prospect park

Less ‘All My Children’ and ‘One Life to Live’ on Web

Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz, who own the production company responsible for the shows, said viewers’ behavior had suggested to them that they make a change. While daytime dramas on TV typically have fresh episodes five days a week, Mr. Frank and Mr. Kwatinetz said in a statement on Thursday that in viewing patterns, “All My Children” and “One Life to Live” now resemble online shows more closely than traditional television shows.

Some viewers are stockpiling episodes and watching them on the weekend, on their own schedules. “In the past these shows had their vast majority of views within the first 24 hours,” said Mr. Frank and Mr. Kwatinetz, whose company is called Prospect Park. “Instead, our shows are primarily consumed on different days than when they originally air.”

Additionally, there is not as much overlap between the audiences of the two shows as there was on TV; many viewers seem to be choosing to watch one or the other. “This leads us to believe we are posting too many episodes and making it far too challenging for viewers to keep up,” they said.

So Prospect Park will start staggering future episodes, with new half-hours of “All My Children” on Mondays and Wednesdays alternating with “One Life to Live” on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The new schedule will take effect on Monday; the shows will continue to be distributed through Hulu and iTunes.

The schedule change was immediately assailed by some fans, but others said they supported the decision, if only to keep the shows alive in some form. The soaps were canceled by ABC in 2011. In the statement, which was addressed to fans of the shows, the two producers apologized for the change and added, “Please understand we are trying to ensure our shows succeed and not meet the fate they experienced previously.”

While the adjustment will not markedly reduce the production company’s costs — Prospect Park is still committed to producing 220 episodes of each show — it will give the company more time to recoup those costs and turn a profit. Prospect Park needs each episode to be seen roughly 500,000 times to break even. With that in mind, slowing down the release schedule so that those episodes last two years instead of one is a logical step.

Prospect Park also said it would combine the two Friday recap shows that it is currently producing into one.

Hulu, which has guaranteed a minimum amount of ad revenue to Prospect Park, has backed the new schedule, Mr. Frank and Mr. Kwatinetz said in their statement. Hulu was going to make only the most recent episodes available free, while providing the whole library to paying subscribers of its Hulu Plus service. But “because Hulu agrees with our findings, 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,” the two men said.

“All My Children” and “One Life to Live” have regularly ranked among the top 10 most-watched series on Hulu since their premieres on April 29. But no specific viewing data is available for that site or for iTunes.

The Prospect Park statement hinted at the challenges associated with marketing shows, even those with storied pasts, on the Internet. While television is a mostly passive medium, lending itself to viewing of multiple shows in one sitting as dictated by the schedule, the Internet is more active: viewers choose what to watch, when, in what order. (With the rise of on-demand options, television viewing is slowly becoming more active, as well.) Many fans have been binge-viewing the soaps, Mr. Frank and Mr. Kwatinetz said Thursday, and they felt overwhelmed by the number of new episodes a week.

“We need to devise a model that works for all viewers,” one that follows how they want to watch online, the statement said. “When it comes to online, as with all new technology, it’s adapt or fail. We feel fortunate to be an online company and to have such an opportunity to adapt.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/business/media/less-all-my-children-and-one-life-to-live-on-web.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

It’s the Economy: The Food-Truck Business Stinks

I was originally hoping that Nafziger would help me figure out a decidedly New York puzzle. As I was walking through Prospect Park recently, I wanted to find a healthful snack for my son and something for me. The only options, though, were the same sort of carts that my dad took me to in the ’70s: Good Humor ice cream, overpriced cans of soda and overboiled hot dogs sitting in cloudy water. This seemed ridiculous. In the past few decades, food in New York City has gone through a complete transformation, but the street-vendor market, which should be more nimble, barely budges. Shouldn’t there be four Wafels Dinges trucks for every hot-dog cart?

David Weber, president of the New York City Food Truck Association, explained that the ratio is more like 25 to 1 the other way. That’s because despite the inherent attractiveness of cute trucks and clever food options, the business stinks. There are numerous (and sometimes conflicting) regulations required by the departments of Health, Sanitation, Transportation and Consumer Affairs. These rules are enforced, with varying consistency, by the New York Police Department. As a result, according to City Councilman Dan Garodnick, it’s nearly impossible (even if you fill out the right paperwork) to operate a truck without breaking some law. Trucks can’t sell food if they’re parked in a metered space . . . or if they’re within 200 feet of a school . . . or within 500 feet of a public market . . . and so on.

Enforcement is erratic. Trucks in Chelsea are rarely bothered, Nafziger said. In Midtown South, where I work and can attest to the desperate need for more lunch options, the N.Y.P.D. has a dedicated team of vendor-busting cops. “One month, we get no tickets,” Thomas DeGeest, the founder of Wafels Dinges, a popular mobile-food businesses that sells waffles and things, told me. “The next month, we get tickets every day.” DeGeest had two trucks and five carts when he decided he couldn’t keep investing in a business that was so vulnerable to overzealous cops or city bureaucracy. Instead, DeGeest reluctantly decided to open a regular old stationary restaurant.

Nafziger also knows well the regulatory hassles of the business. After one of his employees spent eight hours in jail for selling falafel without a license, he strictly follows the rule insisting that every mobile-food employee has Health Department certification. The trouble is that he needs to employ four people, each with his own license; if one quits, it can take two months for a new worker to get the proper paperwork. Nafziger said he holds on to his truck only because it’s basically a moving billboard for his two, more successful brick-and-mortar restaurants, in Greenwich Village and NoLIta. And stationary restaurants, by the way, require that only a single employee on duty have a Health Department certification.

Nafziger and DeGeest may have become experts in the rules and regulations, but many of the city’s vendors are constantly flummoxed. I spent one recent morning in the offices of the Street Vendor Project, a worker-advocacy group. As I sat with Sean Basinski, the group’s founder, a stream of vendors came in with pink tickets in their hands. One woman, an Ecuadorean immigrant who sells kebabs in Bushwick, Brooklyn, handed Basinski the six tickets that she and her husband received on a single afternoon. The total came to $2,850, which, she said, was much more than what she makes in a good week. She had a street-vendor’s license, she said, but didn’t understand that she also needed a separate permit for her cart.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/magazine/the-food-truck-business-stinks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Less ‘All My Children’ and ‘One Life to Live’ on Web

It’s the Economy: The Food-Truck Business Stinks

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