GLATWT88

They're already super disrespectful with those poor quality clips and they better not spend a large amount of time talking about reality shows.

23 minutes ago, Faulkner said:

There was a Hollywood Reporter article that reported that the initial increases from the stay-at-home orders have evaporated even for primetime. A lot of speculation that people are fatigued by watching news in the daytime and want to do other things at night, especially at the weather has been so nice across the country.

 

The total viewers for CBS are strong, but those ad demos aren’t great, and I do wonder how many of those lapsed 18-49/25-54 viewers will lose the habit the longer this goes. Y&R and B&B didn’t have a lot to give up in the demos. All that said, the reruns are fabulous and much better than nothing. The bottom hasn’t fallen out, and it could have.

GH had better brace itself, though.

I agree the total viewer numbers for CBS are good especially for repeats. The demos aren't great but they're holding on okay from week to week considering it's now the third week of ratings for repeats. The 18-34 numbers have been the most stable for YR these past 3 weeks of repeats (54k/56k/54k). BB also held on in that demo despite a big drop last week, but they aren't counting enough days to make a fair assessment. I wonder if preemptions are making the number a bit crazy too, because I'm surprised Days and GH are down - not that I've been watching but from what I have read on here they seem to be doing okay as far as fan interest. 

If BB and YR can hold onto these numbers while in repeats I think that would be amazing, but I don't know how long viewers can tolerate these one off episodes. 

28 minutes ago, JAS0N47 said:

If I'm remembering correctly, I think you saw Peter Reckell drive into the parking lot during his return in 1990, or in the storyline it was when Bo was supposed to be in Australia before returning to Salem. 

 

I think I remember seeing a portion of the parking lot outside the window during the brief time when they were doing some scenes in the hallway and made the hallway a "high school" hallway with a few lockers at some point in the last decade, so that would have been the window you saw in the high school locker scene.

 

I forget if you saw the bars of the parking lot gate, but this could have been the street (where the photographer is standing) where John Black was run over and 'killed" by a car in 2007-ish.

Come on Days! We love a resourceful soap... lol. They're trying. 

Wow, these came out fast. Nice to see that YR and BB have gone up in the 18-34 demo from the first week of repeats. YR went down slightly from last week but only a small drop, yet BB had a nice increase this week after a drop last week. Considering that was the demo I heard would most be turned off by these repeats, they seem to be hanging on. 

Not sure why YR didnt count Friday again as last week it's highest rated day was Friday. Also, BB is still only counting Wednesdays and Fridays. 

2 minutes ago, Darn said:

The people have spoken, they'd rather watch reruns of Y&R than new episodes of GH and Days. We love to see it.

A little scary how bad those numbers are for GH and Days. Also, scary that these stay at home orders did pretty much nothing for soaps. 

While taping so far in advance has helped DAYS (well not really since the numbers are pretty much the same, but who knows what may happen to the numbers for the other soaps after they return from this extended break), I don't think any soap should tape so far in advance as it limits the ability for change. If you're pushing a storyline that isn't connecting with the audience, then you're stuck with 8 months of already taped story. When considering the low budget soaps, once taped they're not going to go back and film new footage.

6 minutes ago, JAS0N47 said:

"DAYS" STUDIO PARKING LOT EMPTY...

 

As the "Days" production shutdown continues into its 67th day today, here's a photo sent in by Doug, a "Days" fan, of the "Days" Burbank Studios parking lot empty yesterday on what would normally be a bustling day of Salem storylines taping inside:

 

I'm surprised they haven't used that parking lot as a set.

2 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

He was a terrible actor. Probably one of the worst but he is Ridge.....

So true! He's Ridge to me. Even after all these years, I still have a hard time accepting his replacement...just seems like a completely different character to me.

49 minutes ago, ranger1rg said:

Agree completely. I feel that way about all of their weddings— just ridiculous, and the vows are hysterical because we know none of it lasts or means anything.

 

This episode LOOKED really old and dated, too — those long, lingering looks, the camera pans that lasted forever, the hot air balloon that’s supposed to give you the feels while it’s a cliche from hell.

