DM James Fairbanks

Being a stats guy, these ratings are interesting when studied by each component. Such as how did AW get a total rating of 11.0 and an avg. rating of 8.6, but AMC had a total rating of 9.9 and an average rating 8.9?

LIAMST was doing great until David Birney, Donna Mills and Leslie Charleston left in the span of four month. That is what gave DOOL the edge to take it over. Though Mills was planning on leaving, Birney left when CBS offered him a salary reduction at contract renewal, though he was the hottest actor in daytime (yes, above Reinholt and Frid). Replying to Paul Raven's post: August 66 ABC replaced Confidential for Women with Dating Game at 2pm and it became the best rating ABC show since GH. Within weeks it was beating Password 35 share to 28 and that was with lower clearances than GH. And then Days took off on NBC so CBS dumped Password for Love Is A Many Splendored Thing. The first chink in the CBS armor. What really killed Password was not DOOL, but the Dating Game. And that happened because CBS and NBC carried a press conference on the Vietnam War, but ABC aired the premier of Dating Game. That gave Dating Game it's audience as it was so different than anything on the air. Also, that lead to Newlywed Game that was another hit. Then add CBS's mismanagement of LIAMST, WTHI, TSS and LOL and you see why the castle crumbled.

What is fascinating is that the common belief when a show drops so badly is that it is not being carried well (like Dark Shadows in the fall of 1970). But according to this, Another World has 99% coverage, SFT 93%, and Texas 91%. Those are healthy numbers. The Doctors only has 71%, but Edge of Night with 80% has double it's audience. So, the bottom line is that Search was pretty reachable by the CBS audience, but they simply choose not to come over, because they had become involved in Y&R (unless some key markets were missing in that 93%). Same with Texas. Unless key markets (any of the top 33 markets) had pre-empted it, it should have performed much better. Does anyone know of the 33 largest markets (which is what Nielsen uses), which may have had pre-empted Texas, SFT, or TD?

Fascinating! Especially since in the year end ratings, Women with a Past finished with a 7.5 rating to The Secret Storms 8.1. Now I know it was CBS's lowest rated soap, but a 7.8 avg rating for the half hour was terrific.

I think the issue is where would one of them go? SFT/TGL became lunch time favorites and one would lose that position. I think when TGL moved in 1968, it fell to 9th for awhile.

I knew WTHI started strong and suddenly took a dip. I wonder what happened to turn people off. Was it the move of Password on ABC to noon from 4:00 PM? Bill Bell retired in 1995. I think his last great creation was Phyllis Summers.

Paul Raven, wow! CBS has the top 12 shows. Another World has gained in that it beat The Doctors.

Actually, LIAMST was moved to 3:00 PM and TSS at 3:30. I think that having an hour of crime would have been good if TSS had stayed at 3:00 and moved fully to that arena. LIAMST could have survived if ti became more relevant in its love story to compete against OLTL. Instead, that 1972 move gave both NBC and ABC their best shot at taking over CBS and they made the most of it. That is the year AMC and OLTL made the top 10 and GH I think tied AW for #3.

I guess the problem with Splendored Thing is that like Password before it,it lost too much of the As The World Turns lead in. Days of Our Lives had proven to be tough competition. So eventually P&G pressured to have all its soaps in one block. Paul Raven, the biggest issue with Splendored Thing became cast changes in the leads. LIAMST finished the 1969/1970 season about half a point ahead of Days (9.5/8.8). CBS cooked the goose that laid the golden egg when it offered David Birney (the most popular soap actor according to the Daytime TV readers poll) and salary cut! He left just as Donna Mills was leaving, and since she was dating Birney, so did Leslie Charleston who went with him to Hollywood. When those cast changes hit in May/June 1970, LIAMST fell from 1st in the readers poll to 8th. Paul, these numbers must have had Irna have a potty accident! No wonder she moved to melodrama to goose up the ratings.

