will81

@vetsoapfan Though I never saw her material. Any time I hear the name Gabrielle Upton/Gillian Houghton, I shudder, haha. She seemed to be a soap killer. She and James Lipton were definitely on the bottom rung of soap scribes.

The kids go back to school and Y&R drops. I wonder what it's demo's were, especially in the summer. Was it the young person's soap back then?

Y&R hits the top 5. Nice. I assume this is a summer boost due to school being out as I know it drops out of the top 5 again in winter 1975.

Though Y&R had already hit #10 a couple times, this is by far its best showing at #8 and a 7.8 rating. I wonder if Leslie being in the psych ward a few weeks prior might have gotten the show some attention and it just took a while for people to start tuning in. Or maybe the events of this week were promoted well enough to get curious viewers to give the show a try. I wish we had promos from each week to see what was being pushed to promote the show. I know the soap magazines buzzed about the show at that time too. I guess also maybe younger people on summer holidays around this time??? Then again the ratings back then often were all over the place, so I guess we'll see how the show goes over the next few weeks.

But also the number of tv households was lower. I did some crude calculations and honestly apart from the GH juggernaut in the late 70's. Viewership really didn't change that much until the late 90's. No massive changes anyway, the numbers were fairly consistent when you factor in the tv household numbers.

Thank you for confirming those, We now have almost every pre-emption. I know some of the late 1973 ratings are missing, so there will be a couple we can't confirm but so exciting to have almost all of them for Y&R

Great, thanks for confirming.

In Pittsburgh they didn't clear Y&R for years (it aired on an independent) due to a local talk show that was very popular. The Marie Torres show, which was an hour long show from 1pm - 2pm The same station aired a newscast at 12pm and I think many stations were similar. Airing a newscast at 12pm and not willing to budge the schedule for Y&R was probably likely in many areas. It also sounds like CBS didn't try hard enough in some markets which is why Fred basically apologised to Bell for not getting clearances. Possibly Y&R was seen as too racy for some conservative CBS affiliates as well.

Thanks it was mostly the Vanderbuilt News Archive. Often missing things and I think the timezone is central but still a good resource. https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/siteindex/1974-7 I also did some research on newspapers.com and I think that's where I got the July 29 date or could make an educated guess. I had actually just recently changed my Aug 28 guess to Aug 08 (news on Nixon) so I was a day off there.

Awesome, thank you. Great to have those confirmed and the correction for August. Look forward to getting the Sep 18 and Nov 14 pre-emptions confirmed or corrected.

Also it has one of the lowest station clearances on the chart. I think quite a number of stations took on the show around Jan 1974, so it was likely lower in 1973 than what we see here. I believe this is what Fred Silverman said to Bill Bell in 1973 when he panicked a bit about the ratings. Fred knew the clearances weren't there yet and apologised to him for not clearing the show in enough markets but felt confident they would get there eventually. It was Screen Gems (Or at least one exec) that was making a big deal of the ratings and likely influenced Bell's mind about it until he spoke to Silverman.

Oh nice. Glad I changed my guess

Maybe it was last? I'm wondering now. Maybe my guess was too high. Rank #34 Rating 4.5 / 16% share

I'll guess AMC was 5.5 20% share. It had low clearance for several years and I believe was at the bottom of the ratings for a while. I assume it might have had a slightly stronger debut week though as many shows often do.

I think Guiding Light and Search were still 15min until September 1968. Not sure if any other shows were. I think they might have been the last on the schedule to expand to 30min

From what little data I've seen from 1974, I think they spend the next few months with similar ratings. It would seem Y&R starts building more in the summer of 1974. While HTSAM stagnates. But will be interesting to see how it played out, once more of 1974 eventually comes in next year.

Fair, I guess it's hard to tell without a timeline/year and it is possible she has mixed things up so it could have been in the later 80's or even 90's

She stated Moonlighting and showed a picture of Cybil with Bruce Willis from the show. It's possible she got them mixed up and it might have been Yellow Rose. I get the feeling she really didn't remember who the guy was and Broadcast News was just a reference for the flop sweat she was feeling, haha

I've watched most of Jill Dalton's videos, she's a great story teller. This was likely 1984. She scored her SAG card off this role and was later up for the co-lead in Moonlighting. Not a chance she would even be looked at for that role without being in a union. She also had a short term day player role on EON, so the AMC role would have been before that. Otherwise the EON role would have helped her get her SAG card. My guess is David Canary. I think Erica and Adam were dating already by then right?

To say I'm shocked is an understatement. Like many here I had no idea he was even sick. RIP to Drake and thank you for bringing me so much entertainment for so many years. My condolences to his family and all those at Days who worked with him.

Totally missed that. I looked it up. The game started 3:30pm Eastern.

One interesting thing that may or may not have had an effect. WCBS in New York bought the syndicated Dinah Shore show and after it struggled at 9am they moved The Mike Douglas Show to 4pm and cut it from 90 to 60min and placed Dinah's show after it at 5pm. They moved their 4pm game show Musical Chairs to 1pm. Mike Douglas was now competing with Somerset and as a result WNBC moved Somerset to 1pm. So Ryan's Hope and Somerset were in direct competition with each other and whatever game show CBS had on, I think Musical Chairs. No idea if this may have had a big effect on the overall national ratings for either show. It doesn't look like the CBS game shows were much threat, but at least in New York, Somerset and Ryan's Hope may have been battling for viewers. Since it was the largest market it may have had some impact.

Awesome work. Thank you so much for sharing, especially the recaps of the other daytime shows. So many gameshows came and went and networks more and more started relying on soaps, so it is interesting to see how those shows were going as well. Side note - I feel this now confirms Y&R's first week at No.1 ever was indeed the week of Dec 29, 1975. For reference this was the week Jill's baby was born, in fact his birth date was Dec 29, 1975.

So interesting to see Y&R slowly climb. Going from the bottom of the top 10 to multiple weeks in the top 5. Unless it goes #1 in the next two weeks, and excluding the fast national week as we don't have that data and it doesn't really count anyway, Y&R went all the way to the top for the first time the week of Dec 29

Unfortunately it was one of those deep dives I was doing and came across it and lost it. But if I ever find it again I will post for sure.