It wasn't a very interesting episode IMO. Didn't we have the preceding episode two weeks ago? It's like someone pulled out one episode and said well let me take this one right next to it and use it for another week. Is a wedding the most exciting thing they have to show us about Brooke? I don't know, maybe it is but I feel like if you're showing one off episodes they need to have more action and excitement. This dragged on a bit and maybe without the context it did make me super uncomfortable that mom and son were having a conversation about their exes who are now together. Stephanie telling Ridge it's not over with her ex-husband and Ridge knwowing his ex is married to his father. I mean it's not a new concept on soaps to have all these characters have relationships with each other and marry each other and I have watched BB before for many years so I was aware of the history. However, I'm not sure if this exchange just made the concept more obvious where I was just a bit creeped out. 

And the fact she goes between these men several times throughout the years. It's like I'm glad yall are environmentally friendly and like to recycle but you dont need to apply that concept to your women. It's like your dad knows your wife's goodies as much as you do and you took her back and went to each other's weddings and then back again. Oh lord...I can't. 

40 minutes ago, Errol said:

 

It was talked about extensively with industry folks: 

 

Soap Secrets Revealed: ‘GH’s’ Anthony Geary, ‘B&B’s’ John McCook, ‘DAYS’ Casting Director and More Discuss 2013’s Resurgence of The Soaps!

https://www.soapoperanetwork.com/2014/01/soap-secrets-revealed-ghs-anthony-geary-bbs-john-mccook-days-casting-director-and-more-discuss-2013s-resurgence-of

Thank you so much! Definitely going to give it a read. 

40 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

 It is so frustrating when you remember that all four of them were having a resurgence in ratings/attention around the same time around 2013-ish.  Several of them were hitting numbers they had not seen in almost a decade, the press was commenting positively on the renewed interest.

 

Then it all just slowly unraveled over the next few years, to the lows we have now.  The only thing I think that could rally them again is if they come back from the current hiatus with renewed energy and purpose.  

Do you know to what they attributed this resurgence in the ratings? I can't think of anything in particular that happened in 2013 that may have caused this to happen. I wasn't really watching soaps then either as I had gone off a bit - so it's interesting to hear this news. 

56 minutes ago, Faulkner said:

OMG filthy.  

 

Thorsten didn’t bother to dry his hair for his intro/outro, I see.

  I was also thinking the same thing. I was like is that the look he was going for or did he just not bother 

2 hours ago, titan1978 said:

Greg’s Lucky is really just a generic bland soap hunk.  But I liked him better than JY in the role.

 

This statement is so accurate it hurts. I really do like GV and think he's adorable, but I totally get what you're saying...he played the role very safe or maybe the writing just wasn't there when he played the character, but he seems really sweet and I hear he's doing well on DAYS. JY was never Lucky for me...maybe because he was on the way out when I started watching GH for a bit. 

59 minutes ago, soapfan770 said:

 
Haha it’s interesting by this point I think we had reached who was going to long lasting daytime shows although we’re just a few months away from ABC launching Ryan’s Hope. 
 

Both ABC and NBC had by this point been down the road and trying make headway against CBS in both Daytime and Primetime. ABC at least tried to give soaps like A Time For Us and A World Apart a chance before canceling them. NBC always seemed hellbent to cancel on their first instinct, hence why NBC only had 3 shows to make it past a decade.

 
Haha don’t hate now I love Gina Tognoni but yeah it’s odd they didn’t think of such a scene the previous year for Y&R’s 40th or at very least just have Hallick play Brad again returning the favor to someone else while summarizing why he won’t go back to GC LOL.

I didn't know that about the NBC soaps. It seemed that NBC was so desperate to compete with ABC and CBS that it would sometimes made moves that would do a lot of harm to it's lineup. I was reading up on The Doctors and they really killed off that show with all the moving across the schedule, especially since it performed so strongly in the early/mid 70s and did decent in the late 70s to then see some pretty significant drops at the end of the decade and beginning of the 80s. 

