Yeah. But I wonder to what extent it influences airtime. I suspect heavily, and by that I mean there must have been times he's told whatever writer that there was a guaranteed saturation level for whatever character, right down to required minutes of airtime. No way of knowing for sure, and maybe I'm just paranoid

I wouldn't put it past him. Lol, my little friend conspiracy theory thinks so too.

AMC's ratings going up last week was attributed to 3 reasons....

1) Proper Promotion - ABC ran promos touting this story and it worked.

2) Proper Build - You knew this was coming sooner than later, and it worked

3) Good writing & balance

I credit 4 characters being placed in Life & Death situations - they ended the previous Friday episode with Angie in a helicopter with the bad guy, Jesse jumping off a building to get to her, Julia shot and Tad shot. Since that doesn't happen every week like on GH it worked here.

There was no difference in the promotions from the weeks before. There was no change in balance (it was 65-70% vets again) in the week they went down (5/19-23) and the week they went up (5/26-30).

I credit 4 characters being placed in Life & Death situations - they ended the previous Friday episode with Angie in a helicopter with the bad guy, Jesse jumping off a building to get to her, Julia shot and Tad shot. Since that doesn't happen every week like on GH it worked here.

There was no difference in the promotions from the weeks before. There was no change in balance (it was 65-70% vets again) in the week they went down (5/19-23) and the week they went up (5/26-30).

I think AMC got a bump because it placed some beloved characters in exciting, life and death situations. People wanted to see what would happen to Jesse, Angie, Tad, Julia, and, hell, even Opal. The daily numbers trended downward as the week progressed, so I wouldn't expect them to sustain these numbers this week. It's the same exact thing that happened to OLTL a week earlier: an inflated early week rating followed by normal numbers for the rest of the week, followed the next by their usual numbers. So, I would expect AMC to be back to the usual 1.9/2.0 next week. Hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.

ATWT was number 1 from 1958 to 1978.

In 1984, Steve and Betsy's wedding ended GH 4 year reign just for a week.

I'm commenting ahead, but I'm very interesting in finding out about OLTL's ratings after this week.

Days....meh. It's such a disappointment that I almost root for lower ratings for what was my favorite soap for decades.

Does anyone think that ATWT's "new low" in the ratings has anything to do with it's other new low - dumping Marth and installing (the lovely yet not Lily) Noelle as nuLily? Goutman has an infuriating interview on SOD about the fan's opinions where he tells them he doesn't care the slightest about what fan's think or write about. When asked if fans should even bother to send anything he says "No". The only thing he listens to is his gut and the ratings. Well, I hope that's at least half-true (the ratings part) - cause the ratings say "GET MARTHA BACK NOW!".