In Lemay's book he made it seem like one of his early stories was killing off Cindy.

Yes, that's right. The Russ/Cindy story was quite touching, although Robert Hover, the second Russ, was rather pallid.

Hover mostly seemed to be known for his being big in the "muscle" photo era. I guess that would have been an interesting story for Russ...

Did Groom play out any of the Cindy story?

Hover mostly seemed to be known for his being big in the "muscle" photo era. I guess that would have been an interesting story for Russ...

Did Groom play out any of the Cindy story?

I believe Groom was there at the beginning of it.

Cindy came on in May 1970 and Groom played Russ until Sept 71 so they were together a decent amount of time.

From Variety Oct 9th 1974

1.ATWT 11.4

2. Match Game 74 10.8

3.AMC 9.4

4. DOOL 9.2

5. DRS 9.1

Variety Dec 15 1971

For week ending Dec 5th

ABC & NBC tied with 7.7 CBS 7.5

1. GH 10.4

2. EON 10.1

3 ATWT 9.9

Variety April 7th 1976

CBS-TV posted an 8.3 daytime rating for the week ended March 28, a score that was 28% better than NBC (6.5) and 32% better than ABC (6.3) for the week. The advantage over its rivals is the best CBS daytimelead since October 1970, when the web led NBC by 28%.

Edited November 9, 201213 yr by Paul Raven

Variety Jan 19th 1972

For the second week in a row, ABC-TV has won the daytime average rating race. Long dominant CBS is third in very close three-way competition. Nielsen book for the week ending Jan. 9 gives ABC an 8.7 rating and 29 share to NBC's 8.0 and CBS' 7.7.

Variety Jan 19th 1972

For the second week in a row, ABC-TV has won the daytime average rating race. Long dominant CBS is third in very close three-way competition. Nielsen book for the week ending Jan. 9 gives ABC an 8.7 rating and 29 share to NBC's 8.0 and CBS' 7.7.

This and the earlier post from Dec 71 really help explain a lot of the major sweeping changes CBS made around this time that led to so many cancellations (SS, LMST, WTHI, etc.), it's striking how panicked CBS got by ABC and NBC's success, and I'm not sure that many of their decisions ended up being for the better in the long-run.

1977 Daytime ratings

ABC 6.6

CBS 6.8

NBC 5.6

1978

ABC 7.3

CBS 6.7

NBC 5.3

This is for all of daytime ,not just the soaps,but ABC's increase must have come about from GH's rise.

Thanks. I thought NBC would have been a little better.

This and the earlier post from Dec 71 really help explain a lot of the major sweeping changes CBS made around this time that led to so many cancellations (SS, LMST, WTHI, etc.), it's striking how panicked CBS got by ABC and NBC's success, and I'm not sure that many of their decisions ended up being for the better in the long-run.

Has it been brought up in this thread how someone at CBS said they'd rather cancel the lowest rated shows to get them out of third place instead of trying to fix them?

Any ratings from the year 1970? I would think that Dark Shadows would still have been popular at that time.

1977 Daytime ratings

ABC 6.6

CBS 6.8

NBC 5.6

1978

ABC 7.3

CBS 6.7

NBC 5.3

This is for all of daytime ,not just the soaps,but ABC's increase must have come about from GH's rise.

I think it was AMC. It was ABC's top soap for most of the 70s and 1977-1978 was a season before its peak above all soaps.

Did these ratings come from Wikipedia? Because wikipedia has an article entitled "List of U.S. Daytime Soap Opera Ratings" which has a list of the ratings from 1951 all the way up to the current week. When you read the 1980s decade ratings it has GH's household rating and then beside that how many millions of viewers watched. All My Children's highest ratings were in 1981-1982 with 10 million viewers with it ranking 2nd in the ratings and OLTL ranking 3rd which I am guessing would be roughly 9 million viewers give or take.