Jump to content

"Let’s Make a Deal" ratings are up but... mostly made up of older viewers


Recommended Posts

  • Members

Let me just say I don't want ATWT or any soap canceled.

But at the same time, I don't see the point of putting on one hour of dramatic television everyday, five days a week, fifty two weeks a year if you're not going to put everything into its development.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 72
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members

The best thing is... Sometimes it's actually the only way. Just cancel it because no re-shaping will help it. One then thinks: Toldya, net execs, you shouldn't have put it on air in the first place!

It's a d'oh kind of statement to say that soaps would have live longer hadn't they been mismanaged. "Fixing" them means changing how advertisers, advertising agencies, network executives, producers... think. And that's - impossible. Or very difficult.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

The panic is warranted.

Newspapers, magazines, free TV, music...all undermined by the same common variables: easy distribution, easy violation of copyright, loss of collection bottlenecks (appointment TV, large circulations of morning papers) that allowed you to gather large numbers of eyeballs for your advertisers.

So, if the ad-supported model won't do it, look at pay-per-view. But did you see the foo-fa-rah this week about Hulu talking about charging for new content? So much protest that they backed off within a day!

If these folks can't figure out how to get paid for content, and if the cable/satellite companies don't want to pay retransmission fees...I'd panic too. There is no working business model!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Beautifully put. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't make any sense to me. Some people are acting as if GL was a short-lived piece of brilliance that was bullied by the networks because it didn't have great ratings. Why are people failing to remember that this show was on the air in one way or another for SEVENTY-TWO FREAKING YEARS! Andy Griffith ended his show after EIGHT years and he was still #1! Why should GL have stayed on the air at the bottom of the ratings after 72 years? It's illogical thinking.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

One, I called it a moral victory for GL fans, I'm under no illusions that CBS regrets their decision (or would have even if they'd had to cancel LMAD after one week...) to cancel GL. Or that they're not licking their chops in anticipation of the day they can wave bye-bye to the rest of their daytime lineup.

However, I fully expect they'd anticipated bigger numbers with college students. Wayne Brady had to be the selling point in choosing LMAD over Pyramid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Watching a TV show, especially as long as some people watched GL, isn't about sense, it's about emotional connection.

I think many people know GL had better days, and was going no matter what. It's not like LMAD was a specific replacement for GL. But I don't really get how it's a shock that some GL viewers don't want LMAD to succeed. I mean I know someone who refuses to watch anything on CBS Friday night because they canceled Threshold. And that was a show which ran for like two months.

It's not the longtime GL fans who are angry about the cancellation that CBS should be concerned about, it's the younger demos that should have been a fit for this show, and yet have not shown up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I think some people will always want to believe the show could have gotten better or would improve in numbers. They'll never know, so they're going to assume that. I know at the start of the year I felt the same way. Looking back, I realize that that was a pipe dream and the show was probably just going to sort of limp along even if it lasted another five or ten years, but I did hope otherwise, for a month or two, when Phillip came back.

It doesn't help that a lot of the soaps are now near or below the rating GL was supposedly canceled for, although that just means those shows, aside from the Frons pets, are going soon too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

GL was only consistently at the bottom of the ratings after mid-2007 once CBS wouldn't even invest extra in it for its anniversary. GL had clawed its way back into the ratings pack by the end of 2006, despite falling way behind a few years before that. CBS actively killed GL by not investing in it at that point in 2006-2007 when it showed potential for longevity.

72 years is all the more reason that CBS had a responsibility to really do everything it could to save the show, not a reason to cancel it ... 72 years means something has brand resonance and a core remarkable idea ... CBS did not even give Phillip coming back a chance to succeed (less than 2 months is not a chance) before pulling the plug.

Comparing Andy Griffith and a soap - no. Different animals.