2 hours ago, soapfan770 said:

I’ve always really wanted to know why they never followed any male demos for the soaps either lol. I remember SOD ran a story on what the AA demos looked like back in the late 90’s, of course Y&R was #1 but lily white P&G shoes were dead last lol.

I remember reading an article years ago that actually said the entire CBS daytime lineup was in the top 10 for AA viewers, including TPIR, GL and ATWT. I'm not defending GL as far as diversity even though they were the first soap to prominently feature African American characters. In their final years, I believe the only diverse characters were a gay couple, a larger figured woman, and the AA Boudreau family. I'm sure YR probably helped those AA numbers as they were the best as far as representation of the four CBS soaps not that it's saying much. Daytime in general hasn't been the best for diverse representation on TV.

I feel like the ABC soaps did well with AA, but I would like to see actual numbers. I know plenty of friends' grandmas who watched OLTL...not sure if that was just a coincidence or if OLTL did appeal to AA audiences. 

13 hours ago, AdamNewmanFan said:

Like ATWT and GL were P&G OLTL and AMC was frons. all these cancellations were poor decison making, Wasn't passions doing well in the 18-24 demos?

Yes, Passions did well in the 18-24 demos in comparison to other soaps but that isn't saying much. I wonder if Passions had better numbers from delayed viewing since it did skew a bit younger than the other soaps. However, those numbers aren't worth much if they're still relatively small and there isn't much revenue that can come from them.

That's why I'm always curious about the streaming numbers. If they are significant like some seem to think they are because DAYS is usually at the top of the app - then that would mean there is a possibility to profit from those views but if the L+7 numbers are an indicator than that might not be the case. Although, I will say that I don't really DVR many programs unless I plan to watch the same day as I already know that I can just stream it the following day or later. 

3 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

The Talk has been struggling in the ratings before the pandemic. I remember reading an article saying they hope Marie could help them increase their ratings.

 

I wish they'd cancel it and bring back ATWT.

I would love to have ATWT back, but as was mentioned, it was more of an issue of P&G wanting to get out of the soap business than the network. Also, so much time has passed since cancellation, I'm afraid the numbers wouldn't be there and it would eventually just fail and be off our screens soon after. More should have been done to save GL and ATWT from cancellation and AMC and OLTL for that matter. I feel of the two P&G soaps, ATWT had the most potential for being saved because it was actually performing better but P&G wasn't interested in injecting time, money or effort into a dying genre. It's unfortunate but networks have become complacent and they're okay with keeping these soaps on as long as they're profitable or they don't have a viable cheaper product they to replace them. Look at AMC and OLTL being replaced by cheap talk shows that quickly disappeared from the schedule. 

As soon as Passions was cancelled and then GL and ATWT, there was so much chatter about soaps not making it into 2020. The cancellations of OLTL and AMC soon after only added to that concern. The fact that we still have 4 soaps in 2020 is amazing. 4 soaps with great potential but unfortunately no one knows what can be done to save them or whether it's even possible. I hope they can last, but I also hope they can thrive. 

3 hours ago, Errol said:

 

Talked about a lot of that above, but I do think that with the soaps in particular doing well on their respective network's services and apps, the numbers have to be high enough to justify keeping a lot of the other shows they spend millions on in production. The soaps just don't get any love on that front since they audience is already there on the miniscule budget they are already getting. No sense to invest, I guess. Nielsen measures streaming, yes, but again...not accurate whatsoever.

Do you have any idea what the budget for a primetime series vs. a daytime serial is nowadays. I imagine producing a soap is still costly for the networks as they are producing 200+ episodes per year compared to a tenth of that for primetime shows. 

I've always enjoyed looking at the numbers since I started watching soaps so I appreciate you sharing these with us. I remember always being stressed out when GL would have a bad week as it was already struggling. I just wish soaps would perform a bit better and part of me is hopeful that many still do watch soaps just in untraditional ways. 

23 minutes ago, EricMontreal22 said:

Brooke is an original character *and* actor.  So it makes no sense to me to not show at least ONE 80s episode.  Y&R has been better with the episodes they pick but I felt the same way about the Katherine week--couldn't they have shown a couple of 70s episodes?  Something from the 80s?  I get that they want to feature characters and actors still familiar to new watchers--but these are cases where they can do just that...

I absolutely agree with you, but I think it's a matter of not wanting to alienate certain viewers by going too far back especially since the visual aesthetic can look "old" to younger viewers. BB has been awful with their classics selections, which is odd since it is the youngest soap still on it might have the easiest time going into the archives. It already has its first 25 episodes up for streaming. Honestly, I thought it was great that we were getting throwbacks and classics until I saw on social media some people asking about new episodes, being irrationally upset and not understanding why there's no new episodes. It's like are you an idiot or have you not read or watched the news. It's not like they did it on purpose or that they need to serve you and record new material because you bitch about it. One person keeps posting vomit emojis everytime there was some post of a classic episode...my favorite part was when asked what episodes they would like to see a majority of posters mentioned Steffy and Liam's love story to which I had to roll my eyes. It's like you just saw those episodes 2 seconds ago, you want to see them again already? I've always been really into older tv even as a kid, so the idea of getting classics excited me and when they show older episodes such as the 80s and 90s, I get really excited but I'm starting to realize that for many this isn't as exciting. 

1 hour ago, soapfan770 said:

CBS’s schedule had been historically unchanged since the 50’s at this point. SFT at 12:30 since 1951, no programming in the 1:00 hour, ATWT at 1:30 etc. It made sense that ABC would air their shows at different times to allow them to achieve their own success, especially given how all NBC’s failed soaps in the 50’s served a lesson to be learned. 
 

Not to mention P&G forced CBS to

moved Edge because it didn’t allow its soaps to compete against each other, a rule that would be quickly disposed of by the end of 1975 and long forgotten by 1980.

It's interesting to see so many soaps on CBS and NBC. I know at one point, the number of soaps on daytime were in the teens but when it's on a grid like that it really gave me a better perspective of how heavily populated the daytime schedules were with soaps at one point. NBC having 4 soaps is odd as I have always remembered there only being 2, well vaguely remember 3 with AW, DAYS and SuBe.

I will give it to NBC, they really did try up until the late 90s to get their schedule right and attempted through the years to experiment with new soaps and programming ...unfortunately at times, these experiments were at the expense of other soaps on their schedule. I believe NBC had the most soaps premeire on its network - I guess in an attempt to compete with ABC and CBS over the decades. However, I think expanding DAYS to an hour is what ends up hurting it's performance in the late 70s, especially once it starts going up against the highly rated ATWT at the time. 

Did ABC and CBS plan their daytime schedule together...pretty funny that they don't have any of their soaps going head to head.

5 hours ago, Faulkner said:

It’s interesting, though. The delayed viewing bumps are pretty small in the A18-49 demos. A lot of primetime series more than double their Live+SameDay in Live+7 in that demo (which allows for apples-to-apples comparisons), and GH leads here with only a 24% boost. I’m sure streaming adds some for the soaps, but it’s pretty much WYSIWYG in those weekly numbers Toups posts. Granted, most delayed soap viewers likely DVR during the day and watch when they get home from work (still SD), as opposed to primetime viewers, who will watch on weekends.

And yes I don’t know how The Talk survives on those numbers. I suppose they are saving a lot of $$$$ with these janky Zoom episodes.

Those were my thoughts exactly. I don't believe the L+7 include streaming, on demand or online views but considering the lean gains from DVR viewing, I'm unsure if there is much to be gained from adding the streaming views to the numbers anyway. I know some say DAYS is usually the most popular show on the NBC app, but I wonder what those numbers actually look like and whether they're large enough to even matter. 

8 hours ago, mikelyons said:

I do know that YouTube TV and Hulu provide their viewing figures to Nielsen, so - hopefully - they're in the +7 ratings, too.

Can we cancel THE TALK already? Their ratings are nothing but trash around the board.

Yes, I think that Nielsen does offer some measuring services for streaming services but I don't think they're factored into the L+7 numbers. I believe those only include DVR numbers. 

