May 6-10, 2013: All Soaps Rebound From Terrible Week

[marceline]

You're trying to make the "evidence" fit your hypothesis. Last week you said the ratings drop was due to PP now you're claiming that the same monolithic horde that tuned out of the network soaps one week has now returned to those soaps and that all of that happened within two weeks.

We've seen this plenty of times long before PP was a factor. All soaps drop one week then bounce back the next. It's usually weather or news pre-emptions. Weather is the likely cause in this case as well. There's no reason to believe that PP is as powerful as the weather or the news.

[EricMontreal22]

Exactly. As much as I personally love the online soaps I can not imagine any fan of one of he on air soaps watching them and then saying "Well now I don't care what happened on Days of Our Lives I'll just delete it from my DVR."

[jfung79]

I agree with both of you that I'm selecting evidence to fit my interpretations. But I've stated there are numerous theories that could explain the changes in ratings so I don't just have one hypothesis.

I see what you're saying but frankly I find it hard to believe that PP can both be successful and have no significant amount of people delay watching their TV soaps by even one day. One of those has to be wrong. As I said, the weekly ratings are Live+Same Day so even delaying a day means you don't count in the weekly ratings anymore. You don't delete the show from your DVR.

It's clear that daily PP viewership dropped from the first week to the second week in terms of how high each new episode was getting on the daily Hulu charts, so a rebound to GH, when considered as an addition to other factors I mentioned such as randomness, Luke/Laura/Scotty, and Maura West (and yes, I agree weather could be part of it too), is not inconsistent with what I said last week.

[EricMontreal22]

jfung, as usual I come off more bitter towards you than I mean to be. I always find your posts interesting. One comparison though is--when AMC and especially OLTL were canceled--did overall soap viewership go up?

[jfung79]

I didn't think you came off bitter, but thanks!

I believe all soaps have generally been up year to year for a few months now, which I think probably would not be the case if AMC/OLTL had been on TV the whole time. I do think the soaps I watch are in good shape creatively and deserve their viewership gains, but I also think part of that is from AMC/OLTL fans migrating to the other soaps over time, even though it wasn't instantaneous after they were cancelled. I want to clarify all this doesn't mean I think Prospect Park is wholly bad for the TV soaps though -- all the excitement is good for the genre and at bringing new or lapsed viewers back to the genre. I myself didn't start watching DAYS, or GH again, until coming on here after the Prospect Park news broke in December.