September 15-19, 2008

[dragonflies]

LOL Pratt keeps on a reeling in those viewers

[ivnkplng]

Don't be a jackass, SageyBob. And I know that's a difficult request for you. The only names I post under are ivnkplng (here, at GLMP, and on the yuku boards) and gllover (at PGP). Unlike you, my online goal is not to create distress for other posters, but rather to share in an appreciation of soap opera.

[DaytimeFan]

My God what happened to Y&R!

[Sylph]

Mediocrity, DaytimeFan, mediocrity! Before that, there was a woman called Lynn Latham.

[DaytimeFan]

But to lose 300,000 viewers in a single week?! That's atrocious!

And I haven't been finding Y&R mediocre, I've been finding it quite enjoyable...is it Bill Bell? No. Is it Kay Alden at her peak? No. Is it on par with what Jack Smith was doing or better, I think so. I'm surprised and I bet MAB and HS and PR are too.

[Sylph]

It's not bad, it's just... Bland. And with those medical stories, it's probably driving viewers insane. People just don't have any more patience. 

It lost its spark.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

It should be interesting to see if any soap can get a significant bump for November sweeps, but I seriously doubt it at this point.

None of these shows are as good as they should be, some might be impoving, but the audience won't stick around for constant transitions it seems.

[marceline]

Why bother? You grow attached to characters and stories only to have them disregarded, reversed and/or wiped off the canvas a year or two later.

[Jess]

Now that is the truth. You can't trust soaps, particularly those on ABC. You in invest in characters and stories and then a writer or an EP gets a hair up their butt, and to hell with the viewer, character or story.

[MarkH]

[Sylph]

Latham was terrible. 

This is precisely what I'm saying. First she totally harmed it, alienated a lot of extremely patient and faithful viewers, and then it took too long for something interesting to be set in motion. But once that happened, the writing could not sustain it.

It is still suffering from the same old things: lack of strong vision, mediocre material, behind-the-scenes mess, corporate control of the soap, weird writers hirings/firings etc. One gigantic mess.

Which is what happened. And those viewers won't come back. Y&R is probably the only soap that could regain lost viewers, but not anymore. 

Oh, I was referring to Victor's depression and Heather's condition.

[Sylph]

And for this same week, here is how the telenovelas fared on Univision:

MONDAY

Querida enemiga (7-8 P;): 1.7/3 (1.2), 2.0/3 (1.5)

Al diablo con los guapos (8–9 PM): 2.6/4 (2.1), 2.8/4 (2.4)

Fuego en la sangre (9–10 PM): 2.5/4 (2.1), 2.6/4 (2.2)

TUESDAY

Querida enemiga: 1.8/3 (1.3), 2.0/4 (1.6)

Al diablo con los guapos: 2.7/4 (2.4), 3.0/5 (2.9)

Fuego en la sangre: 2.6/4 (2.5), 2.4/4 (2.2)

WEDNESDAY

Querida enemiga: 1.7/3 (1.2), 1.9/4 (1.5)

Al diablo con los guapos: 2.6/4 (2.3), 2.8/5 (2.6)

Fuego en la sangre: 2.4/4 (2.2), 2.3/4 (2.1)

THURSDAY

Querida enemiga: 1.6/3 (1.3), 1.9/4 (1.6)

Al diablo con los guapos: 2.7/5 (2.5), 2.9/5 (2.8)

FRIDAY:

Querida enemiga: 1.7/4 (1.2), 2.0/4 (1.6)

Al diablo con los guapos: 2.7/5 (2.8), 3.0/5 (2.9)

Household ratings/shares (18–49)

[Sylph]

Here are the top ad spenders with changes in brackets:

1. Procter & Gamble (-4.33%)
2. General Motors (4.87%)
3. AT&T (-5.75%)
4. Verizon Communications (3.65%)
5. Johnson & Johnson (-5.62%
6. PepsiCo (9.12%)
7. Time Warner Inc. (-8.83%)
8. Toyota Motor (7.38%)
9. Ford Motor (-30.56%)
10. Kraft Foods (-10.36%)

[Jess]

I'm not sure if this is what you were saying or not, but just to clarify, I do not propose a spinoff of current soaps at all. I do not think there should be a spinoff of a current soap. The only thing that I would even give an ounce of a chance is if a popular character moved and popped up on a show. I don't even think that would work. I don't think Night shift will work in any fashion because it is a spinoff and is essentially the same thing as the daytime version. I think putting Night Shift on the network would be a big problem because the production quality is so very bad. If they would spend a little money before shooting it back to daytime, it might be a good ida.

I don't know if putting something on a popular existing evening show would work or not. My thoughts is in the current environment, you have to do something that makes people who work all day or who go to school take enough interest in a story that they would bother to turn on their DVRs to see if they like it. I didn't know that Texas spun off of a night time show. I thought, for some reason, that it was a spin off of Another World. PC was a spinoff of GH. Did it spin off of a nighttime show too?

I think Jon Robin Baltz is brilliant too. You idea would be great.

[marceline]

I wholeheartedly agree. Any and all of my ideas for a new soap are based on the assumption that the current shows should no longer exist. It's like a scifi show where a character time travels at some point another character says "You shouldn't be here. Your presence here has destroyed everything!" That's how I feel about the current soaps. Most of them should have one off the air years ago and new shows should've filled those vacancies. Instead we have ReRon taking a serious, groundbreaking, REALITY-BASED story and turning it to typical soap pablum. He's taken the work of a far more talented writer and sacrificed it to his fantasy of what it would be like when he was finally in charge.

Imo, OLTL should have gone off the air after the end of the first Malone regime. (Although I can't help but notice how easily that version of Todd, Marty and Nora would fit into an episode of Law & Order: SVU.) And been replaced by a show focusing on the Gannons, Vegas, Bo, Nora, etc... until that didn't work anymore. Then it should have been replaced by something else and so on.

Instead the audience is forced to endure the equivalent of sitting at Thanksgiving dinner while Uncle Ron retells the story of his gallbladder surgery for the one hundredth time with a mouth full of cottage cheese If these shows had been allowed to run their course and replaced, maybe primetime wouldn't be the only place to find good soap these days.