October 11-15, 2010

[Saving ATWT]

Yeah, there was a short term rating dip when unhappy gay viewers tuned out and the show dropped down to about 1.7HH. This was a short dip that lasted about four weeks. I still argue that daytime is very different than primetime when it comes to viewer reaction to gay story. Son is a fairly liberal message board, doubt that there are many Bush/McCain/vote to ban gay marriage voters here; however, a majority of the nation doesn't support gay agenda and soaps still draw a lot of these 'tradional' viewers. I come from upstate NY, ATWT did very well up there in the hill towns, maybe because of the Snyder Farm, and a lot of the house wives over 30 quit watching once Nuke came on canvus. These viewers weren't sick of the various bad story lines but, instead, were freaked by Luke: Soaps are fantacy and for these women the idea of a gay son was a nightmare. As of yet, not one soap has done well with gay story in terms of things. I wish 'tradional' viewers weren't phobic but they really are. Those Mega Churches all over the nation; the anti-gay marriage votes; the stay at home mom's with children who bully gay kids--these people make up the bulk of daytime viewers. Online, there are demo breakdowns of the average daytime female viewer to back everything I've said up. The average stay at home soap watching wife lives in the 'heartland', not the coasts, and trends politically conservative. I know these people, they are my family and friends. We can't deny that something big has happened in the Us over the last decade regarding the gay issue. Do you honestly think that the majority of voters who voted No to gay marriage in California, Alabama, and Texas were willing to accept Nuke or Kish? In 2004 and 2006 anti-gay politics were powerful and swayed elections. Today, gays in the military is a hot button issue. Primetime draws a lot of people and can thus play with social issues but the daytime pool smaller, conservative and tradional unlike SON SOAP.

I went to the Republican Convention in 2004, saw the 'values' voters who are the bulk of network daytime viewers. They openly talked about restoring sodomy laws. I think we all make the mistake of forming our world view based on our own family/friends and assume the rest of nation to be the same. Soaps need to focus on issues the unite, as opposed to divide, viewers if the hope to stay on air.

[Saving ATWT]

+1

Sad but true. Daytime viewers are conservative. Adultry is fine but these people pray away the gay

[DRW50]

I don't believe daytime viewers "pray away the gay." The ratings for OLTL during parts of summer 2009, which featured a lot of the Kyle/Fish story, were high, they were even the highest-rated ABC soap at some points. If soap viewers were as bigoted as are being claimed, then daytime would have gained, not lost, viewers over the last 15 years of shunning minorities.

There were many other stories which likely killed ratings, including the Danielle story, which is probably one of the laziest and most one-note I've ever seen on a soap, and the Stacey/Rex story.

[TeamEric]

I agree with Michael Logan's take on the main causes of the ratings plunge. It wasn't Kish but RC taking the gay too fast, too far. Logan rightly noted many viewers were upset about Dorian faking being a lesbian. Instead of the Dorian vs Viki mayoral fight we were promised, RC baited and switched, and fans were pissed off. Logan joined the chorus of critics and fans who blamed the Stacy Morasco fiasco, too. Lastly he noted fans were turned off by the Mitch stuff.

I think Logan hit on the 3 big flops.

[TeamEric]

Sorry, the numbers don't back up this claim. Kish's last week April 12-16 was 1.7HH. After KISH, OLTL gained viewers 4 weeks in a row to rise to 1.8HH week of May 10th.

OLTL actually had a pretty good sweeps finishing 3rd in the key 18-49 demos and up NET +107,000 viewers.

June is when OLTL ratings took a nosedive as the teens swallowed up huge chunks of airtime. Starr & James on the run was on like 15 days straight and then the Bull/Nate/Dani/Starr/James/Todd teen stuff hit new record lows.

When the show returned to adult stories as focus the ratings bounced back up in July. The highest viewership of the summer, 2.6 million viewers, was July 22nd, day TnT celebrated engagement and twins WTD.

[Saving ATWT]

There is a huge difference between racial/ethnic bias and homophobia so your lack of minorities comment makes no sense. Lumping blacks, latins, jews and gays into the same boat lacks logic. Over 70 percent of the US Army is against gays joining and many of those opposed are 'minorities'. 70 perect is a huge number and might give us an insight into why gays on soaps has yet to work. Soldiers didn't become phobic once joining the army; these guys came from families and communities that are anti-equality. Back when soaps were popular, a writer could take a risk and loose a million viewers. Now, loosing even a tiny group of viewers will get you cancelled. Everyone says PGP wanted out of soaps. Maybe the used gay characters on GL and ATWT to weaken ratings?

[DRW50]

There's not a big difference in daytime. Don't forget that the first person to be purged at the time of this ratings drop was a black woman, and that OLTL backed away very quickly from any strong stories featuring black characters, preferring instead to just have tokens onscreen to support white friends.

There were many reasons for viewers to turn off the show in fall 2009. The show was terrible. I just do not believe that they turned off because of homophobia. I also don't believe that you have to be homophobic to object to the Dorian storyline -- it made very little sense and was probably only put out there because the show knew they only had a limited amount of airtime allowed for the non Rex/Todd/John stories, so they thought they'd combine Dorian with the gay characters.

I don't understand the point about the military. I thought this was about soap viewers.

[TeamEric]

What black woman and what ratings drop do you mean? DD's Rachel was gone before Kish were fired.

