If this lethargy continues, when will daytime die forever?

[MarkH]

It's been done. Weren't Gordon Thomson and Kin Shriner on some doomed thing for a while?

[Toups]

Family Passions: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108844/

Some familiar names:

Bruce Neckles

Thom Racina

Roscoe Born

Hayden Christensen

Anders Hove

Gordon Thomson

Kin Shriner

Jørn Winther

[brimike]

Man, I'd sell a major organ to see Gordon Thomson and Kin Shriner in ANYTHING together!

Anyone have the scoop?

[Toups]

The last time Y&R was in the top 30 in Canada was for the week April 14-20, 2008. Y&R placed 24th with 818,000 Viewers.

[MarkH]

Thanks Toups--I think--for Family Passions. (I heard it was awful, but never saw a second).

Where are you getting those Canadian ratings. PM if needed :-). I really want to make a 30 year graph of Canadian ratings. You know I'm not joking...

[Toups]

Yeah, Thom Racina said he had a horrible time.

http://www.bbm.ca/en/top_programs.html

They only list the top 30 every week. Have fun researching!

[TC]

I've seen bits and pieces of "Family Passions" and later came to know Jennifer Dale, a lovely woman and great person.

But that show was a joke. The German accents were like Benny Hill in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang".. and that's just for starters.

[MarkH]

Wow, quite a resource.

I wonder if BBM would make other data available. I may ask...

Does this ever rerun?

As a 15 year old show, I guess there is none of it on youtube

[brimike]

GERMAN ACCENTS?!

:lol:

[DaytimeFan]

As you can see, Y&R has actually GAINED viewers over a few years ago.

And remember the BBM ratings are the Top 30...in the country. That's daytime, primetime, weekend, whatever. For a SOAP to crack the top 30 is remarkable and further testament that Canadian soap habits are different from American.

[MarkH]

In addition to the BBM stuff that Toups linked, do you have other data sources?

[Toups]

I never heard that Passions did well in Canada. Cool. I gueses it shouldn't be too surprising since it came on at 3:30pm in Ontario. It was Y&R's lead in. Imagine that. Talk about opposite audiences. LOL

Canoe.ca's Jam! Showbiz used to list National, Toronto, and Quebec ratings but not anymore.

The timeslot helps. It comes on at 4:30pm in Ontario, so they get that huge Toronto audience.

[DaytimeFan]

Oh yes, Passions was a hit for Global, particularly in the youthful demographic that came home at 3:30...and because the younger kids watched it...when Y&R rolled on afterwards Mommy and Daddy tuned in (surprise!)

As far as other data sources: if you go to your library you might have access to an online database called Canadian Mass Media Complete...I found several tables of daytime ratings for Canada but they were annual (I did this research quite some time ago!). Finally, the stockholder reports for CTV usually had some info in them.

[TC]

I meeeke theeze toyz foerrrr the BARON!

[MarkH]

Growing up in Toronto, CHCH TV 11's 4 pm broadcast of Y&R totally hooked me. It came on after school, so it was the only show I could actually watch.

Around 1983, I think, CHCH lost Y&R to Global. Global knew the 4 pm broadcast time was a fundamental component of the show's success, and planned to keep that time slot.

But CHCH decided they weren't going to HELP Global. So, after the deal fell through, they still had the show for about 6 months before they would lose it. So CHCH cancelled the 4 pm showing, and decided to simulcast the American broadcast at 12:30 pm. They also stopped showing day-ahead episodes.

I was....BEREFT. Noooooooo!

So the day it started being at 12:30, I scraped money together, went to Sears and bought a Beta VCR. The remote for this unit was connected with a WIRE to the machine. Of course, by that I learned the miracle of time shifting, and have recorded Y&R almost every day since.

My point with this story is this: I would never have discovered Y&R had it not been on at 4 or 4:30 pm. The daily airing at that time made the show a family event (Dad got home from work early, and he watched too; Mom would iron or whatever in front of it). Everyone in my extended family watched (still watches) because of the convenient time slot.

So, I cannot believe that this couldn't work south of the border (49th parallel) too.