October 17-21, 2011

[aMLCproduction]

And they're so old. Marlena is a grandma!!!. B&B is fabulous these days. A real treat. I will say MARDAR needs to spice things up asap

[DRW50]

Marlena's been a grandmother for over 15 years. I don't think that bothers viewers. It's just all been done a million times before, I doubt viewers would tune back in for that.

Given how bad the stories on B&B are, I guess Jacob Young might be a reason, although they don't give him a lot to do.

[aMLCproduction]

True but it really hits home seeing that will is a young man.

[Saving ATWT]

I've been bashing B&B for over one year but the soap has really turned a corner. Brooke and Ridge as the grown ups, the new Stephanie and Eric, helps to give the show greater balance, frees up space for the next generation. The returns of Thorne and Rick are great, too. Nice is basically MIA and this is a good thing because he stopped being interesting years ago.

The Spencer v Forrester dynamic reminds me of the good ol' Spectra days. My only wish is that the writers would find space for Oliver and Felcia.

OLTL is a top soap, is that means anything these days. GH is such a gonner come Sept 2012.

[TeamEric]

Toups, I lost part of my GH spreadsheet, so I could be wrong but GH's last all-time low in 18-49 demo was 614,000 week of 7/4. Do you have any lower 18-49 for GH?

[DRW50]

The Spectras had a lot of humor and heart. The Spencers are dull, misogynistic pigs who only care about getting some tail.

The kids of Ridge and Brooke are also too one-note to really generate enough interest. They just rush from one plot-driven true love to the next.

[TeamEric]

Despite GH's crashing viewership, that is only the 2nd time OLTL beat that soap in the 18-49 demo all year.

As for OLTL's AMC vs Chew lead-in debate:

With AMC as lead-in for September, OLTL averaged 2.7 million viewers.

Last week with Chew as lead-in, OLTL again averaged 2.7 million viewers for Mon-Wed. That proves OLTL can overcome the poor lead-in and attract those viewers back to watching... at least for certain episodes.

However, OLTL is back to its April-June trend of gaining and losing as much as 400,000 viewers from one day to another. During those months OLTL would spike as high as 2.8 million then crash back to 2.3 million in a given week, too. That erratic trend is back.

[JaneAusten]

Doesn't B&B generally follow the trend of Y&R. Y&R has been down for months so has B&B. Y&R got a boost last week so did B&B. THere may be an exception a week here or there but that seems to be the general trend.

[soapfan770]

The truth about the Days reboot is that its not working and has turned into a non-event as I anticipated. The truth is the show still has some problems and I don't think anyone wants to sit through a Rafe/Sami/Austin/Carrie quad.

[DaytimeFan]

While it's true that Y&R and B&B seem to go up and down in tandem, B&B's numbers, over the last few years, have levelled out while Y&R's continue to plummet. B&B's been in the 2.? range for years, Y&R's hit the low 3.?'s only recently. Y&R is on a major slide.

The DAYS reboot has failed horribly and is a non-event. It's boring and unwatchable.

[Soapsuds]

It's been done before and I am sure fans dont want to see Sami regress. I've never cared for the Rafe character either. The show right now is very boring. The vets are on but nothing existing or interesting is happening.

[TeamEric]

OLTL's Todd and Blair's reunion had part of the cover of SOW yet their recent flashback-laden episode only brought in a 1.7.

The writers need to do more than just throw old couplings back together and scream watch the REUNION! They need to revitalize old pairings or explore the changes in the relationships.

Even though Guza tried to poison Luke and Laura's 25th anniversary wedding as much as possible with his Tracy crap, the story was still new in some respects b/c it explored Laura rebonding with her grown children. The scenes between a grown Lulu and Laura especially were very touching and something I had longed to watch. Also, a side story was a broken down Luke finding his heart for at least a few weeks, something many old Luke fans like myself longed to see...

Soap writers need to learn nostalgia alone isn't going to attrack back old viewers. The returns must come with new, engaging stories, too. If Leo had returned from the dead months before AMC's finale and had a real meaty story, I might have returned to watching that show again... but as is the resurrections were all cheap gimmicks, IMO, and viewers didn't flock back in droves until the very end.

[DRW50]

No Todd relationship would ever bring in a ratings boost because he only ever had a relationship with someone for about five minutes before it all blew up. If former viewers don't want to choose between the woman Todd beat up and the woman he gave a jar of ashes to, I can see why.

[JaneAusten]

The problem I have with Days is even the new and interesting is uninteresting. Jack having PTSD and Jennifer helping him is not much different IMO than him walking away from her because he thought he was dying or the zillion other stories they have told for them. Sure the PTSD is different but sometimes a couple just needs a break and be allowed to interact with other characters to give characters something new to work with and a new relationship helps wih that, I was never a huge Luke and LAura fan but watchng Luke break and spiral downward after Laura went into catatonia and rebel against Lucky's choices at first was realistic and interesting to watch. And he was actually watchable with Skye while not a great pairing to me they were better balanced in a lot of ways. Maybe it was because they didn't spit on Laura for them and we actually kind of saw them help each other in many ways versus taking advantage of each other. Its only been since they turned him into this totally amoral scum he's become with Tracy, hating on Laura and their history and hating on his life as a husband and father that he's really become unrootable. I am not even enjoying EJ and Nicole anymore. While placating fanbases which is what Days always tries to do, they end up losing viewers because the relationships are just played out in many ways.Its the same issue GH has with their 2 stronghold couples. And it gets tiresome reading how these couples must stay together because they have so much "chemistry". Frankly its more because they have history together than anything chemistrywise. I might hate Y&R but I give them some level of credit for not locking VIlly together endlessly and at least TRYING to move away from Cane/Lily. Lily and Daniel were actually getting some support. If the stories were more interesting it frankly would have been no issue.

[TeamEric]

The last Todd romance that was a proven ratings winner was with Rebecca in 1994, and IMO that was more due to Gottlieb's insistence on some gritty realism for the prison and rape therapy sessons.

Todd's current story with Téa is not romantic. Far from it, as they have been mainly fighting and their episodes have scored well in the dailies, never following below 1.9.