April 12-16, 2010

[AS THE WORLD TURNS]

It's not the first time ATWT beat OLTL.

[Saving ATWT]

No, not the first ime but look at AMC demos; also, World Turns in cancelled with no soap press promo. ABc does do a good job with adverts but nothing seems to be helping.

[tgilbrea69]

Seems like a decade ago when ATWT was coming in 3rd on a consistent basis - but was just a couple years ago. A lot can change in a couple years. I wonder if cancellation trend will continue. If so, it seems like OTLT would be the soap at the largest risk - although ABC, despite their shortcomings, seems to be far more devoted to their line-up. CBS would be willing to ax the entire line-up if they could arrange a bunch of game shows that would pull in an extra .1 in households. I think this actually represents the end of CBS dominance in daytime. I think that they have really underestimated the 'loyalty' factor of viewers. B&B (my prediction) will begin to see erosion and will soon fall from the number 2 position - and Y&R, while remaining the number 1 soap, will also see an increase in erosion.

[fanOLTL]

AMC is going through a major change. With new writers coming in and David Canary/Julia Barr leaving, I think the show is in trouble and would be the one most likely to be cancelled next if it wasn't for the fact that ABC shelled out lots of money to move the show to LA. As far as OLTL, they spent the last five/six months on a story involving a cartoonish vilain and a pregnancy debacle that put DAYS's devil storyline and GL's Reva clone fiasco to shame. It was not compelling, not well-written, and featured a lot a characters that aren't popular. They ended the story only to realize they have nothing else going on. This last week, however, was the best I've seen the show in a long time. GH seems to be on an upswing, but they too feature a few characters - Sonny, Jason - all the time. Still, the fact that ABC owns the shows and airs them in daytime, primetime, and on the net, means revenue/profit. My dream would be for Soapnet to start airing original shows, some shows that currently air on the web like Venice, and shows being cancelled by other networks like ATWT. A boy can dream, can't he?

[Saving ATWT]

Thanx for the insights into what is up with the ABC lineup. I've mainly watchec CBS over the years; however, once in a great while tune into GH at 3:00 and, you are right, about the show getting much better. The show didn't even seem like it was about a hospital for quite a while and all I ever saw, aside from Sonny and Morgan, were the younger characters.

I so wish SoapNet would pick up internet soaps as well as ATWT and Guiding light but, if anything, it seems like the network is running away from the genre. Also, I do not believe for a second that PGP would not have sold off future rights for two dead shows like ATWT and GL. Frons seems to be in love with PGP writers anyway given the three recent hires (no one ever mentions ATWT vet Simons joining OLTL to oversee scripts--she sucked!) It would be great if the networks got together and just flipped all of the soaps onto SoapNet repeating all 8 (including GL) soaps three times a day. There is still very much a market out there for this genre and cable would offer less restrictions regarding language and even nudity. Sex scenes on soaps come off as lame when contrasted with those on primetime, cable and film. Also, the soaps could pool resources and even share sets as a means of saving cash. I honestly doubt that the average viewer would notice or mind if ATWT and OLTL shared the same airplane or hotel room set.

I've decided that YouTube as well as DVR killed ATWT and did great harm to OLTL. I was checking out the NUKE and RUKE clips on YouTube and realized that the uploads must have really hurt World Turns in total viewers as well as demos--viewers under 49 are the primary users of vid sharing sites. I'll bet KISH fans did the same thing in addition to other fan bases focused on a fav supercouple. Given the fact that this RUKE stuff has happened after cancellation, it seems fairly clear that ATWT has a lot more fans than a 1.6 in households. I get that shows live and die because of adverts and that clips without ads are worthless; however, the current rating system is so flawed.

[AS THE WORLD TURNS]

I agree ATWT does have more fans than that 1.6 HH rating. The ratings system is outdated. They are going to start counting internet viewing in September for a sample or something like that and then next year do it all together. I hope they at least try it before ATWT is off and see how far it goes up.