It’s been just two and a half weeks weeks since popular soap operas One Life to Live and All My Children were reborn as online-only shows — but production company Prospect Park has already decided to cut back on the number of new episodes released online each week. The change in schedule, the company claims, is due to the fact that viewers are “binge-watching” instead of watching one episode a day, and this makes it too hard for them to keep up.

Starting on April 29, Prospect Park — which licensed the soaps from ABC — ran new, 30-minute episodes of each show every Monday through Thursday, followed by a recap on Friday. The shows are available on Hulu and Hulu Plus, or can be downloaded from iTunes. They’ve received “millions” of views, Prospect Park cofounders Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz wrote in a letter to fans (PDF) this week, and have “consistently been in the top ten shows viewed on Hulu.”

But most viewers aren’t watching these shows the way they traditionally watched soap operas on TV. Instead, as with other TV shows online, “our shows are primarily consumed on different days than when they originally air,” Frank and Kwatinetz wrote:

“Primarily, fans have been binge viewing or watching on demand, and as a result, we feel we have been expecting our audience to dedicate what has turned out to be an excessive amount of time to viewing these shows. (As an example, for the substantial audience only watching on the weekends, we are currently asking them to watch five hours of programming to keep pace with our release schedule).”

In addition, viewers aren’t adhering to traditional soap-watching habits. When the shows were on ABC, “viewers watched only 2-3 episodes on average a week and picked up with whichever day’s episode it was.” By contrast, online viewers “seem to primarily start with the first episode and then continue forward episode by episode…yet starting from the beginning with the amount of episodes we are releasing is asking too much for viewers who need to catch up.”

Prospect Park is also concerned by the fact that, when the shows aired on ABC, viewers often watched both — but online things are different:

“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. Part of the reason for choosing between the shows may be that the largest viewing takes place either between 12 PM and 1 PM (when people generally can only fit one episode during lunch time) or between 5 PM and 7 PM (when the vast majority of competing shows are a half hour long). We are finding that asking most people to regularly watch more than a half hour per day online seems to be too much.”

Overall, Frank and Kwatinetz conclude that “When it comes to online viewing, most of us are just trying to find time to watch series comprised of 13 to 22 episodes a season — so asking viewers to assign time for over 100 episodes per show is a daunting task.”

So starting Monday, May 20, the schedules will change. Each soap will now air just two new episodes a week: New episodes of All My Children will air online on Mondays and Wednesdays, and new episodes of One Life to Live will air on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with a recap episode on Friday. “Because Hulu agrees with our findings,” the founders wrote, “for the meantime they will keep all of our episodes on Hulu.com for free to give viewers the opportunity to find us and catch up.”

Frank and Kwatinetz acknowledge that “our most dedicated viewers will be upset,” but “we need to devise a model that works for all viewers and follows how they want, and are actually watching, online” in order to ensure that the shows “not meet the fate they experienced previously.” The

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Fox’s cable TV business made up the vast majority of News Corp’s profits for the quarter ending March 31, contributing $993 million of the $1.36 billion in operating income for the period. Total revenues were $9.54 billion, up 14 percent over the previous year.

The overall home video market is up five percent and “we’re up a bit more than that,” Carey said. “The driving force is digital…the overall marketplace continues to grow really well, and digital is becoming a growing part of what we do.” He also said that the DVD business has stabilized, “with Blu-Ray offsetting the decline in the older formats,” and that “really low-priced rentals” through services like Redbox  are “becoming less of a force.”

In response to an analyst’s question about the future of Hulu, Carey said that the service has “great momentum,” and “we’re particularly excited about subscriptions” through Hulu Plus. “There’s an important role for Hulu Classic in the marketplace,” he said, but “we need to develop the dual-revenue side of it.” In a few years, he said, “Hulu will look a bit different than it does today,” partly in response to changes in Netflix’s business: “Netflix talks about evolving their business to somewhat different business models” (he didn’t elaborate on what those are).

When asked to offer general advice to the broadcast networks, Carey said they are still the “viewership leaders,” but acknowledged the networks might need to “be a bit more targeted in the types of series [they] invest in…networks have been more about the volume game, stuck in historical practices…Do you need to break some of those rules? The answer is clearly yes.”

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Yahoo 

Celebrity Presence: John Stamos, Ed Helms, Morgan Spurlock, Cheryl Hines, Rachael Harris, The Lumineers (who performed live).

New Shows Presented: A mix of comedy and lifestyle programming, including Helms’s Tiny Commando, a show about the intersection of food and film, and a Spurlock-produced series where celebrities tell Stamos about the first time they had sex.

Biggest News Announced: For wrestling fans, it was probably the announcement that Yahoo and the WWE will be “tag-teaming” video distribution. But Yahoo also announced plans to partner with Condé Nast and CNBC for shows.

Money Quote: From Sam Gutelle at Tubefilter’s coverage, based off a comment by Yahoo COO Henrique de Castro:

De Castro asked advertisers to sink 5% of their TV budget of just one brand into Yahoo. Clearly, he understands that while the online video space is growing in popularity, it is still an area meant to complement TV, not overtake it. Yahoo’s new shows should do just that by providing solid, accessible entertainment.

My Take: None of the announced partnerships are as high-profile as Yahoo getting the exclusive rights to Saturday Night Live clips. That said, of all the new shows announced this week, I might be the most intrigued by Losing Your Virginity with John Stamos: It sounds like a lot of fun.

AOL 

Celebrity Presence: Sarah Jessica Parker, Nicole Richie, Baratunde Thurston, iJustine.

New Shows Presented: A wide range of largely lifestyle-oriented programming, including the Gwyneth Paltrow-starring Second Chances, Hank Azaria’s Fatherhood, Webby co-founder Tiffany Shlain’s The Future Starts Here, and a show about ballet executive-produced by Parker.

Biggest News Announced: To track who’s actually watching all that programming, AOL will be collaborating with Nielsen on a system that will “express audience measurement in the language of TV, enabling comparisons between the audience of AOL’s high-quality original programming and curated premium partner content to TV viewership” (according to the press release).

Money Quote: From Video Ink’s coverage of the Nielsen deal, an interview with Nielsen SVP of Strategic Partnerships John Burbank:

Ultimately, it’s not up to the Comscores and Nielsens of the world. “It’s really the market that has to decide, and we’re doing our best to make the measurement as robust and as fair for everybody so the buyer and the seller have to agree to transact on the data,” Burbank added.

My Take: Some of AOL’s original programming sounds potentially interesting, but relying on celebrities and brands to drive web content is far from a fresh business model, and oftentimes doesn’t have much staying power. However, if the audience for that content finally gets properly measured, it could help advertisers better understand the potential impact of online video.

Hulu

Celebrity Presence: SNL‘s Seth Meyers (who hosted the event), Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria, professional wrestlers Sergeant Slaughter and Rey Mysterio.

New Shows Presented: Two new exclusives include Quick Draw, a comedy western, and high school drama East Los Angeles. Plenty of other series are on their way, and Hulu made note of One Life to Live and All My Children, which have performed well in their new digital iteration.

Biggest News Announced: Hulu had some exciting numbers to report, most importantly that Hulu Plus has topped four million subscribers, and according to comScore, it’s number one in engagement among top ad-supported sites.

Money Quote: From Variety’s coverage, a snippet from Meyers:

“‘You might be wondering why someone who works for a traditional network like NBC is at the Hulu upfront,’ he said. ‘Simply put, I’m hedging my bets. I don’t want to be working for the steam-engine company and wondering if cars are going to work.’”

My Take: It would have been interesting to see bigger-name content presented by Hulu this week, but with subscribers on the rise and the site bringing in more original series, things seem to be going well for the site.

Blip

Celebrity Presence: Rob Huebel (who hosted the event), Grace Helbig, Rooster Teeth’s Burnie Burns.

New Shows Presented: The Huebel-starring comedy Mainly Murder, unscripted competition series Jewelry Star, The Great S. Cape!, created by Dark Knight producer Michael Uslan. (Full details presented on Blip’s site.)

Biggest News Announced: Not only has Blip already announced a partnership with My Damn Channel to distribute original content, but on Wednesday they announced a production deal with hugely popular (and outspoken) YouTuber Ray William Johnson.

Money Quote: From AdWeek’s coverage of the event:

“‘Blip is the future of TV,’ said CEO Kelly Day. ‘We have the largest library of Web originals anywhere. And we are not a platform.’”

My Take: Blip is currently in the midst of a massive sea change — so it was inevitable that this week’s news is a bit underwhelming in comparison to earlier shakeups. However, it’ll be exciting to see how the talent Blip’s brought in meshes together.

Crackle 

Celebrity Presence: Jerry Seinfeld, David Arquette, Missi Pyle.

New Shows Presented: Plenty of them, including Extraction, a feature-length thriller starring Danny Glover and Vinnie Jones, Cleaners, an assassin action series with a cast including Arquette and Gina Gershon, and Strand Street, directed and produced by Milo Ventimiglia.

Biggest News Announced: As previously announced, there will be a second season of Jerry Seinfeld’s extremely successful Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, but more importantly the landmark 2010 web series The Bannen Way will return in 2013 for six new half-hour episodes.

Money Quote: From the Hollywood Reporter’s coverage:

“Crackle is for the new living room,” Eric Berger, executive vice president of digital networks at Sony Pictures Television and GM of Crackle. “It’s programmed, it’s everywhere and its easily accessible. We’re not a content aggregator but a programmer much like a cable network.”

My Take: Anecdotal evidence suggests that Comedians In Cars has been huge for Crackle, introducing a whole new audience to the service, and the emphasis on thriller and drama programming is a positive step forward for those looking to see web original content mature.

But there’s this line from the press release: “The long-awaited sequel to the cult favorite David Spade comedy Joe Dirt will break new ground as the first made for digital movie that is a sequel to a hit motion picture.” We might be looking at two steps forward, one step back.

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The numbers were released on Hulu’s blog Tuesday, with Andy Forssell, in his new role as acting CEO, sharing a few other key stats as well:

• The service now offers around 57,000 hours of content on Hulu and Hulu Plus, including more than 70,000 full TV episodes from nearly 2,500 TV series.
• Hulu has more than 470 content partners.
• Hulu has served more than 1000 brand advertisers since launch.
• Hulu Plus is now available on more than 350 million mobile and connected devices.

Forssell also used his post as well as his appearance at the Newfronts in New York to announce a number of new exclusive productions for the site, as well as the addition of All My Children and One Life To Live.

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Pilot partners include Fox, NBC, ABC, Univision, Discovery and A+E. AOL is the only digital video company participating in the pilot; Hulu and YouTube aren’t participating yet. The tool will open up to others this fall.

The tool can’t be used yet to track viewing on mobile devices, though Nielsen said that capability is coming, and because it does not include many online sites, it can’t give advertisers and networks a full view of how viewers are watching TV online.

Nielsen also announced in February that it plans to add cord cutters to the households whose TV watching habits it tracks.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock / Mehmet Dilsiz

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Production company Prospect Park, which licensed the shows from ABC, will run new, 30-minute episodes of each show Monday through Thursday. (Previously, each episode was an hour long and a new one ran each weekday.) On Fridays, there will be a recap of the week. Episodes are available for free streaming on Hulu and Hulu Plus, or can be downloaded from iTunes for $0.99 apiece or $9.99 per month (20 episodes). The free version of Hulu will only make the most recent episodes available, while Hulu Plus will have all of them.

The New York Times calculated that, because production costs are lower (due in part to having shorter and fewer episodes) and because ads on Hulu can be targeted, Prospect Park needs 500,000 streaming viewers to break even on the soaps. By contrast, the shows attracted three million viewers on TV. In addition, Variety noted that Prospect Park has the rights to sell the the shows to U.S. cable and broadcast networks starting in September (where, in an interesting twist, they’d be available a week after they air online) and is also distributing them to international television networks.

