December 13-17, 2010

[Soapsuds]

It's sad that soaps are hoping that a big winter storm helped the ratings. What has become of soaps.....shakes head.

[SFK]

I got to a pub my brother and I go to every now and then MUCH earlier than I usually do one Friday afernoon, and it was funny to hear the retired gentlemen commenting on GH. It wasn't so funny when the Oprah episode about sexually abused men came on and one man looked up at the TV unawares and chimed in, "What are they all crying about?? They're wimps. "

I love it when I catch soaps in a public place though, even if the people around you hardly EVER watch, they all have some sort of soap-related story or memory. And all of the black barber shops I grew up going to always had the stories on in the daytime. I will never forget the afternoon the crew spotted Paul Williams on B&B and had a lengthy conversation about "that weird lookin' dude" they knew they knew from somewhere. I knew his son, and they wouldn't believe me when I said his name was Paul Williams because that's of course the character's name on Y&R.

[SFK]

A lot of people are stuck right now, flights cancelled until Thursday and whatnot. I could be wrong, but I think most people are too pissed and antsy to sit and watch soaps. Maybe they'll be on as background, but I bet most people are on their phones and computers, furiously flipping back and forth to the weather channel when the tube's on.

[quartermainefan]

Why are GH's numbers any more dreadful than OLTL or AMC? And they were something like 3% lower than the ratings for DOOL, so why aren't DOOL's ratings deemed dreadful too?

[DRW50]

GH is ABC's crown jewel and gets far more money and attention.

[chyti]

Well I live in NYC also and while we didn"t get any major storms it was the first cold front we had of the season and flu alerts were coming in from everyplace that week. I work at a hospital in Manhattan in the emergency room and we had thirty sick calls that week highly unusual. So yeah I think that weather plays a part on ratings increases more people at home, more people likely to watch shows on tv. As for today the storm was on sunday, but there were likely many people who couldn't make it into work and OLTL and GH was on, don't watch AMC so don't know about that one I live in the Bronx the news came on in the morning not any pre-emptions in the afternoon

Bad weather forces people to stay at home, there is no way anyone can deny that more people at home means more eyes in front of the tv even if they are multi-tasking and doing other things.

[quartermainefan]

But obviously it is not the crown jewel, as reflected by the ratings that are right in line with all the other soaps.

[Soapsuds]

Vanessa Marcil.flop return..and what CarlD2 said.

[MontyB]

Interesting. I'm a Nurse Manager at a major hospital in Manhattan

I don't deny at all that people are probably watching TV when at home. The question is, are they watching the soaps?

[marceline]

Exactly. It's not just a bump for soaps, it's a bump for ALL tv. I bet Fox News, H&G and TNT all had similar spikes in viewership. Soaps went up because more people had the television on, not because more people were "watching."

I think you're right about people checking their phones and the Weather Channel but people will watch whatever's on TV in an airport bar as long as the drinks keep coming. I've seen people stare at the Shake Weight Infomercial like it was The Wire.

[MontyB]

Maybe. I may be able to accept that one because it's a sad commentary if one was watching and didn't tune back in or record to find what happens next.

[Soapsuds]

Yup...I had it on AMC yesterday but it was more like background noise...I noticed Kendall was crying again...who cares...but I couldnt tell you what else happened yesterday.

[Angela]

The flu. I don't know if it's happening nationally, but in NYC the flu is hitting hard in December. My mother got her shot, and she is going on week 2 of a really bad case which she got from my father who just got over it after 3 weeks. I'm still on week one of a mild case. I took my mother to the hospital last week and half the waiting room was full of people looking half dead from the flu. Everybody I see outside seems to be talking with that sick flu voice. It really feels like Santa left the flu in stockings this year, lol.

More people home due to illness, because their kids are home so they took a week or two off & because it's too cold to do something outside means a lot of TV programs will get some kind of boost. Despite the other outlets (cable, internet, video games), I think network television in particular benefits from that. It doesn't necessarily mean people are watching, it means they have their TV on.

Sad, but I think so accurate of where soaps are now. It doesn't mean they aren't, in some cases, or can't be quality again but it probably does mean the soaps lost an audience that isn't coming back and the soaps can't get a new audience back long-term. IMO, there are two things that consistently effect soap ratings now and that's heavy advertising and weather fronts. I have so much ratings for AMC stored up in a file and for the past 2 to 3 years their ratings have gone up and down in such a correlation to weather. Not who is writing, not who is frontburner but weather.

[marceline]

Fascinating. I've been hearing about the weather nonstop but not one word about the flu but that would really affect viewership.

And that's the ugly truth. For every viewer that can be lured back to a soap the way AMC has always managed to do for me. There's many, many more who just walk away and never think about their shows again. When people quit, they don't come back.

[mamasita]

i have been watching Y&R again, Maura West is doing a great job and the soap is at least lite fun most of the time, loved the chocolate food fight between Sharon and Phyllis last week!

Watching OLTL on YT because i only care about Kim Zimmer and her role of Echo Di Savoy, the rest is same old same old: Vicky with her wild temper tantrums and Dorian acting like bozo the clown, IMO they destroyed both characters a long time ago. I watched a bit of AMC last week and it is a big boring mess, what happened to that soap?