Will Web soaps survive?

The turmoil within American Cybercast could have been lifted directly from the scripts of the cybersoaps it produces.

The recent cash crunch at the owner of Web soap opera The Spot offered some high drama this week when a desperate worker disclosed the company's financial problems on a Web bulletin board. After only a few hours, it was abruptly removed by managers clearly not anxious to air the gory details.

Fun in the sun with the cast of The Spot

But the incident was far from ordinary internal company gossip: The troubles at The Spot, one of the highest-profile soaps on the Web, are part of a subplot that could mean curtains for the budding industry. Indeed, the shows, dubbed "Web-sodics" by insiders, face a future as uncertain as a soap star's next affair.

Once touted as the perfect marriage of television and the Internet, cybersoaps promised to provide all the thrills of traditional TV soap operas--alien abduction, marital betrayal, family secrets--with the interactivity and community that only the Web could provide. But despite promises of glory, Web soaps have been unable to make ends meet.

"Kids are cool, but advertisers want middle-class people who can pay for things," said Jon Katz, media critic for Wired Ventures. "Media works when middle-class people have a reason for using it. This has been a bitter pill for the Web culture to swallow."

Unlike TV soaps, Web-sodics have appealed to twenty-somethings with little disposable income, not exactly prime targets for potential advertisers. And if the 100-plus soaps on the Web are not able to generate enough traffic to stand on their own, they will increasingly have to be produced with counterparts on television and even films to survive.

In some cases, that is already happening. Scott Zakarin, the original Spot creator who has since left, is marketing his new online soap, Grape Jam, to five cable companies.