Ratings from the 70's

[Soapsuds]

CBS was solid. It had 3 of its soaps in the top five with SFT at #6.

[Paul Raven]

AW continuing as #1. I'm sure NBC had no idea what was to come. Their concerns would have been the rest of the lineup.

Michael Brockman had been appointed Nov 77 as head of daytime. Ann Marcus was writing Days and no change was made there in 78. I guess she was an expensive hire and and maybe had a contract that ensured her position. At that stage maybe it was felt she needed more time to bring the show around.

At The Doctors Mel and Ethel Brez were dropped in April. They had been touted by NBC and signed a deal that saw them appointed to TD with no previous soap experience.

[JAS0N47]

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 2/20/78-2/24/78 & 2/27/78-3/3/78:

 

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Edited October 20, 2023 by JAS0N47

[Soapsuds]

GL dropping out of the top five. Dropped all the way to #9. Any reason why?

[JoeCool]

How close for the Number 1 spot - AMC, AW, ATWT and Y & R.  Surprised Ryan's Hope beating One Life and GH.

[Broderick]

I believe World Turns was hurt by DEMOS, more than by any other factor.  

There's a book on soaps (written by Robert LaGuardia) that was published right about the time of these ratings -- late 1977, early 1978.  LaGuardia closes his book by saying an "unprecedented number of young viewers have recently entered the daytime audience", and the shows primarily benefiting from this influx of young viewers, in his opinion, were All My Children and The Young and the Restless.   In fact, he goes on to note -- direct quote here -- "The Young and the Restless and All My Children are currently all the rage on college campuses, where young viewers tend to relate to the characters on these two shows."  

We can see the proof of his assertion clearly in the ratings for the final week of December 1977.   During that particular week, winter break from school was occurring all across America, and younger viewers were at home, taking control of their parents' TV sets.  What's #1 & #2 that week?  AMC and Y&R. 

The next week, school started back, and those younger viewers returned to campus, where their viewing wasn't being monitored by A.C. Nielson, and the parents at home switched back to As the World Turns and Another World, propelling the more traditional soaps back to the top.  

As the "influx of younger viewers" continued into the late 1970s and very early 1980s, we saw All My Children continue doing extremely well, along with One Life to Live, and of course General Hospital, which underwent a huge transformation in 1979.  We also saw The Young and the Restless at or near the top of the ratings in 1979 and 1980, up until its somewhat disastrous transition to an hour, which temporarily zapped away the momentum it had been gaining for the past 7 years. 

I don't necessarily believe World Turns was "abandoned" by its viewers.  I believe the viewers of the older P&G soaps were simply dying off slowly, and the younger viewers, who were entering the audience at a fast rate, were more interested in the ABC shows and the Bell shows.    

[will81]

That is interesting as it's audience share doesn't really drop much. So it seems overall that timeslot lost households. At least that's how I read it. 

You can see it drop from an 8.4 to a 7.9 but it maintains a 27% share and then it falls again to 7.6 and finally drops 1% share point. So despite it's big tumble in rank, overall it was still mostly maintaing its share of the available audience. 

[TEdgeofNight]

Thanks Jason for these ratings. CBS back then was (and still is) the old ladies network. Grandma watched her 'stories' ATWT, GL and SFT. The young people watched AMC, OLTL and RH and then GH exploded! Would love to see the demos. 

[JAS0N47]

Check back in a few minutes.   

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Hopefully you can explain some of the numbers, since I'm not an expert at looking at these things. Do you add some 0's to these numbers??

 

 

[JAS0N47]

1977-1978 Season Averages as of January 22, 1978:

 

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[TEdgeofNight]

I would add 3 000's to the numbers, except of course for the average column,which lists total number of viewers. 

[te.]

What's surprising is that Edge of Night's male demo is nothing special, especially since the story has always been that it was male skewing.

[Broderick]

First thing that jumped out at me.  Maybe they hadn't recovered from the "CBS time switch" where all of that demo was supposedly depleted.  

[kalbir]

I wonder what grandmas BITD thought of Y&R. It must have been scandalous and shocking to them.

[JoeCool]

My mom loved Y and R...my great grandmother (Mom's grandmother) on my Mom's side Nana who was born in Ireland....strict Catholic loved it...she would not answer the phone if you called during Y and R!