GLATWT88

Seems like poor foresight to place Love of Life at 4pm instead of 3:30. The 3:30pm slot is doing well at maintaining GL's audience - perhaps viewers were sticking around til 4pm and letting that hour block conclude before switching off or onto something else. Wonder if the network just didn't have much faith in LOL and keeping a rerun that could pull in numbers was just a wiser move than jeopardizing the slot in the case LOL still manages to underperform.

I wonder if this "more grounded" feel also had to do with the massive ratings erosion that occurred in season 7 and the decline that would continue til the end.

Thank you. Didn't realize the turnover was so quick. When did these longer tape to air periods become more of the norm, especially Days which seems to have one of the longest.

Am I correct to assume that GL was recording episodes one week before they aired back in 1980? Was this common practice or am I misunderstanding?

I believe she underwent heart surgery and missed out on the earlier episodes and is replaced next season. I remember when I, similar to you, decided to watch all the eoisode from the very beginning not too long ago and noticed she was absent and thought that this would be the season Geddes gets replaced by Donna Reed but it's not.

Matt Bomer briefly talks about his run on GL after receiving The Hollywood Reporter's Trailblazers Award. Complete Article: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/matt-bomer-interview-ryan-murphy-bradley-cooper-career-scad-tvfest-1235819552/ In lighter moments, Bomer reflected on humbling milestones he experienced as an aspiring actor, from his first role as a background artist at age 12 in the 1992 Chuck Norris movie Sidekicks (“If that’s not an origin story, then what is?” he wondered, laughing) to a three-year run as a regular on both All My Children and Guiding Light in New York in the early 2000s. His appraisal of those gigs was tinged with equal parts appreciation (“It felt like going to grad school”) and unbridled amusement. “My Guiding Light character was a trust-fund baby who bet his fraternity brothers he’d be the first to deflower the town virgin … then he lost his trust fund and turned to the only life that someone can when they lose their trust fund: sex work. Then he went crazy and killed five people,” Bomer said, laughing along with the crowd inside the newly minted SCADShow theater. “Some days I’d have 30 pages of dialogue, ya’ll!”

On paper, Texas sounded perfect for the era. Why wouldn't you capitalize on the Dallas hysteria and bring that same energy into daytime. However, I'm not sure Texas was ever really all that much like Dallas (I didn't watch so I have no idea). What is true is that NBC fumbled the bag. I wonder what promotion was done to launch Texas and whether the soft launch through the AW expansion did more harm than good. It clearly left AW on life support for two decades.

I was extremely underwhelmed by this first episode of season 16 from start to finish. Very curious to hear your thoughts.

Interesting to see Days have such fluctuations in the ratings. Most of the other soaps seem to range within a few points for the most part...almost like keeping homeostasis but gradually trending down over long periods of time. However, Days is just all over the place.

Lots of movement except for the bookends. Days and AMC have made quite the return.

YR is pretty much untouchable. It was interesting to see GH back in the 7s for a few weeks not long ago, but none of the soaps are strong enough to match YR right now.

It could also be that Edge wasn't really performing too well at this ooint while the rest of the ABC lineup was, so as to not highlight this fact, they just didn't include it at all.

That is part of the reason I loved season 8. JR realizes that Sue Ellen is the only woman that can handle his [!@#$%^&*]. He also remembers why he was so in love with her to begin with. It could have changed the direction of the show- JR could have still been as sinister and conniving as ever, but his family, Sue Ellen and his son, should have been who he protected against it all.

Thanks. Interesting to see more dates on the list from 87 than 88 or 89.

The end of 89 saw a ratings improvement for GL, but it wasn't sustained. There also is an overall downward trend for all the soaps at this point.

I was waiting for this. The point in 1990 when GL first drops below a 5. I believe this is GL's first HH rating below a 5, unless I missed one in 88/89

Pretty much one of the many issues that led to the death of soaps - viewers were aging out (and also dying) of the younger demographics and these coveted demos weren't being replenished with new viewers for a number of reasons (one being the growing number of women in the workforce as working moms increased from 56 percent in 1980 to 72 percent in 2000).

GL is pretty much done at this point. It is ranking in the moderate zone, but no longer has the pull to get those big numbers or leaps it achieved in the early 80s. The breakouts of the second half of the decade were ATWT, DAYS, and YR. YR continued to succeed and ultimately replaces GH as top soap. DAYS started the decade weak but shined during its supercople eras and ATWT solidifies itself as CBS' #2 soap around 86.

GL jumped up to a 6 for Josh and Reva's wedding after dipping back down to the mid 5s after Roger's return died down. BB starting to make gains, but will pretty much peak around this year but maintain numbers for a few seasons.

I agree that YR would have done well either way, its rise to the top wasn't only a matter of a cushy timeslot, but really strong storytelling and soap as well. However, AMC could have held off some of this growth if placed head to head. I wonder if YR being scheduled so close to local news programs (12:30pm on most east coast affiliates and 11 on the west coast) plays any role in all these preemptions. Although, it does say full preemptions...

True. ABC did very little to compete with YR and it ultimately hurt them in the end. Having AMC go up against YR's full hour when it was at its strongest could have taken a bit of steam from YR's engine, especially since AMC remained quite strong ratings wise until the mid-90s. Instead, ABC decided to have weak soaps or debut new soaps in that very difficult timeslot against YR. It was almost as if YR had a whole half hour without much direct competition to establish itself and gain and grow an audience.

I wouldn't say thrive, but it probably would have helped with clearance. By the end of its run, RH was clearing about 80% of markets compared to about 97 percent in the early 80s. Capitol and Bold both benefitted from being hammocked between established soaps. While neither achieved the ratings success of their lead ins, it definitely helped.

I can understand it from this perspective, especially since GH blows up and AW lagged behind all other timeslot competition. But the same can be said for all of NBC soaps at the time. Each one was last in their timeslot, at least AW had better numbers. It would seem like a poor decision to axe it unless something else was going on behind the scenes.

Isn't that a bit soon? AW was NBC's top rated soap in 1979. I don't think AW drops out of the top until mid 1980 and even then it's not like Days is pulling big numbers, at least not for a while.

Thanks! It seems like ABC was a bit inconsistent with their Thanksgiving week schedule. In '97 and '99 GH had a new episode on Thanksgiving and preempted on Black Friday - while in 98, they aired Luke and Laura's wedding on Thanksgiving and preempted on Black Friday. I'm assuming ABC probably just aired new episodes all that week in '89.