June 30 - July 4, 2008

[Carolyn1980]

Wow, do I disagree, lol.

I find Judge Judy the only court show worth watching. She doesn't suffer fools gladly, but she's compassionate when the situation calls for it. She's also incredibly smart, just a great judge.

That Marilyn Milian is dumber than a box of rocks, as are all the others of that ilk.

[Rocket Man]

Where's the ABC Daytime news release, I need a good laughter right now.

[Carolyn1980]

The View and The Price is Right are network daytime shows, so they're not included in syndicated ratings, just network daytime ratings. Today is a network morning show, so that's included in network morning ratings (plenty of places to find those, including nbcumv.com). Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart are in the low 1's.

[SteveFrame]

The networks have quit taking chances. They have gotten too scared after the Janet Jackson debacle.

I am a firm believer in family viewing and having family time. Everyone has a right to watch what they want and don't want. I don't hold anything against the ones who complained about it, but at the same time viewers today want a little risk in their viewing - thus the reason that some of the shows like Nip/Tuck have been successful.

Teh pendulum has swung way too far in one direction and the networks are paying for it. come on folks there needs to be balance. you can have both - there can be a happy medium. But not for the network honchos.

Add to that they are just way too cautious about everything. Let there be a little big of viewer outrage over a couple breaking up or a story going this way or that and they just change the direction of the story at the drop of a hat. They have let the viewers hold the shows hostage in a sense.

It just gets so old.

**************************

As to the last poster, yes there are some who are doom and gloom but you can't be all positive about it either. To honestly think in your mind that TPTB are going to put up with these ratings just because other areas are down too is totally looking at the situation with rose colored glasses.

With the way these ratings are they could replace many of these shows with reruns of Judge Judy or Divorce Court or other such shows and make more money off of them.

Hell I just saw an article that said reruns of Law & Order on TNT in the afternoons are doing better than the soaps are. Now that is scary when people would rather watch a rerun of a show than watch first run episodes of the soaps. The networks could easily put reruns of these shows they own on and make more money. And believe me I wouldn't put it past them.

[Rocket Man]

Maybe the Nielsen ratings formula/sample is distorted? It's time for an overhaul of the system that only use random sample to determine who's watching what. It would make sense to have an electronic device to hooked to all televisions, ipod, cellphones, videos, mediavideo, and internet that airs the soaps to measure the viewerships.

[WorldTurner]

No change except the name. TeleVest who has long been involved changed their name to TeleNext. Brian Cahill has been in the same position for quite a while. It's all still the same players just using a different name and logo. It's all still owned by P&G.

[SteveFrame]

I'm sorry I get confused when people keep saying it is the Nielsen sample or the way they do things is the reason the ratings are down.

Duh they have been doing it this way for years and years. They keep their samples the same all the time - keeping teh same amount of people in each age group to make sure the sample is scientific. When I was a Nielsen household, I got cut because at a certain age around my birthday we got cut due to going into a new age bracket that already had the desired scientific number.

All things are done this way. When they do the polls for elections, they don't go around and ask everyone thier opinion. Should those be thrown out too? All things are done by scientific samples - have been done that way for years.

You put that electronic device into all TV's - guess who is going to pay for it - we are. They are just going to raise prices elsewhere on the price of the TV etc. Plus it will take more people to process the data so that will cost even more.

What is funny is that people have been blaming Nielsen for years. They said if they would count colleges ratings for this soap or that soap would go up. They added colleges - soaps went down.

They said they needed to add the DVR/VHS recording ratings, they did. What Toups gives us here takes in account quite a bit of the taped ratings - they still have gone down. If you think these are bad - see the live ratings alone - they are dreadful.

They said they needed to add more people. Last year Nielsen added a lot more households to their samples - guess what ratings still went down.

The more people they add to the quotient the ratings are getting worse.

[Carolyn1980]

The laws of statistics say a random sample is perfectly appropriate.

And the privacy laws would never permit a system that identified what everyone was watching (although with the Democrats in Congress rolling over on the FISA law to protect Bush and the telecom companies, on par with giving Nixon a pass for his illegal wiretapping during Watergate, means the 4th amendment may be the next part of the Constitution used as toilet paper by this administration).

