Week of Feb 14/00

Y&R 6.0

B&B 4.6

GH 4.6

DAYS 4.5

AMC 4.2

OLTL 4.0

ATWT 3.8

GL 3.7

PC 2.3

PSSN 2.0

Total rating point lost 6 years time total loss of rating(Feb 2000 to Current)

Y&R-1.6

B&B-1.4

GH-2.0

Days-2.0

AMC-1.9

OLTL-1.6

ATWT-1.3

GL-1.3

pass-.5

As you kan see hailed as the most horrible show on daytime it is the only soap that has the least amount of viewership lost in 6 years time. I kant belive how much Days and GH has lost The P&G shows kome in 2nd tied with leeast lost viewrs wow shocking numers eh?

Well to be fair, you're just picking and choosing any week of the year.

Also, the ratings point has changed.

We can only compare the amount of viewers to see the whole picture.

No, for the networks it's always the ratings that count. So someone should research to see how many viewers did 2000 rating pt. mean.

Total viewers mean very little to the networks.

As you kan see hailed as the most horrible show on daytime it is the only soap that has the least amount of viewership lost in 6 years time. I kant belive how much Days and GH has lost The P&G shows kome in 2nd tied with leeast lost viewrs wow shocking numers eh?

1. Learn to spell. The letter 'cee' is your friend

2. Relative loss is more telling than absolute loss. For example, consider two people. One person has 2 apples and one has 100 apples. Each loses one apple. Who has lost more? By your analysis, they suffer equal losses, but the one person has lost 50% of his apples while the other has only lost 1% of his. Keeping this in mind, consider the relative loss of viewership (even though Toups objection is valid as well...):

Name..2000...Latest...% Lost

DAYS..4.5...2.4...46.7%

GH.....4.6...2.6...43.5%

AMC...4.2...2.4...42.9%

OLTL..4...2.4...40.0%

GL.....3.7...2.4...35.1%

ATWT..3.8...2.5...34.2%

B&B...4.6...3.2...30.4%

Y&R...6.0...4.4...26.7%

PSSN...2.0...1.5...25.0%

Again, Passions shows the lowest loss, but the Bell soaps have faired much better than P&G soaps. ABC and Days in the same class I'd guess if weekly volatility of ratings (which still existed back then) is taken into account

We can only compare the amount of viewers to see the whole picture.

Well, that is partly true. Ratings are the most important thing in viewership information for the networks. They represent, as you probably know, a percent of all television households. So, they are representative because they are percentages. If once upon a time a soap was being watched by 8% and now it's 3% of all households, it's quite a difference! Yes, twenty years ago there were, I'm just presenting an example, 95000000 households and now there are 106000000. But that doesn't matter, the important thing is that now 4% watch and five years ago it was 8%.

Again, Passions shows the lowest loss, but the Bell soaps have faired much better than P&G soaps. ABC and Days in the same class I'd guess if weekly volatility of ratings (which still existed back then) is taken into account

This is exactly the right analysis to do. Repeating it now with the absolute number of viewers would be most interesting.

But, it's really amazing that the industry is not carefully studying Y&R to understand why it has (a) the highest absolute numbers, and ( the least relative decline. These two elements suggest it is treading water better than all the other soaps. Given that Y&R is now also #1 in the 18-49 demo, with men, AND with Passions' coveted "12-17 year old girls", it seems that everyone should be falling over themselves trying to imitate.

Instead, they're all firing the veterans. I understand the immediate cost decisions that lead to such choices, but how can you ignore evidence? Let's say coffee sales were declining worldwide (they're not). But let's say Starbucks was losing a lot less of the market than Maxwell House. Wouldn't you, as a coffee seller, try to copy Starbucks? Wouldn't you, if you were Maxwell House, NOT throw out your existing formula and move to something that was EVEN MORE different from Starbucks?

I just do not understand the ABC strategy. The only thing that makes sense to me is that they've decided to create a different daytime lineup of reality/talk/game shows, and they need to tell the story that "viewers abandoned soaps" before they can do this.