@JAS0N47 Thank you so much again. If there data on affiliates goes back to the 50's, one of the biggest mysteries will be solved. How did "Full Circle", that ran for nine months, from 1960 to 1961, and followed ATWT that was getting a 10.4, only got a 1.4 rating. Ratings below are from Wikipedia. After LeMay left, AW was good but was sssssllllloooowww compared to GH and even GL. Also, too many new characters came on all at once. Beverlee McKinsey would have left or be reduced because she was tired (she was still recovering from her accident the year before). Finally, NBC stood for No Body Cares at that point (in prime-time Different Strokes was the highest rated show at #30).

@JAS0N47Thank you so much for the work you did digging up these statistics. It does make things much clearer. Question, is there anymore information going back to 1970? Coverage is an extremely important measurement. In Oct 1976, Daytime TV came out with the Daytime TV's Star Directory. The most important aspect of this book was the number of affiliates that carried a show. Considering the data is about six months old (based on the copywrite date and how long it takes to publish), it is interesting that at the time, these are the numbers. Here is the list, including the changes in 1978: So, except for OLTL, DOOL, RH and EON, all shows lost a pretty noteworthy amount of stations (ABC had gains in OLTL, RH and EON, but lost a significant number of stations for AMC (22) and GH (13). I am wondering why the CBS shows all lost between 5 and 10 stations (LOL and GL being the biggest losers [though could have GL’s expansion to an hour have done that?]). None of the other CBS shows moved timeslots. I remember Days was starting to go all over the place in 1977, as well as the expansion of AMC in the spring of that year, which lead to the fall in ratings. $20,000 Pyramid was still at 2:00, but damage had been done to both ATWT and DOOL. Had Family Feud caught on fire yet? That is what I think lead to LOL losing ground. I did not realize For Richer, For Poorer was going against AMC. In New York, I remember it going against EON. Below is the schedule for Fall 1977 to Summer 1978. Your thoughts?

I think CBS was more patient. They knew 12:00 was an iffy timeslot. Supposedly Bill Bell wanted to cancel after 9 months, but CBS talked him into waiting as the ratings were rising slowly. As what was said here earlier, Y&R did well where it aired and that lead to it being picked up by more markets. Ryan's Hope showed promise of being a #4 soap for ABC in 1978, but I believe that is when Claire Labine moved to the "movie" stories. I think Return to Peyton Place could have been a contender if NBC gave it six more months with the faster pace, but Lin Bolan wanted a slot for How to Survive a Marriage. P&G probably made a fuss about cancelling Somerset. Finally, I think For Richer, For Poorer had potential as well, but it seemed to have the lowest number of clearances. Again, it would have been interesting to see how it would have done with clearances in the 90+ stage.

Thank you Jason47! Hopefully I am replying in the correct way. It is interesting that Love of Life had only 185 stations the last week of 1977, but gained seven stations the first week of January 1978. Also, it makes sense that For Richer, For Poorer had the lowest percentage of clearances. One has to wonder if it would have been more successful had the clearances been higher.

n Sept. 1972, EON moved from it's late afternoon slot (4:30 p.m.) to (2:30 p.m.) so that P&G could group it's soaps together. For the previous seasons, EON was #2 (69-70), #2 (70-71), #4 (71-72) and, then after move #10 (72-73). It was a stupid move since 50% of audience was male + big with after school bunch. Also, there was between 17-19 soaps during that period. (Half-hours) Finally, the ratings were far smaller as the US population was 200 MM in 1970 and 308 MM in 2010. (Although there were significantly more women at home and with far fewer choices, it would be interesting to know how many people were really watching.) Actually, EON was on at 3:30 from 1962 until 1972, than moved to 2:30.

Interesting that Guiding Light was ahead of its lead in Search GL regularly beat Search as GL was on at 12:45 and Search at 12:30. August 66 ABC replaced Confidential for Women with Dating Game at 2pm and it became the best rating ABC show since GH. Within weeks it was beating Password 35 share to 28 and that was with lower clearances than GH. And then Days took off on NBC so CBS dumped Password for Love Is A Many Splendored Thing. The first chink in the CBS armor. The decision to preempt Password the day Dating Game premiered is what sent Password on it's downward spiral. In a book on Allen Ludden, another factor was that based on the rules of the time, there were only about 3000 words that Password could use.