Manny

I think some people here are overestimating the number of people that would be watching old soaps.

As it was said here, this was attempted via SoapNet in the past, and it was shown as a non-profitable thing. Introducing One Tree Hill was probably done as a result of unsatisfactory ratings, in hope to gain young viewers who were watching OTH then.

How are they doing it with BB Youtube thing, no clue. Maybe because BB is more international? But even their views are very low, from what I can see majority eps have around 30-35k views which seems very low.

To invest money in digitalization and servers to keep all those thousands of episodes for shows, some which have been gone for more than 30 years? Seems like a bad idea to me, as much as I would personally watch (maybe) some of them. I started watching BB on Youtube and then I stopped after some time...

It is really sad what Y&R has become.

1 hour ago, kalbir said:

April 13, 1984 Y&R Victor and Nikki wedding.

Wow, I would have expected a rise. But instead they fell from week before. I would have thought that the lead up to the wedding, which was Friday, I guess, would have gave the show a boost. And even in the subsequent weeks after the wedding, the ratings just kept going down. 

55 minutes ago, AbcNbc247 said:

Alright, Days!

The climax of the Salem Slasher really helped. 

Poor AW though. Not even the 20th anniversary and Jacqueline Courtney’s return helped much 

Oh I was about to ask what happened on DAYS! Salem Slasher climax, okay, nice!

Looking forward to seeing how premiere of Loving fared against other soaps that week in 1983!  

Thank you, Jason!!

Just for my records, do we have full 78 now? I am missing some weeks, but I don't know if those are generally missing or I missed to input them in my spreadsheet  

Great news!! Cannot wait

13 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

I think it was Worldvision that handled the P&G soaps at that time. Definitely a distribution company.

AW had previously aired on the 9 network in Oz in the 70's at 11am at one point for several years.

14 hours ago, will81 said:

It was also very common for networks here to have package deals with companies that included several shows and were effectively forced on them. So it is impossible to know. Network 10 that aired it may have done a deal with the distributor, not P&G, that included big shows as well as others they were trying to get into international markets. 

I remember in early 90s, in Croatia we suddenly had Guiding Light, As the World Turns and Edge of Night all airing for one year. I guess our main TV Network at the time bought the package of the soaps for one year. Unfortunately, I guess none of them caught on with the audience, because I am pretty sure they only aired for 1 year.

13 hours ago, Skylover said:

The more fans we have, the better! Have you watched Neighbours before, @Manny?

No, never!

Actually it has been many years since I watched any daytine soap and I thought Neighbors coming to Prime would be a great time to start watching a soap again.. but alas........

7 hours ago, Liberty City said:

VPNs are a life-saver! I never used them before but now I swear by them!

I keep hearing that

I already watch too much TV and I am worried that VPN will offer so much more and I will never leave my home hahaha

Thank you, both! I never really used VPN, so it did not occur to me to use it now  Might try! Thanks!

26 minutes ago, Skylover said:

Where are you hoping to watch it from?

I live in Luxembourg.

The ratings seem to be generally slipping (for some more, for some to a lesser extent), so I was wondering if the rise of the sale of VCRs is attributing to this. I thought maybe 1982 would be too early for this, but I found a chart. So I guess VCR sales will really explode in 1985. 

I wish Prime would release Neighbors in all of their markets, instead of doing it just in a few selected markets.

2 hours ago, JAS0N47 said:

Nothing. That was me seeing it as 8.9 on the Fast National page. When I noticed your message, I looked at the page again and it actually says 6.9. The Fast National weeks are sometimes a little harder to read, and I don't always do a double-check of them because they are different than the usual 2-weeks-per-issue issues, which are listed by time period (just the like the order I have them listed on the charts I type up), as opposed to the Fast Nationals, which are only listed alphabetically.  

