May 5-9, 2008

[Jess]

Yeah, I use Stata because it is so easy. The good thing about R is it is free. and it is constantly updated. There are some online manuals you can download. I don't know if there are any online courses. It's a lot like the old typesetting language. The graphics are really awesome too. There was a course on it at the university where I work so I sat through it. I admit I still primarily use Stata or SPSS because they are both so easy and because the university buys the software for me.

If you type in R and statistical software into a search engine it will take you to some pages where you can either download it or get manuals.

I never could figure out Quicken!

[Angela]

MONDAY, MAY 5

1.(1) Y&R: Monday: 3.7/5,193,000 (+388,000)

2.(2) B&B: Monday: 2.8/3,916,000 (+264,000)

3.(4) ATWT: Monday: 2.1/2,925,000 (+204,000)

4.(3) GH: Monday: 2.2/2,871,000 (+54,000)

5.(7) DAYS: Monday: 2.1/2,623,000 (+213,000)

6.(8) GL: Monday: 1.8/2,474,000 (+160,000)

7.(6) AMC: Monday: 2.0/2,469,000 (+57,000)

8.(5) OLTL: Monday: 2.0/2,424,000 (-13,000)

TUESDAY, MAY 6

1.(1) Y&R: Tuesday: 3.5/4,742,000 (-451,000)

2.(2) B&B: Tuesday: 2.5/3,486,000 (-430,000)

3.(4) GH: Tuesday: 2.3/2,827,000 (-44,000)

4.(5) DAYS: Tuesday: 2.1/2,749,000 (+126,000)

5.(3) ATWT: Tuesday: 1.9/2,652,000 (-273,000)

6.(8) OLTL: Tuesday: 2.0/2,380,000 (-44,000)

7.(7) AMC: Tuesday: 1.9/2,274,000 (-195,000)

8.(6) GL: Tuesday: 1.6/2,222,000 (-252,000)

WEDNESDAY, MAY 7

1.(1) Y&R: Wednesday: 3.4/4,926,000 (+184,000)

2.(2) B&B: Wednesday: 2.8/3,863,000 (+377,000)

3.(3) GH: Wednesday: 2.3/2,976,000 (+149,000)

4.(5) ATWT: Wednesday: 2.1/2,881,000 (+229,000)

5.(4) DAYS: Wednesday: 1.9/2,573,000 (-176,000)

6.(6) OLTL: Wednesday: 1.9/2,444,000 (+64,000)

7.(8) GL: Wednesday: 1.7/2,330,000 (+108,000)

8.(7) AMC: Wednesday: 1.9/2,320,000 (+46,000)

THURSDAY, MAY 8

1.(1) Y&R: Thursday: 3.9/5,435,000 (+509,000)

2.(2) B&B: Thursday: 3.1/4,426,000 (+563,000)

3.(4) ATWT: Thursday: 2.4/3,227,000 (+346,000)

4.(5) DAYS: Thursday: 2.1/2,892,000 (+319,000)

5.(3) GH: Thursday: 2.2/2,766,000 (-210,000)

6.(6) OLTL: Thursday: 2.1/2,619,000 (+175,000)

7.(7) GL: Thursday: 1.9/2,560,000 (+230,000)

8.(8) AMC: Thursday: 2.0/2,419,000 (+99,000)

FRIDAY, MAY 9

1.(1) Y&R: Friday: 3.3/4,491,000 (-944,000)

2.(2) B&B: Friday: 2.7/3,701,000 (-725,000)

3.(5) GH: Friday: 2.1/2,798,000 (+32,000)

4.(4) DAYS: Friday: 2.1/2,642,000 (-250,000)

5.(3) ATWT: Friday: 1.9/2,571,000 (-656,000)

6.(6) OLTL: Friday: 1.9/2,418,000 (-201,000)

7.(7) GL: Friday: 1.7/2,358,000 (-202,000)

8.(8) AMC: Friday: 1.8/2,351,000 (-68,000)

[MarkH]

Thanks!

LOL about Qucken...me neither. I just use Excel to balance accounts.

[Sylph]

Can't wait! However, if it's something that will seriously abuse of your free time, then you can do it sometime in the future.

Thank you, Jess. I just used Excel because it's the most straight-forward. I could've used a really fancy graphics tool, but there's really no point in embellishing this, I only wanted the people to see the disastrous decline (the main point). Besides, there's only so much time I can dedicate to doing this.

