December 27-31, 2010

[Llantano Incorporated]

Hmm. I find OLTL's Courtney Simon and especially Melissa Salmons to be some of the best writers around.. I have heard this criticism of OLTL's dialogue here before and it always suprises me. Totally agree with OLTL needing some more heart. There is so much going on, but not a lot of subtext. I find Y&R far worse in this respect.

[EricMontreal22]

I think Salmons is a great scripter--but I do often get the sense that what could be pivotal scenes are being rushed--I guess that's where I blame the dialogue. I'm not a loyal Y&R viewer and haven't watched it for a decade and a half the way I have OLTL, but I think the problems are similar.

[EricMontreal22]

Thanks--I appreciate that you feel the way I feel.

[~bl~]

I don't blame the dialogue writers at OLTL for the issues with pivotal scenes, sometimes but the breakdown writers. They put too much other action during the rest of the show, which sometimes short changes the story climax that is going on that particular day.

[JNewt]

Its been a couple of great months for the soap industry with the renewals and now the biggest week of the whole year ratings wise although I could be wrong if February got higher numbers. Anyways this great Winter Break, snowstorm, or not these numbers show that the soaps can still respond. The problem with the soaps is that they need grab viewers on regular business days like Thursdays and Fridays which continue to score weak.

OLTL has finally seen the light it so rightly deserves reaching 3 million viewers on Monday. GH is really good right now and I don't see them slipping too much next week but they will do so. GH is still ABC's strongest soap on any given day b/c it can always go back to this amount of audience. AMC is still pretty strong but the show needs to shape out. For the first time in a while I see the show getting better as I checked it out this week and its getting there but there's a long ways to go.

DAYS has been the best soap to me over the last month and those numbers are proving it and I'm not just talking about this week but in both November and December.

CBS' Y&R getting 5.5 million viewers on Tuesdays is sick. I hadn't seen that amount since like 2008.

[Soapsuds]

Surprised by the big jumps. When was the last time all of the shows except for AMC were in the 2's??

AMC is in big trouble when it can't even get in the 2s during a snow blizzard stay in holiday ratings grabber.

I am shocked GH went up that high....I've seen it and the show is dreadful.

I guess showing their vets helped OLTL get the bump too.

[EricMontreal22]

That's a fair point--and prob more my complaint (they also have a tendency to do the pivotal story climax scenes in those REALLY short edits back and forth they like to do...)

[jfung79]

It always depresses me that quality often goes unrewarded in the ratings! Why is AMC last place? Argh! BTW I am also one of those "one week behind" viewers referred to in an earlier post. I agree it is a big time commitment. Although, you still have shows that are big time commitments that people do not fall behind on -- several-times-a-week reality shows -- so I don't know why that is.

[DRW50]

I hope you post more often jfung. I try to post some old P&G soap stuff sometimes and would like to hear your comments.

[jfung79]

Will try to post more, Carl, thanks! My familiarity with the P&G soaps started when they were all already under siege by the networks (starting with AW in early 1998 under Richard Culliton, the first time out of many that I saw good writing go unrewarded in the ratings), so I may not have many comments about your posts regarding the glory days of these soaps. But I will try to look for your posts! Let me know if there are any you want me to look at specifically right now!

[DRW50]

Oh you can look at any. I will try to post a few more from the years you mention, I've mostly been posting earlier stuff as I enjoy that, since I never saw any of it, but I have a few later things. I have some Weeklys I scanned parts of. One of them a few weeks ago is in the GL thread, it has a Tina Sloan interview, and an interview with the guy who played Drew's brother and is now on Vampire Diaries.

[EricMontreal22]

Paul Wesley?

[DRW50]

Yes. He had another last name when he was on AW/GL.

[EricMontreal22]

Yeah I think he did on Wolf Lake as well (which I think I was the only person in the world who watched)

*edit* Wasilewski

[jfung79]

He'll always be Wasilewski, and Sean McKinnon on AW, to me even though he was only on a month there. I played his character on the Twitter roleplay for a year!