September 13-17, 2010

[DRW50]

I'm sorry. I thought you were joking when you said ATWT had rarely been well written. I was going along with the joke.

[Sylph]

Oh, sorry, I thought you were implying something.

Anyway, I think I've said this three times, if I've counted correctly, but more than 8 years of continued excellence can't be achieved. It's a great form, absolutely beautiful, but in the long run – unsustainable. I think the history of the genre proves it. Sure, you could replace one great writer with another one every eight years, but believing in that kind of miracle would be naïve.

Perhaps because of that too in the future, if anyone ever decides to resurrect the soaps, they should keep that in mind. It might be better to cancel it than to allow it to run until it really becomes a misogynous & nasty affair, pure dreck, like Y&R is these days, for example.

As for the percentage, I'm not really sure there would be a consensus on that. Recent threads have proven that some ATWT fans weren't really over the moon when it comes to Marland's vision.

[marceline]

AMC was building a wonderful foundation about six months ago and they threw it all away to slide backward and return to being the same simple-minded dreck we've come to expect from ABC: cavemen and the concubines who love them, white hats and black hats who behave the exact same ways, women who don't use birth control, minority characters who while they're getting some screen time aren't being give the same level of support as Greenmee, Kendull and Ryan McBain. They truncated all the progress they made and recasting won't bring it back. If AMC gets any more stupid and misogynist, it'll be OLTL but with more minorities.

Conversely, you have OLTL which has taken up perma residence at the bottom of the overalls but has still managed to preserve a sliver of viability in the demos in spite of no critical support. So maybe the Ford Fuckups will be enough to keep this hellscape alive.

It's all deck chairs on the titanic, AFAIC.

[Llantano Incorporated]

I always thought that AMC would live another two years after OLTL, I figure AMC will get another year or they will cancel all of them and give 6-8 characters from the show to GH. Maybe make AMC and OLTL 30 minutes each and have them shoot at the same studio? This WGA thing is going to be the end of ABC soaps.

[TeamEric]

Well, color me surprised that ATWT's final week only gained 18,000 viewers. GL gained 512,000 viewers it's finale week. That's a big difference in luring back old-time viewers.

OLTL pretty much averaging 4th in demos all summer and can still challenge B&B and Days but AMC demos have craashed

and burned.

Despite ATWT posting a loss in 18-49 demo, it still beat AMC?? Ouch.

6. ATWT 610,000 (-10,000/+57,000)

7. AMC 592,000 (-7,000/-137,000)

[P.J.]

Total Viewers

1. Y&R 5,048,000 (-69,000/+46,000)

2. B&B 3,193,000 (-58,000/-153,000)

3. GH 2,641,000 (-101,000/-61,000)

4. ATWT 2,593,000 (+18,000/+105,000)

HH

1. Y&R 3.5/13 (same/-.1)

2. B&B 2.3/8 (same/-.1)

3. GH 2.0/7 (same/same)

4. ATWT 1.9/7 (same/+.1)

Actually, ATWT did better in HH

6. GL 1.9/6 (+.4/+.4)

GL spent the prior four weeks to it's demise at 2 million viewers, and only had a bump for it's finale week. ATWT had 2.3 million viewers, and hit 2.5 million for it's last two weeks. There's only a 9000 difference in the finale numbers. That's hardly some moral victory for GL, or some additional indictment of ATWT's storytelling.

[Eric83]

This some very interesting info I saw posted on another board, offered some very interesting insight.

Y&R should start airing more male-leaning ads, having a larger overall male audience than Women 18-49, and AMC is in the most trouble out of all ABC soaps. And as much as I can't stand it, I can't deny that maybe GH does deserve all of that money being poured into it. It's demos are great compared to OLTL/AMC.

[Southofnowhere]

Dont think Gh will take any AMC or OLTL characters but i'm very sure that if AMC goes some PV peeps will end up on OLTl and vie versa.

Can see:Ryan ,Kendall ,Greenlee an dmay La Kane as guest sar or something on OLTL.

On AMC could see McBain replacing Jesse as top cop , Rex and the Ford brothers on AMC!!

[dragonflies]

I don't think AMC made that much progress. I think LB was highly overrated during her time on the show. Characters were still dominating, but yet supposedly the show was "balanced" LOL, trying to figure that one out

People say it cause the network is invested cause they went to all the trouble to move it to LA so no way they'll cancel it. IMO this was a last ditch desperate effort. AMC is probably more unstable now than it was last year before the move. OLTL has more stability cause it didn't move and cause it didn't lose popular actors

[rhinohide]

This is sort of off topic but it doesn't really fit anywhere else either, so I apologize in advance. In an era of declining ad revenues and the few remaining soaps scrambling to capture an audience, this news story was intriguing. Quick summary, these women developed a product that has proven to increase female sexual satisfaction/arousal. The networks have rejected their advertising, apparently at any price. We're subjected to Viagra and Cialis ads, and pretty suggestive/racy ads for sexual lubricants, but these women cannot purchase advertising for their product even after they removed all dialogue referencing sexuality or arousal. And we wonder why there's no longer any love in the afternoon. Apparently women aren't supposed to enjoy sex.

Selling Sex to Women

[quartermainefan]

Well, this is no surprise. Society has always been aghast at the idea of women and sex. That's why Islamic women cover up or else in many places, and Hasidic Jewish women must cover up and wear wigs, why a man can walk down the streets of any city shirtless but a woman can't and why Janet Jackson got crucified but Justin Timberlake didn't. It's been this way since forever.

[rhinohide]

But usually money talks.

[chyti]

Truthfully all this is just guesswork,where is it printed that the only thing the networks look at for daytime soaps is the 18-49 demo, do we even know how advertiser buy soap blocks and how much is an ad spot all I see in print is primetime being shown nothing about daytime soaps in particular. I just find it hard to believe that the networks only care at that one demo when they know that soaps skew an older audience especially now when there is so much talks about cancellation they must be looking at everything to save themselves.

Nothing about any of 18-49 demos are good for any of the soaps I just find it hard to believe that this demo is the only thing determining if a soap stays on the air.

[MontyB]

It's printed by ABC MediaNet all of the time. They only talk about demos. That's how they rank the shows. Obviously, that's what they care about.

[DRW50]

Those demos come at a huge cost. The question is if demos better than OLTL/AMC but not huge on their own is worth paying VMG through the nose.