I actually don't believe homophobia over Kish was the real complaint either. Kish was a casualty of RC deciding one simple gay couple story wasn't enough. RC foolishy decided to have the gay story swallow whole the mayoral story with teens reduced to mere cheerleaders and ousted Viki from her own story! RC also added two more useless gay characters. Then he launched the gay bashing story for a newbie no one cared about, instead of Kyle, a character fan had grown attached to and had other connections in town.

Logan nailed it, RC went too far, too fast and viewers rebelled.

The saddest part was those of us who complained at the time that the gay marriage/Dorian lesbian stuff was pure crap, were attacked as homophobes on the boards. That burned my britches considering I am liberal and from first state that legalized gay marriage in the first place. If RC was losing liberals like me, he was in trouble.

[Saving ATWT]

I included the Army figure to demonstrate that a lot of Americans are not gay friendly. I doubt that same 70 percent would be anti-black, anti-latino, ect. Like, no one is out voting to prevent black marriage. Those same 70 percent of soldiers have friends/family who think the same biased way and change the TV channel when men kiss. I'm guessing you are white, maybe I'm wrong, but it is dangerous and offensive to lump all minorities into the same pile. For example, an African American may be a devout Baptist and consider homosexuality a sin. Please understand that all minorities do not have the same agenda and live like one big connected group. I'm not sure if you are naive, ignorant or just have trouble with logic. Networks and companies like PGP do a lot of reseach and know a lot about viewers. Research shows that stay at home moms tend to vote Republican and be socially conservative. This would suggest the average daytime viewer is, on some level, homophobic. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, it makes me feel bad, too.

Soaps cut African American cast because white housewives have more income. Networks want money and don't care about black viewership. It is racist, African Americans shop, too; however, research showed that whites spent more. Soaps aim for the white soccor mom, that is why every character has a damn baby. You can read up on this stuff with a few Google searches relating to demos, TV viewing patterns, protests made by the NAACP along with Danny Glover as well as the cost of advets on BET compared to Comedy Central.

[DRW50]

I don't really understand why you assume I think that all minorities feel one way or another about homosexuality. I'm not talking about how minorities feel about homosexuality, I'm talking about daytime having an agenda which works against minorities as well as gay people. How minorities feel about homosexuals has little to do with daytime because, as you pointed out, the networks do not care about marketing to minorities.

I just don't believe that cutting minorities out of daytime was some sort of pander to some sort of bigoted viewers. I don't think there is some wide swathe of viewer out there who watches soaps but will stop if they see a black person. Daytime had black characters in roles large and small for years and the ratings were fine. The more exclusionary daytime has become, the lower the ratings have fallen. Frankly I don't believe this uber-rich, stay at home, hardcore racist who is supposed to have some sort of marketing power is likely to watch a lot of soaps anyway.

Exactly. She was the first to go when the ratings started falling. Either that or around the same time as Crystal Hunt, who played one of the most unpopular characters on the show. Then Scott Clifton, and then Evans and Claywell.

[EricMontreal22]

You are correct (well it was several weeks after, but yes. I actually think it had nothing to do with Kish being there or not--but like yous ay that shows that they weren't the ones keeping viewers away).

I also don't see OLTL "cleaning up the writing" the past few weeks--though much to my surprise I am actually enjoying the whole Kim Zimmer storyline, but the Eli/Hannah psyco mess is shoddier than ever.

[EricMontreal22]

Haha you know I like you and your posts, but I'd argue the specifics of that fact. Did you watch back then? The show was *dire*--as horrible as letting go of Kish was, they didn't even make all that much of a difference, I think ratings woulda dropped anyway. I doubt it was because of .1 disgruntled gay viewers...

[EricMontreal22]

Exactly. AMC's ratrings didn't dive when they did their (long) 1997 homophobia storyline, or Bianca's coming out. Yeah these weren't romances, but...

I do agree with TeamEric-that the silly "Dorian is gay, huge gay wedding storyline" which was just poorly executed (and conceived I suppose) probably did them no favourts (I know many gay bloggers found it offensive even)--but that was in the Fall--the mess of Stacey, Mitch, etc going on forever was probably more harmful

[EricMontreal22]

You were called homophobic on here for that? I openly said how much I despised the story--I found it cartoony, forced, silly, and if anything it trivialized gay marriage. And it's hard to get much gayer than me (but maybe I'm homophobic too ). Then again in hindsight I prefered it to RC's current modus operandi of needing to have a crazy killer psycho on teh canvas at all times, and liking to make characters fit that cliche for no apparent reason.

[marceline]

This brings me right back to what I'm starting to think of as "Daytime's Great Matter." Who is the audience? Is it the stay at home moms? Because there aren't many of those and most of the stay at home moms I know are at home because their homeschooling their kids. So are soaps writing for them? Is it the <begin stereotyping> unemployed loser sitting home spending their government check on beer and Funyons? <end stereotyping> Working people who record them and watch later? If that's the case, then maybe its time to look at different demos and stop selling diapers and insulin monitors. Is it bigots, liberals, homophobes, gays, blacks, whites, Latinos (who've done a perfectly good job keeping telenovelas alive and well), etc..

Who's the audience and what do they want? Also who was the audience and why did they leave? That's what focus groups and surveys are supposed to tell you if they're done right but that's not how TPTB use them.