May 30 - June 3, 2011

[Bella20]

It's the 18-49 rating that's the most important. A 0.6 rating is just as crappy as a 0.5. It's pretty much the same thing. Nobody has anything to brag about in this situation.

On average 18 to 20 million people watch Dancing With the Stars every week. Around 10 to 12 million watch Modern Family. Both of those shows also blow the soaps away in terms of younger viewers. Soap viewers make up a very small fraction of the total audience for ABC shows.

[DRW50]

Probably killing off a kid and basically ignoring his parents in order to focus on Steve Burton's glycerine tears and a hammy story that tells us that Luke is the true victim and people who tell him to stop drinking are cult-like squares.

[Angela]

I don't watch GH. I write the Previews for the show for SON. The boring drips off these spoilers and pretty much has since they ended their plots from the past stunt period. GH's fate was sealed with Guza's firing (although the hiring of RC shows they are willing to try to get the numbers up) but it's sad to see the last ship on ABC sinking like this.

Exactly.

[Carolyn1980]

Yes, the 18-49 female rating is most important in daytime to advertisers. And in that category, OLTL and GH are pretty much tied, and have been for months now. Yet one is canceled, and one is not. Seems to me either BOTH should have been canceled, or neither.

As for the 18-34 comment I made, Brian Frons SPECIFICALLY said this is what he was hoping to find with his new shows, this elusive female viewer. And OLTL, the canceled show, has been doing better than GH lately in that very category. Yes, it's very close, but the smaller the audience gets, the bigger difference a tenth of a point becomes. (And BTW, those numbers may seem "crappy" to you in that demo....but they're better than what most daytime syndicated shows garner in that category. Yet those shows are considered successful because they're cheaper. No way does Frons think his new shows will do better than OLTL's 0.6 in that demo....he is probably hopeful for at most GH's 0.5).

Either way, I'm with Anne Sweeney. All three shows should be toast. GH shouldn't be allowed to linger past September 2012...and I doubt it will

[dragonflies]

IMO I think it was killing off Jake just so Jason could spawn another child he doesn't need, with Sam. I mean he is saying it's okay to have a child, mob isn't dangerous

[Angela]

Not really, it's like weighing terminally ill cancer patients against each other by who is doing a bit better any particular day. It doesn't matter. They're all deathly ill and going to die. For the time being. I do believe daytime soaps will re-emerge in some form in the future.

[Bella20]

Don't worry, they both will be, along with every other daytime show. I'm sorry, but the ratings for all of the shows look bad, and looking at the ratings for the younger demos, it's easy to see why no one in charge thinks that things can get better.

[marceline]

GH has been canceled. They just haven't formally announced it. Instead they announced Katie Couric and that Ron will get to spin out the rest of his contract as a script writer. No investment, just dumping leftover resources on it. That's cancellation.

[Ann_SS]

Exactly. All the soaps are dying, trying to parse the ratings to dig out some type of pyrrhic victory is pure desperation at this point.

The need for the fans of the cancelled soaps (usually OLTL fans) to be gleeful over GH's impending demise is ridiculous. When GH is cancelled, it just means that more people are unemployed (which apparently makes some people happy). it doesn't hurt ABC in any substantial way. ABC will just go find more cheaper programming.

[jpoliver78]

.

[DRW50]

I think it does hurt ABC in the long term (as their daytime rots away to nothing), but then, the soaps in their current state - which ABC never cared about repairing - aren't any better for ratings, and are more expensive. Those now at ABC are content to let their daytime, which used to help pay for primetime, die, and are also letting their primetime wither away.

[jpoliver78]

I know I may be stoned to death for saying this, but I do agree with Anne Sweeney when she said that networks should treat their daytime like they do primetime. Look at television history to see how short-lived some game shows and soaps were back in the 1960s and 70s, and to a lesser extent the 1980s and 90s.

What I don't like about ABC's approach is giving back the 3:00 p.m. hour to affiliates. Once a network gives back an hour, it is hard to reclaim that hour later. Giving the hour back in hopes of getting affiliates to air Katie Couric's talk show is also silly, because unless ABC actually owns an affiliate (which it does, for about 25% of the country), the network really cannot do anything to FORCE an affiliate to pick up Katie.

While "The Chew" and "The Revolution" may be better on ABC's pocket book than AMC or OLTL, ultimately, "The Chew" will provide a weaker lead-in to the final months of OLTL and "The Revolution" will provide GH with a weaker lead-in during what may turn out to be its final months on the air. If GH can rank dead last with both AMC and OLTL as lead-ins, how low can those numbers go - below 2 million? - with unproven shows like "The Chew" and "The Revolution" as lead-ins?

There is a very real possibility that ABC Daytime this time next year could have - literally - half the viewers it does today. While budgets may be cheaper, it is never a good thing to lose viewers, and a lot of viewers. While I may be pessimistic about the future of ABC Daytime, I'm not encouraged by decisions being made at other parts of the network either (i.e. primetime). ABC, as a whole, is on the decline (in my opinion).

[NYC123]

Doesn't matter at this point

Soaps are done. Period.

We can have the argument that OLTL should have not gone but it would have been gone next year. Doesn't matter.

[DRW50]

I agree with you.

What exactly did she mean about treating daytime like primetime? Aside from this Katie Couric project it seems like ABC hasn't invested in daytime in a long while, and The The doesn't seem like an investment.

I don't really understand most of the choices at ABC anyway, like their bizarre decisions regarding V.

[Eric83]

I agree with this. ABC is practically switching out its whole afternoon lineup with a bunch of cheap replacements. The numbers are going to be even worse, and aren't going to attract any more 18-49 females then soaps could.