All:Would soap operas survive and get better ratings if they all started at 3pm in the afternoon?

[danthig]

I want to know the posters opinions on this topic.What if the daytime soaps started airing at 3pm in the afternoon? Would it increase ratings? Would it Be a ratings disaster? Would it insure the viability of the genre?What is everybody's take on this? I want this topic to become a long thread if possible.

[Dr. Jay S.W.]

Maybe.

[Dan]

It doesn't matter if they aired at 3 pm or 3 am. As long as they are penned by such incompetent writers and headed by such disrespectful executives, soaps will not survive regardless of the timeslot.

[Port Oak Valley]

I agree with Dan. If they got better people behind the scenes I think they would have better ratings in the late afternoon, more people would be home from work and school.

[Skin]

I think they would get better ratings if they had a better time slot. More oppurtunities to catch veiwers in the evening then during the afternoon or morning. It would be more convient for veiwers to watch during the afternoon say 3-6 then now. IMO. More people work and times change.

No doubt the quality of the show affects the ratings but I don't think they would be as bad if they had a better time slot. But who knows.

[MarkH]

I think Danthig is onto something.

In Canada, Y&R airs after 4 pm in many markets. Indeed, it has aired as "day ahead" at 4 pm or 4:30 pm in the Toronto area since the 1970s...first on CHCH TV 11 and later on Canwest-Global TV network. To my knowledge, it is the hottest soap in the area, and very popular. I can personally say I got hooked all those years ago because it was an after-school/after-work thing I could enjoy with my family.

This is why I really, really, really want to know the SoapNet ratings (but can't find them anywhere). The SoapNet model, it seems to me, is brilliant...because it deals with the fact that the traditional soap viewer is no longer at home during the day. But, of course, it doesn't have wide distribution yet.

[R Sinclair]

Never gonna happen. I hate to be Nora Negative in this make believe game, but still. ABCD's line up alone would take up the 3pm to 6pm block, so that means, definitely for my area (NY/NJ/CT Tri-State Metropolitan area), you're wiping out Eyewitness News at 5pm and only having a 30 minute block for local evening news between 6-6:30pm.

[NYC123]

Agian. it does not matter. Its the stories that are written.

[Skin]

I wonder how the ratings are when the news is on?

Are they highly rated shows? I can't imagine anything from 4-7/8 being that big of a ratings winner. In many locations it's just repeats of syndicated shows like Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Simpsons, Martin, ect. I'd be really disappointed if the soaps couldn't out do the ratings for repeat shows every body has seen atleast 5 times already.

[Skin]

I disagree. If you air two programs at different times you are going to get different results. If you air a show at 3 am and then air that same program at 3 pm you are going to get a different number of audiences. It's all about timing and competetion IMO. Sure quality is another biggie but I don't think ratings would suck so much if they had a more convienent time period. But then again I may be wrong. Who knows maybe GH and Days would get a .4 or .3 at 5:30pm?

[DaytimeFan]

I think American soaps need to adopt the British time slot model. In England and the rest of the UK the soaps air after 6pm and run for 30 minutes a piece. Granted with the terrible writing hitting soaps for the past decade or two the time slot issue doesn't really matter. I do think though that daytime is dead and that it is only a matter of time before audiences in the daypart erode to unrecognizable levels.

A previous poster is bang on about Y&R...in Canada it airs after 3 or 4pm and is the hottest thing on the air and is immensely popular as it works as a wonderful lead into the evening news.

[MoTheGreat]

I don't care if they cut them down to a 1/2 hour or put them on at 3pm. the problem are recycle writers who don't have any imagination like the viewers that watch them do. I read better fanfics then what's going on in soaps.

[jcar03]

We have that they are called Primetime Soaps. Anything after 6pm is not considered daytime.

[All My Shadows]

Many affiliates, especially down here in the south it seems, do the same thing. One of my CBS stations airs between Montel and the news, at 4pm central. It's been that way for as long as I can remember.

[dragonflies]

When I lived in California in the late 80's, early 90's, the area I lived GH didn't start until 4 pm. I never understood why, but not sure if it did well or not at that time, but GH was very popular with the young crowd and alot were happy they'd get to watch GH after they got home from school, so it might have done pretty well at that time.

No I don't think a change in timeslot makes a difference, if the writing still sucks.