You know where I think that small screen can work? When you're at the gym on the treadmill. You can keep that device pretty close, and with the earbuds it's a pretty intimate little viewing system. I'm not saying it is optimal, but I think it works.

I'm sometimes at the gym during lunch hour and catching B&B. Nothing better as a motive to keep on running (and your pulse racing) than to get frustrated over Brooke... LOL!

I watch it on TV though and not on cell/I-pod.

SOAPnet sucks! It was good when it was actually solely about soaps, but they've gone too far off track. The Fashionista Diaries? Sunday Night Movie? Plus theres no need for recent teen dramas. Honestly the only reason I watch Soapnet is if I didnt DVR ABC soaps off of ABC and/or to watch Melrose Place on Saturday. Thats all. The network is no longer appealing to me. Im not surrpised if ratings have gone down

I agree Cheap, plus the unequal treatment that even the ABC soaps get. It's obvious that GH is favored on Soapnet(of the 3 ABC Soaps) and that turns off alot of people, those who hate GH, and might love OLTL or AMC and want to see those get equal treatment.

I saw it third hand so who knows if it was accurate but there was a post that last fall one of the disclosures to the Disney board involved a 33% decrease in SN's prime time viewers. Presumably that was the 8 to 10 pm hour. To the extent the post was accurate sounds like the exodus in viewers from the ABC soaps isn't just in the daytime hour.

I saw it third hand so who knows if it was accurate but there was a post that last fall one of the disclosures to the Disney board involved a 33% decrease in SN's prime time viewers. Presumably that was the 8 to 10 pm hour. To the extent the post was accurate sounds like the exodus in viewers from the ABC soaps isn't just in the daytime hour.

I own some Disney stock and every year I receive this nice, glossy book from the company that goes through the Disney empire and lists how each sector is performing.

The ABC Daytime page has been consistently full of spin. In the years when AMC was scoring well under MMT it was just spinning hard on how well the demos were (leaving out the fact that OLTL was in the crapper)...as GH's numbers have dwindled the focus has been placed on how well the show does in 18-49, leaving out the fact that TPIR and Y&R crush GH and that B&B has more total viewers. Last year the soaps were hardly mentioned at all aside from the obligatory Luke & Laura picture and a picture of Susan Lucci with Mickey Mouse. It was all about The View and how much Rosie had increased the numbers...Brian Frons is lucky ABC is doing so well in the primetime market...once that changes (which it will, this is a cyclical business) his bosses will take a hard look at ABC Daytime and can his ass, it happened at NBC a few years ago after NBC's primetime numbers hit the fan. When all is well in primetime the daytime sector is forgotten, when the company is losing money daytime is always blamed.

SoapNet is major spin as well. It is basically a rehash of the ABC Daytime page...noting that SoapNet is available in something like 70 million homes...failing to note that 69,900,000 of those homes don't watch it!

SoapNet is major spin as well. It is basically a rehash of the ABC Daytime page...noting that SoapNet is available in something like 70 million homes...failing to note that 69,900,000 of those homes don't watch it!

I know you're joking with that 100,000 estimate...but does anyone have ANY idea how many viewers watch the network at any one time? I'd kill for some ratings.

"If you look at the advertisers on Soapnet, many of them are more "infomercial grade" (as opposed to major national advertisers). So if you have low-rent advertisers with a small number of eyeballs, it really might not generate enough to keep up the costs."

This surprises me. I remember watching SoapNet a few years ago and seeing almost the same advertising lineup that I saw for the ABC soaps. Sure, they had an occasional "informercial grade" ad, but you find at least some on most cable networks. Right now, IMO, the problem with SoapNet is they've turned off the group of viewers they set out to cultivate...soap watchers. I might tune in in before noon to rewatch an episode of Days I loved when I watched it the first time, but that's the only time I spend there now. The Days marathon is off my schedule...and I really don't care for those Sunday night movies. I miss Port Charles and Another World. I miss Soap Talk and Soap Center. The Fasionista Dairies just couldn't begin to compare.

I don't know if I could EVER watch a soap on my tiny-ass cell phone. However, watching them on my computer during lunch? I've certainly done that.

I have a friend who watchs Days on her iphone everyday. She sets up in the car, when at the gym, on her lunch break. I would do the same thing if i had a iphone or another phone that could watch video like that and not a sidekick.

I don't think writing is the problem at all. Yes the writing sucks, but if you will notice all the soaps are sliding and they all have different writers. Even the ones hanging on by their fingernails (Y&R, B&B and ATWT) have the same sucky ratings all the other soaps have. And nothing inshow is going to change that because even if you got F Scott Fitzgerald to rise from the dead to write AMC, it still airs at 1 PM when no one is home to watch it. And even the best of soaps are , let's face it , pretty ridiculous and unrealistic.

All soaps need to do is run at night. Then more people will be able to watch it and consequently more people will form the minority that watches soaps. That's how Eastenders prospered all these years. Especially while the strike was on that was NBC's chance to run DOOL M/W/Fr at 8 PM and see if anyone took the bait.

If SoapNet were to go off the air tomorrow, it would be no huge loss. Even at its peak, the network only reran old episodes of three soaps: AW, RH, & PC.

Every soap fan I know is disappointed in SoapNet. Soap viewers certainly don't want to see "Sunday Night Movies" and rernus of prime-time "teen" soaps. Also, I really don't think that all that many are interested in watching same day repeats of the current soaps (since one could simply record these programs during the afternoons). What viewers really want to see are lots and lots of classic soaps: non only reruns of cancelled soaps, but also old episodes of current soaps.

Even though GSN's lineup leaves a lot to be desired, they still show a fair number of game shows from the past. When SoapNet came out, most everyone thought that it would celebrate this genre's rich history. Yet, unlike GSN, SoapNet has not even come close to following its original concept. And once Frons arrived, the network dwindled to new lows.

Edited March 16, 200817 yr by Max

I completely agree Max! Frons is utter poison to Soapnet and ABC Daytime and the soap genre in general. I hope that's why someone new was brought in under him for Soapnet, that maybe they're grooming someone to take over for him

GSN has changed dramatically the last couple of years. Like Soapnet, they have refrained from running classic game shows to instead feature celebrity poker. They used to run b/w 50s gameshows but no more. Soapnet is just following the same model GSN is following, TVLand and it's dropping of classic sitcoms from the 50s-70s in favor of 90s shlock, and all the other niche channels.

I don't think writing is the problem at all. Yes the writing sucks, but if you will notice all the soaps are sliding and they all have different writers. Even the ones hanging on by their fingernails (Y&R, B&B and ATWT) have the same sucky ratings all the other soaps have. And nothing inshow is going to change that because even if you got F Scott Fitzgerald to rise from the dead to write AMC, it still airs at 1 PM when no one is home to watch it. And even the best of soaps are , let's face it , pretty ridiculous and unrealistic.

All soaps need to do is run at night. Then more people will be able to watch it and consequently more people will form the minority that watches soaps. That's how Eastenders prospered all these years. Especially while the strike was on that was NBC's chance to run DOOL M/W/Fr at 8 PM and see if anyone took the bait.

ITA with this. No matter who's writing, the fact is soaps will continue to decline every single year. Television as a whole is declining - daytime and primetime. Ways to watch tv shows is moving to new techonologies.

If this keeps up, before long Soapnet will be like VH-1-which is a channel that shows everything BUT music videos, Soapnet will show everything BUT soaps

What truly should be unprofitable on that piece of a soap network is SNM!