5 hours ago, Errol said:

Broadcast Live+7 for April 20-24: ‘Y&R’ and ‘B&B’ Hit Three and Four Week Highs, ‘GH’ Top Gainer in Delayed Viewers:

https://www.soapoperanetwork.com/2020/05/daytime-broadcast-live-7-ratings-april-24-24-2020

Thanks for the ratings. It's interesting to get another perspective of the numbers for soaps. Also, not surprising that game shows don't see major jumps from non-live viewing.

When Nielsen calculates the Live +7 ratings, those numbers only include the live ratings and any viewing of the episode on DVR within 7 days. It doesn't include any viewing that occurs online, on demand thru cable services or on streaming platforms. Is that correct? 

29 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

I remember at the end of 1990, there was a scene with Mindy and Mallet with Madonna's 'Justify My Love' (which was the #1 pop hit at that time) playing in the background. These soaps can't afford real pop music anymore, but the chemistry was hot in that scene. 

Wow that's pretty epic. I can't picture a soap opera using mainstream music, especially a song like Justify My Love which had the whole video controversy for being too sexual being used on a daytime soap...that's amazing. I would love to see it. 

31 minutes ago, BetterForgotten said:

Ah, here it is, 34:28 in and then at the end of the clip as well:

 

 

I thought the characters were actually going to get down with the music in the background. Still cool nonetheless.

33 minutes ago, soapfan770 said:

LOL TBH I’ve always hated the share and HH’s being the main factor as opposed to the actual number of viewers. I have to admit I gave up on the Nielsens as network were renewing shows in the 2’s in recent years, I mean CBS even renewed a prime time show getting less than Y&R in daytime. Too many other factors at play nowadays. 

Well, that's true. There's so many factors that come into play nowadays than just traditional same day numbers from Nielsen. I mean CW's lowest rated show, Dynasty, has been renewed for a fourth season and it averages around 500k viewers an episode with awfully low demos. However, it performs really well internationally. 

I think nowadays when networks decide whether to cancel or renew a show they take into account how these shows perform on streaming platforms and international figures and not just same day domestic numbers. TV consumption has changed. I would be interested to see the streaming numbers for the soaps. 

On 5/13/2020 at 6:15 AM, Aback said:

Another hidden benefit of rebooting the shows is that it would help the shows get sold internationally again.

 

What prevents international channels from buying these shows is that it's so hard to get into the shows while they're running. If you reboot them (not denying their history but just packaging a new beginning), it would make them more palatable for international markets and maybe streaming platforms.

I know Latin American telenovelas sell really well throughout the world. I wonder if markets would still be interested in soap operas considering there's no set number of episodes or a determined end. Brazilian telenovelas which typically run for more episodes than other Latin American telenovelas, edit their episodes and repackage for international markets so that their telenovelas which are sometimes 200+ episodes would be be packaged in shorter runs for other markets. Although, it's been sometime since a Brazilian telenovela had 200+ episodes, even when they're under they still edit to shorter episode packages. There were instances were due to popularity some telenovelas would extend beyond 300 episodes, but due to costs and strong competition that is no longer the case but length and episodes are determined by popularity something that is not easily adjusted with a soap opera. Mexican telenovelas have done really well in other markets since the 80s and I believe newer ones are even available on streaming platforms. Soap operas are a very unique format due to so much history and an undetermined run which makes it difficult to package or promote on streaming services for new audiences.

I'm really curious if a reboot would help make these soap operas more appealing to outside markets. However, soap operas look so cheap nowadays especially compared to these big budget telenovelas with almost cinematic introductory episodes. Also, there needs to be a crash course almost to introduce audiences to everything and everyone. 

5 minutes ago, Errol said:

Now I remember why they chose the Nurses Ball episodes to re-air. It was easy to put it together since no editing was necessary:

 

ABC Announces Nurses Ball 2019, Releases New ‘GH’-Themed Collection

https://www.soapoperanetwork.com/2019/04/general-hospital-nurses-ball-collection-episodes

Ugh so it's true...we're probably only going to get episodes from 2014 onward.