Thanks for posting. Hope you have more.

That was really the end of an era

Early 78  AW at #1 ATWT at #2. Within months AW had tumbled and GH taken over dominance of the 3pm slot.

Surprising that ATWT began to drop as nothing really changed in terms of storytelling or characters. It just seemed like viewers suddenly found ATWT not to their liking and switched off.

Look at The Doctors ahead of Days. 

9 hours ago, Paul Raven said:

Thanks for posting. Hope you have more.

 

Most of 1978 to 1980 at the moment. Hopefully more in the future!

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 1/23/78-1/27/78 & 1/30/78-2/3/78:

 

Edited June 3, 20232 yr by JAS0N47

On 6/2/2023 at 3:41 PM, JAS0N47 said:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 12/26/77-12/30/77 & 1/2/78-1/6/78:

 

 

In addition to historic Nielsen ratings data, these weekly charts will help fans of other soaps confirm which dates had preemptions! The stations column is the number of network affiliates which aired the soap that week. The percentage column is the percentage of network affiliates which aired the soap that week.

 

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 1/9/78-1/13/78 & 1/16/78-1/20/78:

Thanks for these ratings.  All My Children beginning its rise to Number 1 for the 78 to 79 season and finishing Number 3 in the 77 to 78 season.

 

Interesting to see Another World and As the World Turns as well as AMC battle it out for Number 1 and within the top 3 spots.

Also Shocking that Ryan's Hope is higher than General Hospital. GH was slated for cancellation by Fred Silverman until Gloria Monty saved it.

I had no idea Another World was ever #1.

Agnes Nixon saved Another World from being canceled in the late 1960s and it rose to No. 2 in the ratings defeating General Hospital in the time slot.

 

When ABC saw what Agnes Nixon did with AW and what happened to GH, ABC approached Nixon to create a soap for ABC....One Life to Live debuted in January 1968 and Nixon finished up her headwriting duties at AW.  Then based on OLTL's performance, ABC wanted another soap. Agnes presented All My Children to ABC and the rest is history.

 

AW was near the top of the ratings from the late 1960s until its collapse in 1979 with GH's giant rise.

Late 1970s was ABC huge rise and P&G shows tanked. Did viewers suddenly switch over from P&G to ABC, or did ABC get a whole bunch of new viewers?

Y&R was going strong in the late 1970s but would stumble in 1980 after expanding to one hour and changing time slots.

11 minutes ago, kalbir said:

Late 1970s was ABC huge rise and P&G shows tanked. Did viewers suddenly switch over from P&G to ABC, or did ABC get a whole bunch of new viewers?

Y&R was going strong in the late 1970s but would stumble in 1980 after expanding to one hour and changing time slots.

My guess is that ABC ended up getting younger viewers (high school and college aged) that didn't want to watch soaps that their parents watched (which were P & G).

58 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I had no idea Another World was ever #1.

You're so cute!😋 You apparently haven't read the 70s ratings archive thread.😉

32 minutes ago, kalbir said:

Late 1970s was ABC huge rise and P&G shows tanked. Did viewers suddenly switch over from P&G to ABC, or did ABC get a whole bunch of new viewers?

Y&R was going strong in the late 1970s but would stumble in 1980 after expanding to one hour and changing time slots.

Surge of new (mostly younger and college aged) viewers flocked to ABC especially to GH. Yes Y&R was strong but expanding to an 1 hour and then the changing time slots stymied its progress. The same thing happened to All My Children. When Ryan's Hope premiered in July 1975, ABC gave RH AMC spot at 1 and moved AMC to 12:30. AMC's ratings slightly dipped and AMC's progress slowed. It was until January 1977 that AMC got its 1pm slot back and RH to 12:30 that AMC ratings got back to where they were and in April 1977 AMC went to an hour and the ratings went much higher.

Edited June 3, 20232 yr by JoeCool

Thank you so much. Love all of this, even for soaps I'm not into, love the 70's regardless so this is gold.

Interesting ABC chose to air a 13min episode of OLTL - not sure why they didn't just pre-empt it

GH doesn't air its first 1 hour ep Jan 16 but the following day which must have been annoying as I assume ABC promoted it a fair bit. 

5 hours ago, Soaplovers said:

My guess is that ABC ended up getting younger viewers (high school and college aged) that didn't want to watch soaps that their parents watched (which were P & G).

 

5 hours ago, JoeCool said:

Surge of new (mostly younger and college aged) viewers flocked to ABC especially to GH. 

That makes sense. P&G was old and busted, ABC was the new hotness.

I wonder if ABC didn't promote their daytime lineup during primetime in 78,especially in Summer when there was availability as primetime was in repeats.

ABC was #1 so a lot of viewers would be alerted to the daytime shows.

Days is an interesting case. It's three most definitive eras are the Bill Bell years, the supercouple years, and Reilly's sci-fi years. The years in between each of those definitive eras are not really remembered it seems.

Late 1970s/early 1980s ABC set the template that Days took to a whole other level in the supercouple years.

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 2/6/78-2/10/78 & 2/13/78-2/17/78: