All My Children, One Life to Live Cut Back to Two New Episodes Per Week

The online versions of All My Childrenand One Life to Live will begin releasing two new episodes a week, down from four, starting next week, Prospect Park announced Thursday.

New episodes of All My Children will debut on Mondays and Wednesdays, and new episodes of One Life to Live will premiere Tuesdays and Thursdays, starting Monday, May 20.

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The move is designed to avoid overloading viewers with content and bring the average viewer's experience in line with what it was when the shows aired on ABC — when most fans only watched two or three episodes of the soaps per week, according to Prospect Park bosses Rich Frank and Jeff Kwatinetz.

"In the past these shows had their vast majority of views within the first 24 hours," Frank and Kwatinetz said in a statement. "Instead, our shows are primarily consumed on different days then when they originally air. 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. ... We are finding that asking most people to regularly watch more than a half hour per day online seems to be too much."

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The new release schedule will not impact production.

Kwatinetz and Frank said they realize not all fans will be happy with the change.

"We know our most dedicated viewers will be upset as they would probably prefer more shows to less (we personally wish there were more episodes of our favorite shows; we would love 50 episodes a year of Homeland, Mad Men or The Simpsons)," they said in a statement. "We apologize to these viewers and ask them to please understand we are trying to ensure our shows succeed and not meet the fate they experienced previously. We need to devise a model that works for all viewers. ... When it comes to online, as with all new technology, it's adapt or fail."

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The revamped  soaps have drawn "many millions of viewers" since their launch on April 29, according to The Online Network, and are consistently in Hulu's Top 10 shows.

Have you been keeping up with All My Children and One Life to Live? And are you happy about the cutback?