So, if you ever notice something weird like that, please point it out. I've done my best to put the accurate numbers each week. I double check the 2-weeks-per-issue issues, so there's much less of a chance I have anything wrong in those. So the ones to be on the lookout would be random jumps in the Fast National weeks. I have replaced the wrong chart above and issued the correct one, with YR at 6.9 for that week:

 

 

 

1978-1989 at the moment. 1977 coming next. Probably next year will be the earlier years of the 1970's, so you need patience until 2024!

Ooh, okay! Makes sense! No problem, thanks for the info and hard work, Jason!!

I am also excited for all the future years you are preparing with all this data!! Exciting!!

Wow! What happened that caused this huge jump for Y&R in week of 19 April??

Also, RH seems to be jumping up and down:

March 8 - 5,8

March 15 - 7,0

March 22 - 6,6

March 29 - 5,8

April 5 - 7,4

April 12 - 6,0

April 19 - 6,7

It seems it is up and down more so than others...

20 hours ago, kalbir said:

ED's acting style doesn't lend itself to Ashley being a heroine/romantic lead female. That's why Bill Bell struggled to write a viable love interest for Ashley. Recall the pairings with Brian, Eric, Marc all tanked, and I found the pairing with Steven didn't really work. Bill Bell saw that EB was a match for ED's acting style, that's why Victor/Ashley worked during ED's original run. 

With Ashley/Brad, Bill Bell knew that 1985-1988 Don Diamont was no match acting-wise for ED so he didn't put Ashley/Brad in each other's orbit romantically until Brenda Epperson was in the role. I didn't like that Ashley and Traci became romantic rivals especially since Bill Bell introduced the Abbott daughters as having a good relationship and initially kept them in separate orbits as far as their romances and romantic rivals go.

19 hours ago, BoldRestless said:

 

I agree. I am pretty sure Bell originally was contemplating making Traci the daughter of Brent Davis (when he was running around with just a generic baby picture) and I'm so glad they didn't go that way. She already didn't look like the rest of the family and wasn't involved in the family business, and it would have been so easy to have her fade away if that happened. It made more sense to have that happen to beautiful, strong, Ashley. 

 

Traci was always treated as the ugly duckling with Lauren in her ear telling her Danny would never love her and getting used by her professor. Brad was the hot guy who actually liked her. I always thought Brad had only used her for money, but now that so much 80s footage has come out, I can see that was not how it played out on screen. There's some subtext nodding to that but he also appears to have genuine feelings. And then they played so many scenes, including on her own Honeymoon, where women flirt with Brad and then realize he's with Traci and act disgusted and shocked (unpopular opinion: I don't think DD is that hot... the remarks were as OTT as the ones about Cricket!). Given that, I thought it was terrible for Ashley to get together with her sister's big love, when Ashley had the pick of so many men. And of course the Olivia thing was so gross and a step even beyond that. 

I completely understand your views. That's why I prefaced that I did not watch Brad/Traci episodes and by the time I started, Traci was very much a side character who only sometimes visited. I felt like Don and Eileen had good chemistry. 

But I definitely agree that having Traci go through the death of her only daughter was horrible and unnecessary and very short-sighted. Especially since they killed off Cassie few years prior. It was not needed to have another legacy character to be killed off. 

I always enjoyed Ashley & Brad. I liked them together. But I did start watching the show in 1999, so maybe someone who watched when Brad was with Traci could not stand watching Brad with Traci's sister or whatnot. But I enjoyed them. Hated when Brad slept with Olivia.  

On 7/27/2023 at 8:32 PM, JAS0N47 said:

MAJOR UPDATE ON DAYTIME RATINGS...

 

Another big update for Nielsen ratings fans...I can now confirm that all but 10 weeks (for the time being) will be available for November 1987-September 1989. This time frame bridges perfectly into when the weekly charts started being published in Soap Opera Weekly, which are already available online. There are also 3 weeks that will still be missing from October 1989-January 1990.

 

So, with this update, daytime fans will now have access to ALL weekly Nielsen data from July 1979-Present except for 14 weeks (1 from 1981, 7 from 1987, 5 from 1989, 1 from 1990).

This is so exciting!! Thank you, Jason!!

Yay!! Looking forward to it!! Thanks, Jason!!

