I like the club vibe - I've been wanting soaps to hook into that scene forever - but I do think Shelter is on a bit too much. AMC has at least one other posh restaurant set, but that is actually, uh, just Shelter redressed. OLTL needs another environment like that, badly. And while the recurring players there are fitfully entertaining and sometimes amusing, I just do not care about Dean, Bruce and Diego. If Dean or Bruce turn out to be tattoo people, fine, great, but then get rid of them. If Téa really does get with Dean, okay, but then dump him. I like a diverse supporting cast but you don't need all those random-ass club dudes on quite so much. There was one day where all three of them plus Cutter lined up to talk to Blair or Dusky or someone and I was like, 'the [!@#$%^&*] is this?' Fortunately, Dusky appears to have been sent into a black hole forever.

All you need are the contract players, Cutter and Rama, and the key recurring player, Nikki. Blair's regular environment shouldn't be Shelter, and isn't anyway - she leaves most of it to Cutter as is. Let her run Todd's paper in his absence; she is his wife, and she's done it any number of times before.

The Natalie story needs a lot of work. I hope it gets it in Season 2 - they've amped her up lately.

Well said. I say keep Bruce cause he's ridiculously good looking and drop the rest. I was assuming Cutter may fire Diego for accepting Clint's money and letting him in, anyway. Dean is smarmy and irritating and has tattoo and/or drug ring connection written all over him. He's probably written as a temporary character (at least, I hope he is). Don't even know why they're "attempting" a flirtation with Tea and him. I think Dusky is gone, too.

My problem isn't that they're always at a club, but Shelter is horribly designed if they want to use it for events as well. It's fine as a night club, but they need a new space for an actual restaurant and then they need a space for events like Man of the Year Gala.

I made a few graphs to show the change

EDIT: Looks Like you cant see it. Here is a link to my SON Google Drive folder with a few extra Soap related things. This can only be accessed by people who have the link:

Edit: The Episode Diffrence document may need to be fixed. That said, you need to download it to view it.

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B_ipZf7pCGQrdFh6cDRSM0xhdU0&usp=sharing

Edited August 20, 201312 yr by allmc2008

Ugh. I hoped more people would find OLTL for the second week of time time switch. God knows it was not promoted at all. Both shows seemed to have significant Thursday drops which is odd.

I think some part of OLTL's problem (and I use that term loosely b/c the ratings aren't abysmal for OWN daytime) on OWN was the likely audience and the tone of those early eps. Shelter heavy, young cast heavy- not exactly a match made in heaven for the grandmas who couldn't find their stories online. I'm generalizing here but I can totally see some more traditional viewers tuning out quickly after the first 2 weeks. AMC might have had less familiar faces but it had a homey, comfort food soap feel right out of the gate. Its a shame because they're already using Shelter far more if not sparingly than at least very differently than they did the first month. Dusky's evaporated, we're not getting Dueling DJs and Riff Raff and musical guests. Its more of a backdrop now where I felt like Shelter was basically a character early on. I could still do with less Bruce, Dean and now Nikki but its still light years from where we were in May. Same with the kids- the constant apartment scenes (which I admittedly loved) eventually gave way to them branching into some different stories. And they took if not a backseat, much more of an equal share, with Clint's story etc. the last eight or so eps.

There are still issues to be worked out that have been discussed but on the whole for a pilot season with a myriad of problems and not a ton of money, it was very enjoyable for me overall and is ending, if I look at the last 3 weeks or so together, on a nice upswing.

I think some part of OLTL's problem (and I use that term loosely b/c the ratings aren't abysmal for OWN daytime) on OWN was the likely audience and the tone of those early eps. Shelter heavy, young cast heavy- not exactly a match made in heaven for the grandmas who couldn't find their stories online.

I'm curious about who exactly is OWN's daytime demo. Oprah's "fanbase" isn't just made up of grandmas and her network was originally geared to the "live your best life," read The Secret (grrrr...), positive thinking types. I can see AMC doing better with that crowd because of the heavier family, faith, "you are all my children" tone. I could see OLTL doing better on a Bravo or USA. All of this is just conjecture on my part admittedly.