Even so, some longtime fans of the shows who are not accustomed to online viewing may be confused about how to find new episodes online. (That theory is borne out by many of the user comments on this paidContent post from January.) “We would hope that all [fans of the shows] would call their friends to make sure they watch them,” Prospect Park cofounder Rich Frank told Soap Opera Digest recently. “The way to ensure that this is going to work, because we’re really totally advertiser-supported, [is] that we’ve got to get the eyeballs to be watching this. They’ve done it before; it’s just a matter of rallying the troops and getting them to watch.”

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This week, news broke that the remaining eight episodes of the ABC sitcom Don’t Trust the B In Apartment 23, which was taken off the air in January, would be posted to ABC.com, Hulu and iTunes.

The announcement is a boon for fans of the show, but they shouldn’t get their hopes up that successful online distribution will mean another season of the show; much of the cast has already moved on to other projects.

However, another show may truly get a second life: Also this week, rumors spread that Microsoft is looking at rebooting NBC’s Heroes, which was canceled in 2010, for Xbox and MSN distribution.

As television continues its evolution from a single box that sits in your living room to a multi-platform experience across many devices, resurrections like these are increasingly common — though sometimes they’re less like Lazarus, and more like zombies.

Netflix is of course a front runner in the rebirth business, thanks to picking up Arrested Development (only one more month, Bluth fans!).

But there’s a deep history to this practice. For instance: In late 2009, producer Ashton Kutcher turned to YouTube to screen the unaired five episodes of model drama The Beautiful Life, which had just been canceled by The CW.

However, while the TBL channel is currently at over five million views, not one of the five episodes on it has surpassed a million views.

They’re all still online, along with a plea posted by Kutcher saying that they’d be able to produce more episodes if the channel’s subscriber count hit a certain, unspecified threshold.

Whatever that threshold was, it was greater than 35,000 subscribers — which is the channel’s current standing, four years later. But TBL does deserve credit for being an early example of a show realizing the potential power of digital distribution — arguably ahead of its time in that respect.

The key is transitioning from digital distribution to actually producing new episodes. The most daring and ultimately successful example of this isn’t necessarily Joss Whedon getting to make a feature film follow-up to Firefly or the return of Veronica Mars as a feature — the real kickoff of digital distribution having real meaning for canceled shows comes from the early 2000s, and DVDs.

The Fox animated series Family Guy first premiered in 1999, and was canceled in 2002. But thanks to blockbuster DVD sales of the first three seasons, it was brought back to the airwaves in 2005, and has remained a key part of Fox’s schedule ever since. Creator Seth MacFarlane has even gone on to create at least two other shows for the network.

(Personal anecdote: I was working as a clerk in a DVD store in 2003, and I keenly remember how we couldn’t keep Family Guy box sets on the shelves; they sold out like crazy.)

Sometimes, things need to end. Sometimes, shows don’t work or don’t connect with a wide audience, and those involved are ready to move on. The Onion satirized this beautifully in the aftermath of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign with this piece headined “Stars Of Canceled Show Terrified Fans Will Raise Money For Movie,” centered around recently-terminated NBC sitcom Animal Practice.

The episodes of Animal Practice left unaired after its cancelation are currently available online, though it’s unlikely to come back — a zombie, for better or worse.

But as the industry figures out how to make original content on the web sustainable and profitable, we’ll see more and more examples of Lazarus.

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Cord Cutters are a growing tribe, according to research from The Convergence Consulting Group. I cut the cord in 2008 and five years later have relied solely on non-linear video for my video fix.

PS:  Here is a link to our coverage of cord cutting trend. We also host a video podcast that focuses on cord-cutting trends, technologies and gizmos.

Featured photo courtesy Shutterstock user Mikhail Melnikov.