Just looking at the recent surge of Days in the ratings, and the recent improvement in quality of ATWT (the ratings will follow), should be proof enough that a soap that has slipped, can come back. Also looking at how many people tuned in to GL's last week shows the potential audience that was out there with the right investment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I think they overestimated LMAD. They thought the kitsch factor would sell it. But unlike Pyramid, LMAD doesn't have much in the way of excitement and suspense. It's hard to compete with that winner's circle. and that's why Donnymid didn't work, because what made the winner's circle suspenseful was gone (too easy to win, no boxes flipping, no tick of the clock) from all accounts, they fixed all that in the new version, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that they used LMAD for one reason... they could get it CHEAPER. Because Pyramid taped in New York, it probably made it more expensive. The set certainly cost more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Yes, exactly, GL was doing better in the ratings based on its own efforts (no help from CBS). CBS didn't invest to continue that improvement. Instead they just kept on cutting the license fee. And that led to the show's demise.

Proof I am not making up that GL was back in the ratings pack after having fallen out of it - November 6-10, 2006 ratings:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • Too many returns, that's when you know a show has run out of ideas and doesn't care anymore.  Zoe annoyed the sh!t out of me most times, but the Kat/Zoe storyline will always be iconic and close to my heart (that's the era I first started following the show in near real-time), and probably the only storyline in 21st century EastEnders that had long-term value for the characters involved during their initial run together. However, after all this time and the writing choice that Zoe never wants to see Kat again, I think that ship has sailed and I don't know that it makes sense to revisit it at this point. 
    • Former EastEnders star Michelle Ryan is reprising her role as Zoe Slater on the BBC soap following an absence of over 20 years.  It’s been reported that Zoe will return to Albert Square later this year and that she’ll take centre stage in a dramatic new storyline involving her family.  The news comes amidst news of other big returns, which include Max Branning (Jake Wood), Tanya Cross (Jo Joyner), Shirley Carter (Linda Henry) and Ben Mitchell (Max Bowden), who will also be back in Walford later in the year.
    • I actually love the new fashion.
    • Admittedly, I was a latecomer to ATWT (first becoming a regular viewer in 2000). But I really liked KMH's Emily. I thought she was a very specific kind of neurotic professional character, and I loved her prickly relationship with MM's Susan. I will say I don't think the show did her any favors after Hal died, stranding her in storylines with several of the show's dullest characters: nu-Paul, nu-Meg, and nu-Dusty. I actually quite liked one of her last major storylines, when she discovered she had a grown-up biological son with Larry named Hunter. But then Hunter just sort of disappeared, and the story fizzled out, which was pretty typical of the late Goutman years. 
    • I know the fashions have gotten mixed reviews but I actually like what the new costume designer is putting the cast in. It feels more modern and the more tacky pieces I feel make sense for rich people. They're buying for the brand and the price and we often see celebs in things like this. Especially for a character like Nikki, I feel the more over the top (and tacky), the more realistic it is.
    • Well, her staff pointing out the movie connection never seemed to stop Long from using those plots.  She was right about Vanessa--she needed a man who loved her, which she'd never really had up to then. But as others have pointed out, Long borrowed heavily from Taming of the Shrew to get it done. (which while I kinda disputed that, I get more now, having watched Kiss Me Kate a few times since.)
    • "Holly had her share of the blame..." NO, she did NOT. WOW. That's what you get for trying to be fair and giving these people the benefit of the doubt! The Rita rape episodes do not seem to be available. It sounds like Calhoun thought it was not dramatized, but it was. I saw it when it aired. Yes, it's close to 50 years ago, and memories aren't 100% reliable. I also know that Zaslow reportedly complained that it was written too much like a seduction and that's why the Dobsons portrayed Holly's rape differently. Maybe it started like a seduction and she rejected him and that's when it turned violent. I don't remember that part, if it exists. What I do remember is that Roger threw Rita so violently to the floor that she hit her head. They showed him coming at her from her point of view and he looked all fuzzy. It was an act of violence, not a seduction. Rita kept it a secret until it looked like Roger might be acquited, and then finally admitted it. She didn't make it up, it definitely was not a ploy.
    • I was actually referencing another scene between Roger and Alex, which I think is right after they marry.  But yeah---I'm not really impressed with Calhoun's reasoning. Or the "both recall it wasn't unprovoked" line. Wasn't Holly trying to leave him when he raped her? Oy vey.
    • I know we have discussed the location of Bay City in the Another World thread and the fact that originally Irna conceived of it as being the real Bay City MI, and it was later writers that treated it as a fictional Bay City [probably IL]. This article seems to suggest that that idea was well-established by 1981. I wonder when it started.
    • Desert Sun, 22 December 1983 Guiding Light’ writer looks for fresh ideas By TOM JORY Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) - “Guiding Light” has been a daytime companion for millions since 1937, starting on radio and switching to TV after 15 years. Can anything new, really new, ever happen to the Bauers or the Reardons or any of the other folks in Springfield? “I get really upset,” says Pamela Long Hammer, principal writer for the CBS soap opera since March, “because I’ll come up with this neat scenario and someone will say, ‘That’s like “Strangers on a Train.’” “I think, ‘They keep stealing my material.’ “The way I figure it,” she says, “there are only so many stories in the world. It’s the characters who keep the show new and exciting. All of our stories come from them: I don’t come up with a plot, and then work a character into it.” Continuity is important. Someone out there surely knows all that’s happened, to everyone on the show, in 46 years. How about Miss Long Hammer? "Nope. I care about what our core families have been doing,” she says. “I’m always interested in what happened to Bert Bauer (played since 1950 by Charita Bauer) 20 years ago, but as far as going back and reading scripts, no. “Others on the show keep track,” she says. “I’ll suggest something, and be told, ‘You don’t remember, but five years ago, they had this terrible fight. They would never speak to one another now.”’ Miss Long Hammer, a former Miss Alabama who came to New York as an aspiring actress in 1980, began writing for daytime television while playing Ashley on NBC’s “Texas.” She eventually wrote herself out of the story. Her staff for “Guiding Light” includes nine writers, among them her husband, Charles Jay Hammer, whom she met while both worked on “Texas.” NBC dropped “Texas” after two seasons, and episodes from the serial currently are being rerun on the Turner Broadcasting System’s cable-TV SuperStation, WTBS. Gail Kobe, who was executive producer of “Texas,” now has the same job on “Guiding Light.” And Beverlee McKinsey, who played Iris Carrington in “Another World” on NBC, and later in "Texas,” will join the Light” cast of the CBS soap in February. Miss Long Hammer is reponsible for the long-term story, which can mean looking ahead 18 months or more. Staff writers deal with specifics, including the scripts for individual episodes. She says she draws on “imagination and instinct” for the “Guiding Light” story. Often, that involves inventing new characters. “‘I look at Vanessa (Maeve Kinkead), one of our leading ladies,” Miss Long Hammer says. "What could make the audience care more about her? “Then I think, ‘Why can’t she find a man she can love, who will also love her?’ Voila, here comes Billy Lewis (Jordan Clarke). “Another example,” she says, “is Alan Spaulding (Christopher Bernau). All of a sudden, he’s got a sister no one ever knew about. “They come complete,” says Miss Long Hammer of the serial’s characters, including the new ones. “We know who they are and where they came from long before the viewer gets all that information. That’s one of the most interesting things about daytime, the complexities of the characters.” The writers make a big effort to keep the show contemporary, and four of the leading players are in their late teens or early 20s Judi Evans, who plays Beth Raines, Kristi Tesreau (Mindy Lewis), Grant Aleksander (Philip Spaulding) and Michael O’Leary (Rick Bauer). “Guiding Light,” longevity notwithstanding, is a moderate success by that ultimate yardstick of the industry; ratings. The show is behind only “General Hospital,” “All My Children” and “One Life to Live,” all on ABC, and CBS’ “The Young and the Restless,” among soaps. And Miss Long Hammer says she’s convinced writing is the key to even greater achievement. “When I say I love the characters, it’s not a light thing,” she says. “I think what the audience senses is an enthusiasm and an energy among the people who do the show.”
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy