Ratings from the 70's

[JAS0N47]

FULL DAYTIME LINEUP: WEEK OF 5/15/78-5/19/78:

Here's a look at all of the daytime shows for the week of 5/15/78-5/19/78:

 

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FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 5/15/78-5/19/78 & 5/22/78-5/26/78:

 

My only guess is that if maybe a local affiliate had a local preemption during the week and didn't air all 5 episodes of a show, then the affiliate is not included in the weekly ratings for that specific week? Just a guess though.

Edited June 7, 2023 by JAS0N47

[Khan]

I agree, @Broderick.  What early Y&R and "golden era" ATWT held in common was an emphasis on the inner, emotional and psychological lives of its' characters.  On both shows, stories moved very slowly, because TPTB wanted their viewers to pay closer attention to how and why the characters behaved and felt the way they did.

[BoldRestless]

So if I'm clear, for 1978 we've already missed the weeks of March 20, April 10, April 17, April 24 and there will be 3 more missing?

[JAS0N47]

Yes, the usual "fast national" weeks are late April, and then the weeks around July 4, Labor Day and Christmas. So those would be the other 3 weeks missing for 1978.

[BoldRestless]

Thanks! A bit of a bummer as Labor Day is one of the preemptions I was looking to confirm. 

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[Paul Raven]

So here we are in May and AW and ATWT are still strong. So I guess it is over Summer that GH will jump into the Top 5 and AW will begin to dip with ATWT also dropping.

[JAS0N47]

Luckily, it's the week AROUND Labor Day that gets the shaft usually. I just checked and in 1978 it's the week BEFORE Labor Day that got the shaft. So, you are in luck. What show are you looking for a preemption on Labor Day 1978?

[kalbir]

The kids were off school. Clearly the momentum carried through the fall.

Edited June 8, 2023 by kalbir

[BoldRestless]

Y&R on September 4

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 Would have been a possible US Open date, but the coverage seems to have started after Y&R would have aired, so it's quite the mystery.

[JAS0N47]

US Open aired for 285 minutes from 1PM-545PM ET preempting As the World Turns, Guiding Light, M*A*S*H and Match Game '78. Search for Tomorrow (1230-1PM) aired a normal episode on Monday. For YR (12-1230PM) they list the Monday episode as a "breakout", meaning it's not counted with the regular ratings because a smaller amount of affiliates aired it. I can see why there was confusion.  For the other 9 days of 9/5/78-9/9/78 and 9/12/78-9/16/78 YR aired on 194 affiliates (with 99 percent clearance). For the Monday 9/4/78 episode, being a breakout, it got its own separate rating: 112 affiliates (73 percent clearance), 6.0 rating, 21 share, 4,470,000 viewers. So SOMETHING of YR aired that day (perhaps they subbed a repeat?) or it was a new episode which only 3/4 of the country got to see. 

 

I guess that makes sense. The later affiliates in the Mountain and Pacific time zones probably aired the US Open live, thus having to preempt YR.

Edited June 8, 2023 by JAS0N47

[BoldRestless]

Thanks so much for the detailed info!

 

Wow. So the mystery continues. 

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 I am wondering if they repeated an episode like Chris & Snapper's wedding. I know in some correspondence, Bell was trying to use a lot of clips of the wedding in episodes and highlight that to advertisers to try to get a new ratings high (I presume because it was cleared in more affiliates than it had been when it originally aired in January 1974). @will81 @yrfan1983 and @YRfan23 will be interested in this info!

Edited June 8, 2023 by BoldRestless

[will81]

Thanks Jason47 for the info and @BoldRestless for asking about this one. 

I'm going with the idea of a repeat. Maybe Columbia/Sony and CBS and Bell thought it was worth repeating Chris and Snapper's wedding to an audience that had missed it. Either way I feel like Sep 04 can probably be seen as a pre-emption of sorts. 

In terms of the contractual obligation with advertisers maybe they also didn't want to lose too much revenue in areas where the show could still be aired, so they aired something where possible. Just not a new episode. 

 

[JAS0N47]

 

In one of Bill Bell's script logs, it lists YR airing #1380-1429 between 8/28/78-11/6/78. So, based on that time frame, which covers 51 dates, there were 50 episodes aired. So one preemption between 8/28-11/6. Do you know of any other preemptions during that time frame? 

 

Hopefully that info might solve the mystery?? Once I look through the Nielsen data, that will confirm any preemptions for all but the week of 8/28-9/1.

 

If the YR researchers didn't have these yet, this should help them confirm at least the # of preemptions, and the general time frames of each preemption. Once we start filling in the Nielsen data, that will help confirm the exact dates.

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by JAS0N47

[YRfan23]

Thanks!!  that is interesting yet a bit frustrating that they don’t actually just mentioned what might have been shown of Y&R 9/4/78. I guess a repeat is possible. “Breakout is such an odd wording to use” haha 

I wonder if something was corrected within those days, or Bill Bell thought a show would get preempted but didn’t. Perhaps 9/4/78 is listed in the scripts but maybe ended up airing the next day which would explain, There being 50 days between that time span.  It will be interesting to see what the other ratings reveal hopefully. 

[BoldRestless]

There is an excellent guide made by a French site that I am pretty sure used that guide to match up the dates with episode #s. It has 9/4/78 as a preemption. Mostly, the preemptions can be intuited if there's a holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas or an obvious one like a presidential inauguration. So Labor Day was a good guess but was never sure (since Y&R US Open preemptions don't start til the mid/late 80s). I was pretty sure it was 9/4/78 until @will81 did some research and discovered that the US Open coverage started late which you confirmed. We will know better once you post the rest of the year. Unless Y&R happened to be preempted on one of those lost weeks, which is extremely unlikely, by process of elimination we will probably see that there wasn't a new episode on 9/4/78. But that opens the question of what the heck did they air, and why did Search For Tomorrow have a new episode then! Especially since SFT aired after Y&R so it's not like some affiliates wanted to do a half hour of pre-US Open coverage or something like that.