) it but they wouldn't sell.

The guy who runs the Pop network has mentioned trying to buy it too and we know RetroTV tried to license the shows as well, but that didn't happen.

For the sake of argument that the master videos still exist: what is P&G's problem? Are they ashamed of the shows? They shouldn't be. They brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of people, and sometimes even brought issues that prime-time shows were afraid to touch. They should be proud of these programs.

I'm okay with this, as long as they still have the footage of Reba walking alone on the deserted island in cut-offs

[quote] For the sake of argument that the master videos still exist: what is P&G's problem?

Maybe because P&G is an evil servant of Satan and a new examination of those old videos would reveal evidence they were subliminally corrupting the housewives of America.

Let's all take a moment to remember Ms. Debbie Reynolds, who spent her entire fortune saving Hollywood's costume history from the dumpster, only to have that same town turn its back on ever putting up the money to restore and display it.

Of course, the glitzy new Academy Museum has a little corner in the basement that displays a few items, but Reynolds' son says they only grudgingly did that, and most of the collection is still in storage or being sold at auction because it needs professional restoration that amateurs can't afford.

[quote] I’m in my mid-30s

Sure, Jan.

R49 if I were lying, as a gay man, I wouldn’t say mid-30s, I’d say 29.

One one of the other threads we were discussing this and a poster shared pic of a catalog offered by Broadway Video, Lorne Michaels' company.(SNL) Apparently they have the archive now or they are at least managing it, if the image the poster posted was really.

I think, regardless, what probably happened is that P&G destroyed the old mastertapes, as soon as everything was digitized. And, P&G's digitizing of their archive had to have started well before ATWT and GL ended because remember they had a digital video channel on AOL in the mid Aughts with episodes of SFT, EON, Texas, AW. So I'm sure they have a digital archive somewhere. But, people saw them destroy the actual tapes and cleanout the warehouse where they were and so it seemed they destroyed it all. Unlike physical archives a digital one isn't really going to cost them much/anything to maintain. Instead of deleting the digital archive they would offer it to a university, just for the tax write-off. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign or University of Wisconsin–Madison, as the schools Irna Phillips attended would be the most likely.

No offense to Colleen Zenk, but how do we know she has accurate information?

Soaps have massive money making potential overseas where serialized television is gold. Bold and Beautiful is huge in Italy, Greece etc.

R53 but do they really have massive money making power? Being big in Europe didn’t save Santa Barbara.

ATWT was huge in the Netherlands, didn’t save it.

The fact is these shows appeal to a very small niche and there just isn’t a whole lot of money to be made, certainly not enough to offset the backlash that old, non-woke depictions could engender. To P&G it’s not worth the risk.

Why is Proctor and Gamble in the television business at all? Don't they have their hands full being a consumer conglomerate, and inventing the next generation of laundry detergent and butt paste?

R55 That is why they were in television business, to use their own shows to sell those products.

[quote] The fact is these shows appeal to a very small niche and there just isn’t a whole lot of money to be made, certainly not enough to offset the backlash that old, non-woke depictions could engender. To P&G it’s not worth the risk.

The internet and streaming is built around appealing to niche audiences, especially using archival material whose production costs were met decades ago. As for being non woke, all they or a distributor would have to do is add some sort of disclaimer. People don't burn down TCM every time they show something non-woke. Also, if the Broadway Video catalog is correct, they are removing any P&G branding since they listed it as Broadway Video's ATWT.

P&G always saw the soaps as filler between their ads.

Maybe Meghan Markle can write them a letter.

P&G was never the same after they let me go.

P&G initially claimed it was trying to reshop the shows, but they expected Lifetime or any of those other channels to pay was CBS had, which was a ludicrous idea.

The rights would have been overwhelming for a big release on DVD but Retro did it for the Doctors and must have paid a lower rate or done something differently because they clearly have an audience of hundreds or thousands for an episode, not millions.

I get why PGP might have decided trying to repackage them wasn't worth the fuss. But to destroy them all together is just a hatefulness beyond words.

^ At the very least you would think they just dump it somewhere as a donation and claim a tax credit, right?

[quote] I wish a website archived the old soaps and talk shows like those of Dinah Shore and Mike Douglas. I would be willing to pay monthly to see them. It would be an archive of American pop culture in that era.

These I can tell you were wiped, many of them. Several years ago, I was in post on documentary and I was trying to find an episode of The Mike Douglas Show for archival material and a conversation with someone who worked in the archives of whatever company held them (it's been a while). She told me that for many years, none of that stuff was saved. It was all recycled to re-use the tape stock. We marveled that things like soap operas and talk shows were not saved but game shows were. (And apparently, Merv Griffin was ahead of the curve, as he was smart and preserved all his archives.)

