January 2-6, 2012

[evermore]

Look at those Girls12-17 ratings... Is OLTL's rating due to Jack? And if so, should they send him to GH with his parents & sister?

[tune_in_tomorrow]

Good question. Granted, the numbers this week are a bit skewed because on Monday Y&R and B&B were up against football so its competition and the audience compositition were different, but it is interesting that it has been getting a bounce that Y&R hasn't. Maybe AMC fans who don't want to invest in an hour-long show but might be OK with a half-hour one. I haven't seen ratings for "The Talk." Have they gone up? Maybe B&B is getting some of their viewers tuning in early.

[OldGHFan]

I think the quality will go up dramatically. I think the ratings will rise a little bit. I just don't think it's enough. When the talk shows cost a fraction of a soap, I just don't think ABC is going to keep a soap on the air that costs a lot more.

[Ann_SS]

Well, you never know what the audience finds entertaining. It is possible that the increase in demo is linked to the cold weather. Traditionally, the soaps' demos are at their best in January and February.

[DRW50]

I think they've had stronger ratings in that demo for several years now. I wonder if it's down to the intense focus on "Sole" starting in 2007.

[GregNYC]

The Hope/Liam/Steffi/Thomas crap is working.

[EricMontreal22]

I think it's several things. While I agree with the critics who have complained about the endlessly repeating stories and characters, etc, obviously some in the soap industry appreciate the show--considering its Emmys, etc. I do think that they have several things to their benefit. One is, it's by far the easiest soap to jump into--due to the length, and yes, the small repetitive group of characters and cyclical stories. A year or two ago it was probably the soap I knew the least history about (although years back I did watch the first several months on video), and yet I found it instantly eaqsy to understand what was happening. Also, again for good and bad, it's a soap that (and I think you imply this) is easily recognizable when to many other soaps are becoming less so. Even if one doesn't think Brad Bell has been a strong writer for the past decade or more, obviously there's something about that familiarity that is appealing. So yes, in those respects it makes sense that it's stayed relatively strong. While I think it's too bad iuf it proves that rather simplistic writing is what works best, the show has remained basically true to itself, with a recognizable core. I would also say that maybe it does prove that 30 minute soaps are more appealing in this day and age, although that's not all that relevant as I've heard crap like The Chew is still considerably cheaper than a 30 minute soap and fills twice as much time (of course we all know that doing two 30 minute soaps is considerably more expensive than four 30 minute soaps so the not huge amount of money saved by cutting an existing soap to 30 mins probably wouldn't be seen as worth it to networks, though I wish they would try, and would have been fine with PP going in that direction).

Is that really true? I know their ratings were dropping but were they as low as that??

[Eric83]

The lowest B&B dropped to was a 1.9 in HHs back in June.