August 11-15, 2008

[typoprone]

.5 increase in HH doesn't impress me all that much. I realize that soaps these days rarely go up or down more than .1 or .2 in HH from week to week. But still, my initial reaction to the .5 increase was "that's it?!"

[KLN]

The ratings will plummet in a week or two. The show sucks and the rise this week is a total fluke. Isn't this a .5 rise? No surprise that this comes during the time that Ed Scott's re-write material begins airing, LoL. Get a clue, Corday!

Pretty pathetic that a .5 rise only lands them at a 2.4 rating these days. Sad.

[usetobeasoapfan]

LOL...

2.4 DOOL....WoW!

OG, how I hope GH had a miserable week

[Rakesh]

Yay! Go DOOL. I hope the majority of those viewers stick around.

[Ryan]

Wow....Go Days! Last week was really good and I'm glad the show got a much needed boost. I bet they beat GH in the ratings.

[Sylph]

Hopefully someone will

FIRE ROBERT GUZA JR.!

[Southofnowhere]

GO Days it's your BRITHDAY!

[Ilovedays]

[jcar03]

Wow, I really didn't expect the Olympics to help DAYS whatsoever. I am soooooo wrong.

[Darcy]

That's over a 25% increase in ratings from the week before for DOOL.

Questions:

- Did this result in any decrease in ratings for the soaps on ABC and CBS?

- What percentage of this increase is from former DOOL viewers, new soap viewers, ABC and/or CBS soap viewers who switched to watch the Olympics and didn't bother to switch back, Olympics viewers too lazy to change the channel, etc.??

- Will DOOL maintain that rating for this second week of the Olympics?

- How long after the Olympics will it take for DOOL ratings to start going down?

[Toups]

AMC hit a new low in HH with a 1.8

[Darcy]

I believe they air directly against DOOL in most markets, so that is not too suprising considering the Olympics DOOL increase.

[c0rinne]

Personally, I don't see that it much matters for DAYS. The likelihood that those extra people stay is pretty slim. The ratings for the Olympics are already slipping. I would have been surprised if DAYS wasn't higher, but I know it'll fall again.

[Jess]

Ryan, I'm so glad you said that. I was sitting here thinking, well I thought Days was pretty good last week and I'm glad the show got a boost. :lol: I've accepted my role as unsophisticated as compared to the daytime experts, but I am glad the show got a bump because I've enjoyed it.

[jpoliver78]

Not to throw cold water on all the "Days of Our Lives" fans, but merely the voice of reason. The apparant 2.4 rating, a 0.5 point increase may not actually be for "Days". As already mentioned, "Days" was enveloped by Olympic coverage last week (and this week) and may have aired outside of its normal 1:00 p.m. ET time period - or perhaps pre-empted entirely.

I am not familiar with now Nielsen Media Research scores daytime ratings, but if it follows the pattern of prime-time ratings, there is a two-fold process. First, the "overnight ratings" are released, these are the numbers from the top media markets (i.e. NYC, LA, Chicago, etc.) and count viewers by time slot, not by actual program. A more detailed report is issued later in the day (or the next day) that includes all the media markets and is broken down by program instead of time period. Why is this important? Take for example the CBS reality series "Big Brother 10". The over-night ratings for its Thursday (August 14) episode put BB10 at an average of 6.72 million viewers. However, the series was pre-empted in several large markets (including Pittsburgh) due to local NFL coverage and its actual viewers was around 5.8 million viewers. So, 6.7 million people were in fact watching CBS at 8:00 p.m. ET on August 14, but only 5.8 million of those were watching "Big Brother". Perhaps Nielsen does something similar in daytime. Is that 2.4 rating what NBC averaged for the 1:00 p.m. ET time slot or is that what "Days" actually scored? Also, I would suspect - as someone else has mentioned - that due to the fluid nature of "Days" both last week and this week, that all episodes aired during the Olympics will be classified as specials by the network and not included in the official tally for the soap.