I don't think that would have made a difference. It wasn't that the show had a higher-end audience, it was that it was all over the place both tonally at times and more importantly, in terms of pacing. I think there were bigger problems with OLTL's first season than the tone - they cut down on some of the meandering, character-vignettes-over-story drifting (which was charming at first) after awhile, but the pace still was stop and start. I think the tone settled down pretty quick as edgy, but still mature.

Admittedly, I'm saying that as someone who had thought soaps needed to embrace OLTL's club scene and music aesthetic years and years ago, but I was just as happy as anyone when they started spending less time in there, cut Dusky, etc. That wasn't as much of a problem later as it was in the beginning; I felt that over time, Shelter got more appropriate use. With the exception of it being used for the MOTY gala, which I forgave because it worked for the most part, and because DC's Giddens got one thing very right when he was defending these shows and their sets: these shows are on a budget, they don't have the money (yet) to be building a slew of new big sets. They're making do with what they have.

Edited August 21, 201312 yr by Vee

I don't think that would have made a difference. It wasn't that the show had a higher-end audience, it was that it was all over the place both tonally at times and more importantly, in terms of pacing. I think there were bigger problems with OLTL's first season than the tone - they cut down on some of the meandering, character-vignettes-over-story drifting (which was charming at first) after awhile, but the pace still was stop and start. I think the tone settled down pretty quick as edgy, but still mature.

Admittedly, I'm saying that as someone who had thought soaps needed to embrace OLTL's club scene and music aesthetic years and years ago, but I was just as happy as anyone when they started spending less time in there, cut Dusky, etc. That wasn't as much of a problem later as it was in the beginning; I felt that over time, Shelter got more appropriate use. With the exception of it being used for the MOTY gala, which I forgave because it worked for the most part, and because DC's Giddens got one thing very right when he was defending these shows and their sets: these shows are on a budget, they don't have the money (yet) to be building a slew of new big sets. They're making do with what they have.

Yeah PP had to save money by having both shows share sets and I bet that continues in season 2

Last week's numbers. Both shows are down.

http://www.tvmediainsights.com/highlights/29649/amc-oltl-own-week-of-august-19-2013/

AMC

Mon Aug 19 134,000 total viewers, 70,000 viewers in Adults 18-49
Tue Aug 20 145,000 total viewers, 44,000 viewers in Adults 18-49
Wed Aug 21 170,000 total viewers, 57,000 viewers in Adults 18-49
Thu Aug 22 196,000 total viewers, 67,000 viewers in Adults 18-49

OLTL

Mon Aug 19 114,000 total viewers, 72,000 viewers in Adults 18-49
Tue Aug 20 97,000 total viewers, 46,000 viewers in Adults 18-49
Wed Aug 21 77,000 total viewers, 19,000 viewers in Adults 18-49
Thu Aug 22 168,000 total viewers, 48,000 viewers in Adults 18-49

I was shocked when I saw the numbers for last week. Even though AMC's are down, OLTL are downright terrible.

I'm not surprised. This isn't a TV friendly time of year with kids going back to school and families taking end of summer vacations.

The 56% drop between AMC and OLTL on Wednesday is sad. Weren't these the finale eps?

No, they're still running.

I'm not surprised. This isn't a TV friendly time of year with kids going back to school and families taking end of summer vacations.

The 56% drop between AMC and OLTL on Wednesday is sad. Weren't these the finale eps?

And then OLTL more than doubles on Thursday & is like decently close to AMC. Its odd- you're right though late August is kind of a dead zone- everyone seems to be on vacation this week & last.

OWN doesn't run any promos for the show, so I don't know why anybody expects anything from the ratings. If there were weekly promos airing on the network, showing viewers that they're available and what is happening, perhaps people would tune in. I don't understand why Oprah isn't trying harder with them.

I wonder if OWN execs are of the belief that these shows are miraculously self-promoting, that anyone who is, or ever will be interested in them already knows about them and knows where and how to find them. As if they're just serving a set, prefabricated audience with little desire to cast a wider net. How are Tyler's shows promoted in comparison? My cousin watches THATHN and when I asked her if she was watching AMC/OLTL too, she didn't even know that they were on OWN (!?) which means she's never caught a promo in primetime.

Emmitt's obnoxious ass shows up every single commercial break during AMC and OLTL to pimp Mama Hattie, and H&HN gets promoted almost as much.