October 11-15, 2010

[Saving ATWT]

How is any of this insensitive, sick or thoughtless when true? I'm gay, a racial minority, am not looking to hurt feelings and only trying to make a point about NUKE and KISH. The harsh truth is a lot better than feel good lies. T'm not supporting network agendas but am over people blaming rating drops on everything except the actual causes.

[Angela]

1.(1) Y&R: Monday: 3.8/5,437,000 (+440,000)

2.(2) B&B: Monday: 2.3/3,253,000 (+188,000)

3.(4) GH: Monday: 1.9/2,599,000 (+186,000)

4.(5) OLTL: Monday: 1.9/2,481,000 (+71,000)

5.(3) AMC: Monday: 1.8/2,438,000 (-174,000)

6.(6) DAYS: Monday: 1.7/2,301,000 (-47,000)

1.(1) Y&R: Tuesday: 3.6/5,100,000 (-337,000)

2.(2) B&B: Tuesday: 2.3/3,245,000 (-8,000)

3.(3) GH: Tuesday: 2.0/2,780,000 (+181,000)

4.(5) AMC: Tuesday: 1.9/2,546,000 (+108,000)

5.(4) OLTL: Tuesday: 1.9/2,451,000 (-30,000)

6.(6) DAYS: Tuesday: 1.7/2,329,000 (+28,000)

1.(1) Y&R: Wednesday: 3.6/5,035,000 (-65,000)

2.(2) B&B: Wednesday: 2.1/3,076,000 (-169,000)

3.(6) DAYS: Wednesday: 1.9/2,515,000 (+186,000)

4.(5) OLTL: Wednesday: 1.9/2,413,000 (-38,000)

5.(4) AMC: Wednesday: 1.8/2,328,000 (-218,000)

6.(3) GH: Wednesday: 1.8/2,295,000 (-485,000)

1.(1) Y&R: Thursday: 3.5/4,937,000 (-98,000)

2.(2) B&B: Thursday: 2.4/3,499,000 (+423,000)

3.(3) DAYS: Thursday: 1.8/2,439,000 (-76,000)

4.(6) GH: Thursday: 1.8/2,427,000 (+132,000)

5.(4) OLTL: Thursday: 1.8/2,365,000 (-48,000)

6.(5) AMC: Thursday: 1.8/2,341,000 (+13,000)

1.(1) Y&R: Friday: 3.2/4,644,000 (-293,000)

2.(2) B&B: Friday: 2.1/3,000,000 (-499,000)

3.(5) OLTL: Friday: 1.8/2,546,000 (+181,000)

4.(4) GH: Friday: 1.8/2,517,000 (+90,000)

5.(3) DAYS: Friday: 1.8/2,480,000 (+41,000)

6.(6) AMC: Friday: 1.8/2,396,000 (+55,000)

[Gray Bunny]

I could be wrong, but doesn't DAYS go up against OLTL (and until recently, ATWT) in the majority of the Central Time Zone and Pacific Time Zone areas? DAYS is on at 1pm against OLTL here in Chicago, and is/was the same in L.A.

[Bella20]

Ratings are based on how many people are watching all television programs at a certain time, not just on how many people are watching a certain program. More people were watching television, not just OLTL, on Friday at 2pm (or whenever OLTL airs) than on Monday at that time.

A couple of problems:

1. The facts don't back up your premise. ATWT ratings didn't go down because of Nuke, and OLTL's ratings only had a slight four week up tick after Kish.

2. You changed the wording around, but you basically said that white women didn't want to watch black characters. This is offensive, and history has shown that it's not true. Jessie/Angie and Noah/Julia on AMC, and Drucilla on Y&R have been some of the most popular characters in the last 30 years of soaps. Unfortunately, at one time or another they've all been victims of writers and producers who shared the same bigoted opinion that you expressed.

[dragonflies]

AMC may have went up in the coveted demo, but it's still in last place and close to going into sweeps with that.

I'm not one to be doom and gloom, but I do feel AMC has one foot in the grave and Frons is deliberately pushing it the rest of the way in

[Saving ATWT]

I'm not supporting TPTB choices, just addreeing the issue of why networks have adopted the white flight suburb formula of story telling. Don't kill the messenger. I'm not saying any of this has been good for the genre or viewers. The number crunchers did their little research and the Y&R of today is the end result. Primetime is every bit as bad when 30 Rock is considered the demo gold standard. Don't go down my throat for explaining why networks are biased or demonstrate bigotry. I was remarking on the problem, not supporting it. Ten years go the NAACP tried to make an issue of this but fans refused to join in via boycotts, protest letters, or any other form of sction.

[Bella20]

Viewers is all viewers, even if you have more than one person in a house who are watching the same show. Household is each individual household, and that number doesn't take into account whether or not more than one person in the hose is watching the show. And like I said before, you can't compare days or time periods. For example, usually there are more people watching television when AMC is on at 1pm than when GH is on at 3, so they could have the same number of viewers, but GH's rating would be hire.

If Y&R was the answer their ratings wouldn't be dropping at such an alarming rate. At the end of the season, Y&R will probably be down .2 or .3 rating points in comparison to last year.

[DRW50]

I still don't understand why this shows anything about viewers. "Research" has generated years of consistent ratings erosion and irrelevancy. Yet this is proof that soap viewers are racist homophobes? If anything it proves the opposite.

[Saving ATWT]

No, you either misread or misunderstood. I was talking about gay story and fan reaction and only made mention of black characters after CardID tried to lump all minorities into one grouping. Advertisers chase the white demo and so, as ratings dropped, the networks began to purge soaps of racial diversity. I never said white viewers did not want to watch black or latino characters--America isn't that bad. Black story has already worked and proved effective to drive ratings up. I said the average daytime viewer is a homophobe--America is that bad. No one is protesting Black, latin or inter-racial marriage; however, every election cycle, more states ban gay marriage. These same homophobes watch soaps and have harmed ratings.

[Bella20]

You are still saying the same thing about black characters that you are saying about gay characters. What does going after white viewers have to do with whether or not a show has black characters? The only reason this would be an issue is if you believe that white viewers only want to see white characters, just like you are assuming that only gay viewers want to see gay characters. Unfortunately some people in charge do think this is true, even though the facts state otherwise. And even though some people are more subtle with their racism, some shows still do get a lot of negative feedback about showing characters in interracial relationships.

[DRW50]

In soaps they are one grouping. If you want to blame anyone for "lumping" them together, blame daytime.

Even though almost no soap which has featured gay stories has ever had a big ratings loss at the time those stories were heavily featured.

Yet you said that daytime viewers are too conservative to watch black characters.

[bongobong]

It looks like General Hospital has the most to celebrate, it is the only show to remain stable in the demo compared to last year. Ouch to DAYS loosing 0.4 Was it around this time last year when the show started dropping?

[marceline]

Did Kim Zimmer leave OLTL already? Because last week she was the single-handed savior of the show.

[OLTL_fan]

It was this time last year when the show was growing.

GH has nothing to celebrate. Vanessa Marcil was a huge waste of money.

[DRW50]

Some fans credited the Eli stuff too.

I do think both of those might have given a bump but I wonder if a lot of people are just randomly watching and then leaving again. It makes no sense to me that 100-200K people come and go seemingly every week.