Colleen Zenk is a space cadet who’s spent her life screaming at shadows on- and off-set. Somehow she never became a drunk but somehow she’s always acted like one. Her words are meaningless and her word is dust.

R62 I was going to say I’m sure Merv archived his. I’m surprised Dinah didn’t.

[quote] I’m sure Merv archived his.. I’m surprised Dinah didn’t.

Merv owned his show, Dinah did not

R65 she was evidently able to get her hands on the old Chevy show, or her daughter did, because she’s made releases from them. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Shore did have a personal archive of the talk shows especially the special episodes like when Lucy appeared. I’m sure her later work for TNN is saved somewhere.

[quote] I’m sure her later work for TNN is saved somewhere.

My understanding about past shows that aired on TNN, is the new company that owns that channel has refused to release any of the tapes. They are sitting in some warehouse, and the company says it will stay there,

R67 at least they say they are there. I wonder who actually owns them now? TNN the channel is what is now Paramount Channel. Though there was also a short lived diginet OTA revival that didn’t last long. Of course the former owners of TNN now have CIRCLE the Opry network.

It is funny how we expect everything to be preserved forever but honestly how many episodes of a daytime TV game show need to be saved? Or a third rate talk show on a defunct country music channel.?

Colleen has 2 dui’s under her belt. She was prolly drunk when she said this.

lplpl

Retro TV (the company showing "The Doctors") reruns had asked P&G if they could rerun As The World Turns, Guiding Light, Edge of Night and Another World

P&G said they are no longer licensing any of their soaps.

Claire Labine & Paul Avail Mayer (creators of Ryan's Hope)

Visit the warehouse that holds the entire library of all 3513 episodes of "Ryan's Hope"

R72 Having watched Retro-TV, I wonder if that was a firm no or a not for what you can offer, no. I mean let's say DAYS' move to Peacock becomes a surprise success, so Peacock comes calling for the archive. That might be more attractive to P&G than Retro, especially if it included free ad time for P&G because I don't think they even advertise on Retro.

It would appear that Lorne Michaels' company Broadway Video digitized the archive and handled them for awhile. Including the DVDs that were released around 2010. That tells me the actual files exist somewhere. I'm sure P&G or BV has them saved somewhere, even though the tapes are long gone. P&G's relationship to their former soaps is strange. It would be like Disney distancing themselves from Mickey Mouse.

R74 Mickey Mouse still makes money. Soap Operas don't

R75 Not if they don't release them. The expense was in producing and then digitizing them, to sit on them now, when people are asking to pay to use them, is just bad business sense that as a shareholder would upset me. It wasn't like people were going around using the n-word on these shows.

P&G is right. There’s about 3 people total who want their shows released. That’s it.

It’s hard enough to sit through old episodes of Peyton Place today, and I liked that show. Most soaps are ephemeral. You watch 10 minutes of an old episode and you’ve seen enough to represent the show’s entire year.

I do think it’s disrespectful not to allocate a line item on your budget to digitization and storage, but guess what? Corporations do horrible shit all the time. This is nothing.

R78 I "could" understand that mindset, if there wasn't other companies such as Retro who have expressed interest. Personally I love watching old soap episodes, but I know I'm not the average person. I'm sure they have the files, because it appears they were already digitized by Broadway Video. But, for whatever reason they are just sitting on them.

The best way to introduce some of these shows to younger and/or just newer audiences would be to have someone come along and isolate individual storylines and make a movie or mini-series length show of just that story. They've done it with a few Dark Shadows storylines. And, after watching it people will be more inclined to check out the actual show. For maximum publicity it would help to center them around actors who went on to greater fame, the ATWT one could be built around Julianne Moore and the AW around Anne Heche.

r79, I've thought for years that certain of my favorite Guiding Light storylines would make for great movies, such as the Sonni/Solita tale from the late 80s or Annie Dutton in the mid-90s.

R80 Yes, and would allow people to sample the show. Many people are intimidated by soaps because they think they won't be able to figure out who anyone is or their history.

In terms of editing soap episodes to make a "tele-novella" (like the Sonni-Solita storyline) - wouldn't that require paying the performers a fee? Because you are essentially airing a new episode when you do a re-edit. It is like when you insert a flashback, with a featuring a performer no longer on the show. You have to pay that performer a fee, because you are using their likeness in a new episode.

I could be wrong, but what does the union (Actors Equity or SAG) say about it?

P&G is not interested in profit-sharing - they want to do it all themselves and keep all the profits. That is why they resisted companies outside of P&G wanting to license their soaps.

So why haven't they done it? They don't want to spend the money upfront to make this happen. which is a catch-22 situation.