On 7/5/2023 at 6:30 AM, kalbir said:

I didn't know As the World Turns was exported to Italy.  So that's the third country that I'm aware of that As the World Turns was broadcast in; Australia and Netherlands are the other two.

We had ATWT in the early 90s together with Guiding Light in Croatia. But I think both shows only aired for one year.

Ah the chipmunk crap is when I finally quit Y&R for good. Never went back... 

Wow, awesome news, Jason!! Looking forward to all this data!!

I do see everyone's point about DAYS cancellation looming for decades and never coming true. Especially seeing Jason47's ratings from 70s and 80s where DAYS is almost always in the bottom half of the ratings, makes me wonder how did they survive for so long? (Yes, I know about their ratings renaissance of the 90s). 

But the difference between before and now (for me at least) when speaking about potential cancellation is that clearly NBC never had a solution to fill up that timeslot. NBC has been just killing their soaps one by one for years and finally when they were left with only one, I would assume that they never found anything that would be as watched for such a budget. 

However, lets be real, DAYS was dumped from NBC. NBC finally found something to replace DAYS with (don't follow those ratings, so I have no idea if it is a successful replacement or not). Now being on a streaming service, I would say that it will be much easier to pull the plug. Because there is no timeslot, there is no replacement needed to be found. As soon as the numbers are not as good, Peacock will pull the plug. And yes, this is only my assumption that DAYS is not doing so stellar on Peacock, just because any news of streaming ratings that do come out and Peacock is mentioned, it is never DAYS that gets mentioned. 

So yes, these are all my assumptions, but I just think it is much easier now to pull the plug than ever before, because it is no longer a network tv show. Streaming services nowadays are killing shows left and right. 

As for the quality.. I wouldn't know. I stopped watching full time a long time ago (when was Hogan the HW? :D) because even then I didn't like it anymore. And even though I tried to come back several times (last attempt was during the Ben serial killer storyline... I remember also watching Bo dying.. was that happening at the same time or was that separate? Don't remember..). Based on what I read, the quality had to have gone down because this SF [!@#$%^&*] has really gone out of control. But I'll have to believe you all when you say it has been just as bad all these years.

EDIT: sorry, just realized now what a huge post this is.. sorry about that

On 6/24/2023 at 8:23 PM, Soapsuds said:

Its been dead for a long time but no one has plugged the plug.

Haha Well you could say that too, indeed. I don't really watch to show anymore, but I still hang around here and read what's happening and it saddens me what this show has become. 

On 6/24/2023 at 9:28 PM, Errol said:

I said something similar to Albert and Mike, the CFO taking over as "PR" on Monday. In my email, I commented on the PR move and the messy way Peacock has handled things with the sudden move to streaming only, based on the lack of discussion online about the show since the move and how certain popular DAYS destinations are dead or dying, or awaiting their "burial space."

Two snippets I wrote:

"It tells me your show is barely hanging itself together and that you’re just riding the most recent renewal until everything collapses."

"I don’t know what else to think but that the show is veering towards its end."

You said it well. I hope they take notice, although I don't think the show is salvageable. It is airing one of the smallest streaming platforms. Who knows how long this platform even has, let alone a 60+ year old soap opera which is in such terrible condition, that writes 324 years in advance and cannot course-correct even if they wanted it to. Even if they improve, I don't think enough audience watches Peacock or watches DAYS on Peacock to make the positive word of mouth spread. So best case scenario, they keep the numbers they have now, but I doubt this would keep the budget from getting slashed, because if your numbers are stale and costs keep growing (due to inflation or otherwise), the budget will go down. 

20 hours ago, JAS0N47 said:

A note on the ratings. I will be pausing the posts on the ratings for a bit due to time constraints. Look more towards probably August for the regular ratings posts to return. And 1980's ratings fans, as a teaser, you now have a LOT more to look forward to than just the first year (1980) of the decade!!

Thanks a lot, Jason!! Looking forward to this!!

This show is dying a very slow and painful death...