And yes, I'm fluent in Fortan as well as LaTeX (I use the MiKTeX distribution), I use those every day, pretty much.

I'll definitely give R a try!

Yes, we are. And proud to be.

A man after my own heart.

[MichaelGL]

Wow... I completely disagree with that. If anything RC's writing is everything what a soap should be.

Congrats to DAYS...yeah as a poster said above that's all I have to say about that.

It's depressing to see Y&R so low.

GL gains, but remains below 2.0 in HH. Both AMC and GL are sinking ships.

[MarkH]

Okay, here are soap ratings since they started being recorded. The first graph shows all soaps that ever existed. The figure is busy, but I put it up for nostalgia reasons...that list of titles warms and breaks my heart. The second graph shows only the surviving soaps.

The source of data for both graphs is a combination of SON's ratings archive (the older archive posted by Rick) and, for the missing years, the soap opera ratings shown at Wikipedia. I cannot affirm accuracy of either, but where they overlapped, SON and Wikipedia ratings were essentially identical. Data for the 2007-2008 season may not be complete up to the present.

[Aside to Toups: Do you think I could post the Wikipedia ratings, for the missing years, to the SON archive? Even since you started posting the weeklies, since 2002, do you think I could post the seasonals? This is my OCD...I like complete data sources].

All (US) soaps:

Surviving soaps:

[Sylph]

What can I say... This is the dying of the genre... Look at the amazing slope of that pretty much straight line that's just headed for zero in no time.

Excellent graphs, Mark! Thank you!

[Sylph]

Polished up a bit :

[Canfan]

This sums it up for me, a thirty-something with a masters degree, but yes, with poor grammar skills. I grew up loving soaps because these characters felt like family. Not anymore. I don't recogonize most of them. If I had kids they would'nt become viewers because I am no longer watching. I think that is a large part of the problem. Soaps are not handed down from generation to generation anymore. Largely because the suits in charge have driven away a large part of the audience. Its redundant at this point to say it because so many of us have, but it makes me sad all the same. I think it could have been different.

Watching old clips on you know where makes me miss Douglas Marland more than ever. That man was a gift to the world of daytime. JMO.

[MarkH]

Much better

Why do you add AW and the now-cancelled PSSN? Just to show what a mistake it was to cancel AW? :-)

[Sylph]

Well, that and also I was always interested how AW fared under Lemay. And turns out, he managed somewhat to keep them constant, slightly rising at one point and then the drop continued. AW never regained the viewers after Harding Lemay left.

BTW, Mark, did you watch it when he was writing?

[MarkH]

Sadly, I never saw Lemay's.

I watched AW in the early-mid 80s (where, in your ratings, you'll see AW enjoyed a 4-year bump up....it was still at the bottom of the pack, but it trended up). This was the era where Cass, Felicia, Wallingford, Jackee, Sally, Catlin, and Julie Osburn's character were all driving story, going to Mallorca. Carl Hutchins was introduced at this point, as were Jake and Marley. I enjoyed it so much. Mary Page Keller left, and so did Thomas Ian Griffith and Nancy Frangione...and I got busy...and I just sort of lost interest. It was a totally integrated cast, and the dialogue was just regularly hilarious (enough that SOW did a story on it, calling it the "Saturday Night Live" of daytime).

I read Lemay's book voraciously, though, and realized how much I had missed.

Hey, here is one final ratings figure. It is nothing but the simply year-by-year ratings average, collapsed across all soaps. Sometimes, there is power in simplicity.

[Toups]

All of 2001, and everything I have from 1992-1994 has been added in the ratings archive.

All of 1998-2000, and what I have of 1995-1997 will come at a later date.

[jackal]

Holy ! I see an O.J. type hit has happened to soaps. Who would have guessed the hit would happen after the old writers came back and their material started airing? Congrats to the few who pulled in pluses; Days, GL, B&B and one for A.T.W.T.

[Sylph]

Oh, that book is amazing... I'm sorry you didn't watch when he was there.

Do you by any chance have that "Saturday Night Live of daytime article"?

I was just about to do the same thing! I was thinking whether I should take a simple average or a median! This is just disastrous, I just can't see how these soaps can survive...

Thanks, Toups, I'm going to check them right away!!