There is a historical, "Americana" aspect to AS THE WORLD TURNS that no other soap has/had. It is a cultural touchstone that should be lovingly preserved, not tossed onto a garbage heap like yesterday's news.

ATWT is the one soap that I would say the majority of people who don't watch soaps have seen at least a brief clip of, since they were the show CBS broke into to announce JFK's assassination. And, that clip gets trotted out in every JFK documentary, 60s documentary, Cronkite documentary, or anytime CBS NEWS wants to remind you of their glorious past.

Oh FFS dumbasses. P&G got out of the soap biz and they are never ever ever ever ever ever ever selling their catalogue to anyone. Ever. Don’t be so fucking dumb!

R86 Explain why? Why would a business being offered money for a product they have already spent the money making, not take it? It makes no business sense.

Because we are all snowflakes now. They’d have to go through and edit out all of the racist and homophobic remarks that were made casually back in the day or face the consequences of a 2022 audience in their fragility.

P&G doesn’t need the bad pr.

I love old soap operas. Sometimes I can spend hours on Youtube going down an old soap rabbit hole, but I'm also realistic in the fact that I am a very niche market. It sucks that so much content has been wiped, but I'm not sure if some executive could make a strong pitch to a profit-driven/bottom-line driven board of directors to invest the time, money and labor that it would take to digitize, pay actors and music rights to air some of these shows again - at least in the 80s when popular music was used quite a bit. And you can't really remove the music track from these shows. It was all done together.

I know they did it with The Doctors and thank goodness they did, I love that show. However, except for a few instances there was very little popular music. And for some strange reason, and I'm not sure we're getting the true story, they stopped at 1979.

I can't imagine the P&G soaps were racist or homophobic enough to worry about, TCM, Retro, Antenna TV, MeTV, etc... all air shows from the 1950s-90s, and they haven't been shut down, including the Norman Lear shows who used words you don't see used now. If they want they could include a warning before the the episodes like TCM does. Also, and I can't figure out why some feminist scholar hasn't made this case, but Irna Phillips, whose shows P&G controls, was one of the greatest feminist stories in entertainment pre-women's lib. Keeping her shows locked up is denying us access to the creations of a remarkable woman who paved the way for every female show writer and creator in the business.

And, if P&G doesn't release them I'm going on one of the Q-Anon boards and remind them all that, "we all know" P&G is just a corporation created to send money to Satan. So do they want Marjorie Taylor Green popping up at their headquarters?

R89 As I understand it, there was a change in the overall union contract around that time about paying actors residuals. So anything produced prior to that contract is easier for them to release.

Bumping because the last Midwestern soaps thread is now only open to subscribers. I'm an impoverished elder dyke whose every penny is reserved for my various canes, vagina capes, and nut loaf.

They were going to put it on DVD? Sure, Jan. That was never going to happen. It’s impossible.

There’s a loophole in streaming. Contracts were drawn up before streaming was a thing. As long as they’re not selling the show al la carte, they can release it to streaming without any clearance issues. It’s the same as syndication.

R92 There were official licensed DVD collections in the US shortly after the cancellations of GL and ATWT, I bought a few. There have also been official releases of GL in Germany, and I would imagine ATWT was released in the Netherlands, at some point.

R91 If you link to the previous thread I'll create a new one for you. Since neither of our kind is always welcome around here we must do favors for one another, sometimes.

R93 Then they should program one of those "live" channels on roku, or pluto, or tubi, or peacock, etc... with a P&G classic soap channel. Call it Vintage Suds.

Thanks, R94. This thread is fine for my ... unnatural desires.

R96 Alright.

Has the drunk CZP taken back her comments?

Bullshit! Today the Sunday paper had a blurb on This Day in History that ‘Guiding Light’ ended its run on this day in 2009. Do you believe that shit????? Guiding Light. WRONG! It was THE Guiding Light. Get it right, historians!!!! This ruined my whole day and year!!!!!

The Gamble family has a long history of incredible philanthropy. The son or grandson of the founder became a doctor and helped campaign for modern birth control availability for women, and for men. Their inheritances were conditioned on a percentage - like a third or something - going to charity. The Doctor heir founded the Pathfinder Foundation in Boston which promoted access to birth control and trained doctors to help repair botched abortions especially overseas in poor countries. They got into trouble with the Reagan administration, but they were able to fund their work without government contracts or grants.

Roger Newcomb has released a statement on Soap Opera Network (unfortunately it is behind a paywall, so you can't see it)

But he denies her ever told CZP that P&G "destroyed" their tapes and says he has no idea where CZP got that idea. As it was not from him

Who the fuck cares what that queen Roger Newcomb says!!! He’s an idiot. Ask Colleen about him.