[Ann_SS]

It isn't the storylines or the quality of the writing that is to blame for the soaps decline. People are simply not watching the soaps any more. Watching soaps is a habit and once broken, there is no going back. So it doesn't matter what characters are featured on ATWT. Luke and Noah don't bring in viewers any more that Holden and Carly drive them away. Fanbases always overstate the attraction of couples and characters as a whole. Where are all those viewers that Roger Howarth was supposed to bring as Paul? Same with Luke and Noah, Jack and Carly, etc.

I will say that when it comes to CBS Daytime. I am willing to throw some blame Y&R's way. It is the lead in and the strongest soap. Y&R sudden decline hurts the other soaps, especially B&B. On the other hand, Y&R is probably suffering the most because it had the most audience to lose.

I love Judge Judy. None of the other tv court judges compared to her though I find Joe Brown funny at times. Judy is charismatic, obnoxious, smart, and compassionate all rolled into one. She also can sniff out a lie and BS when it is wafting through her courtroom.

[Loretta3938]

Most of these programs...excluding the soaps...are syndicated, so you can't measure the ratings the same way you do the soaps. Some of them air as late as 7 p.m. or 7:30 p.m...very close to primetime. Oprah airs after the last soaps on my ABC station. Regis & Kelly air at 9 a.m. and Dr. Phil at 10 a.m. A few of these I don't even recognize...whether or not they air in my area. Martha Stewart airs on my NBC affiliate just before Days airs at 1 p.m. Isn't Crosswords the game show that Ty Treadway hosts? It airs on NBC at 3 p.m. in my area...in competition with GH and GL. Maybe NBC shouldn't have been so quick to get rid of their soaps after all.

[GregNYC]

Considering the hype with Cyndi Lauper a 1.8 is very disappointing.

Wasn't Tuesday and Wednesday Tom and Margo's 25th Anniversary? Having those vets on lowered ratings.

[SteveFrame]

Crosswords airs here on Fox opposite AMC and Y&R.

martha Stewart is the lead in for AMC here - no soaps in competition at all - it airs oppsite the local news on NBC and Price is Right on CBS.

Days airs opposite GH and GL here - has for years and years - since Santa Barbara went off I think.

[Jess]

I'll offer a little defense of last week's ratings. I watched Wimbledon in the morning and not Y&R. Wimbledon is once a year and I can catch up on Y&R pretty easily. A few weeks earlier, I watched Tiger Woods and the U.S. Open Golf Tournament instead of any soaps. It was the same logic. It's easy to catch up on a soap, but Tiger Woods was fun to watch that week.

A small defense: second summer semester for university's starts around the fourth of July in many places. Students often take off the first semester and then take classes in the second summer. The little age dips might happen then. You know maybe some of these little dips are just people have a life.

The Olympics are really going to take a toll on DOOL, and it might take a toll on a lot of soaps. For me, it's the same thing: If there is some interesting event on the Olympics, I watch it becuase, yep, I can easily catch up on the soaps.

It doesn't explain consistent ratings falls, but I think special sporting events or news events are easy to watch as opposed to watching a soap every single day.

[Loretta3938]

Days may not be doing as badly as we think...I just checked their total viewership for the 4th of July last year and they gained 67,000 viewers over last year (July 2-6, 2007). Last year, they chose to count two of the five days. This year they wisely labeled all the days as specials.

[Rocket Man]

Obviously with the huge returns of Angie/Jesse & casting GL former star RPG at AMC and the return of Tina/Marty at OLTL did not help the ratings at all.

OLTL long-time viewers wants Tina to interact with Bo, Viki, and other veterans not the newbies and it's time for Marty to stop being portrayed as a vegetable. Perhaps keeping Adriana/Rex/Gigi storyline going through the summer would keep people tuning in but by having Adriana leave the show on the same day as Tina's arrival doesn't do the show justice. Enough of the Starr/Cole/Tess/Natalie/Jared crap because the viewers simply do not care.

AMC needs to stop this endless Zach/Kendall/Ryan/Greenlee madness and the insulting Erica-being-in-prison story since they keep me from tuning in as much as I want to check out RPG's Jake and the upcoming BE's Taylor.

Don't get me started on GH, which TPTB should've given Genie Francis a long-term contract instead of a short-time recurring deal, she deserves BETTER because she's the show's star! Now we are fed with crap by having to see Lulu/Johnny/Claudia/Jason/Sonny/Kate/Jax/Carly every single damn day which causing their ratings to erode. Enough already!