Ratings from the 80's

[kalbir]

@JAS0N47 You are amazing and should be knighted

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Thanks again for bringing all this soap history to us.

@YRfan23 We have a 1990s Ratings thread here

 

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by kalbir

[watson71]

The ratings the week of July 7th will be the last time that AW scored a rating of 6.0+ until its cancellation in 1999.  This was during the Cecile kidnaps Cass and takes him to St. Thomas storyline.  After this storyline concludes, several long running AW characters will be written out of the show- Larry, Clarice, Aunt Liz, Catlin- while other popular actors playing Donna, Cass, Kathleen, Jake, and Ellen Wheeler’s Marley and Victoria will leave as well by the end of 1996.

[JAS0N47]

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 7/28/86-8/1/86 & 8/4/86-8/8/86:

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FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 8/11/86-8/15/86 & 8/18/86-8/22/86:

Change that to the week of July 28, when it had a 6.1 rating.

[kalbir]

Y&R is killing it Summer 1986. Another four weeks at #1, bringing them to 7 consecutive weeks at #1.

We are three weeks away from Oprah going national.

Edited September 30, 2023 by kalbir

[GLATWT88]

And with amazing numbers! 

Capitol seems to be doing fine. It's massive like YR, but it has pulled very decent numbers and while it was doing better at first, the current numbers are still quite good. Considering that GL and ATWT suffered quite a bit in the mid 80s, Capitol has been consistent. It will be out the door soon tho. 

[JAS0N47]

That's funny you asked about this now. As I said earlier in the thread, once the Nielsen books changed in September 1987, they no longer easily list all the preemption data on a 5-page range. Now, it's listed by every half-hour time period for the week. To give you a quick example of a regular two-month period (say November/December 1989), that would usually involve special report preemptions listed on maybe 10-15 pages total throughout the 2 month period (an average of 2-3 pages per issue). I just checked March 1991, the month after the war ended, and the entire month of March 1991 had only two pages with special report preemptions,

However, for the January/February 1991 issues, due to the war, there were 95 pages over that 2-month period involved which listed special reports about the war. Now, of course that's for the entire time periods of the weeks (not just daytime), but just thought it was a good way to show you exactly how many special reports there were during those two months.

And they no longer list the duration, start time or end time of the special reports, so you sort of just have to piece it together from what times the programs are listed as not airing. ABC, howveer, is nice enough to at least list the start time of its special reports in its program title of the special report, so we do know the exact start times of all the ABC special reports.

 

 

[YRfan23]

That's interesting. If they still give us the general duration the special reports took place and if it was during most of the show's scheduled time, It sounds like it will be easy to figure out when preemptions occurred for those years. 

[JAS0N47]

They don't give the duration, start time or end time of the special reports as of September 1987. ABC gives the start time at least, but not the end time. All they do is say a special report took place during the 130-2PM time frame or 2-230PM time frame, etc...  And it doesn't even say what day of the week it happened. Just that there was a special report at sometime between Monday to Friday between 2-230PM.

So, that leaves us with the program pages, which list what times the shows aired, so if a show didn't air from 212-218PM on a Tuesday, then you just match it up to whatever special report is listed in that time frame.

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS (FAST NATIONALS): WEEK OF 8/25/86-8/29/86:

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FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 9/1/86-9/5/86 & 9/8/86-9/12/86:

[Soapsuds]

ATWT gets to #3 and GL tanking.

[kalbir]

Y&R got 9 consecutive weeks at #1 during Summer 1986.

September 8-12, 1986 was first week of Oprah gone national and clearances for the bottom three dropped from the previous week. It'll be interesting to see if there was an Oprah effect in subsequent weeks.

Edited October 1, 2023 by kalbir

[beebs]

For 1985-86 vs. 1984-85:

1	. GH	9.1 (+0.1)
2.	Y&R	8.4 (+0.4)
3.	AMC	7.9 (-0.2)
4.	OLTL	7.7 (+0.4)
5.	DAYS	7.4 (+0.4)
6.	ATWT	6.8 (+0.1)
7.	GL	6.6 (-0.6)
8.	AW	5.3 (-0.1)
9.	CAP	5.2 (-0.4)
10.	SB	4.3 (+0.8)
11.	LOV	4.1 (0.0)
12.	RH	3.1 (-0.1)
13.	SFT	2.8 (-0.4)

 

A generally positive year for many shows. GH and Y&R gaining back some viewers they'd lost in 1984-85, OLTL surging ahead thanks to Rauch/O'Shea. DAYS upward momentum continues, as the supercouple era really gets into gear. RoJohn/Marlena and the Pawn storyline were clearly a big hit.

Some weakness in AMC starting to appear, GL obviously being the biggest loser this year. AW, despite some minor ratings loss, begins to pull ahead of Capitol, and nearly occasionally beats GL. Too bad the momenutum wasn't sustained into 1987, despite both shows around it maintaining or gaining viewers. SB gained some major support, they're now more or less on par with the numbers TX got in the same slot their first year.

[BoldRestless]

So, if I understand correctly, it sounds like you will still know that the show was preempted, but it takes more effort or is not always possible to figure out WHY? For me personally that is ok. For example I'd want to confirm if a show didn't air the day after Thanksgiving but it's not important to me to know what specific TV movie or sportsball game aired (though I am sure some enjoy that data). For unexpected ones, it is always interesting to google historical events on that day and figure it out. Learn a lot of history that way, haha.

[safe]

Ilene Kristen (Delia)  made her second return to Ryan's Hope on September 5th

Thank you, JASON47!

[JAS0N47]

Yes, that's correct. You pretty much will still know why a show was preempted as well, but some of the time it will just say a generic special report. I was more speaking about myself personally...doing the charts for 1988-1992 will take a little more effort as opposed to how I was used to doing them from 1978-1987 (the way I preferred). But, yes, pretty much all of the info is still there (it just takes inference now, since they don't give the exact start time of the special report on that page, then you see that OLTL stopped airing from 2:22-2:27, so then it's obvious that's when the special report aired).

I won't be getting to 1991 for awhile, but for the War preemptions, here's a sample of three weeks from February 1991. I don't know what the "average minute audience rating" numbers are, but I am just posting these for the preemptions data:

Week of 2/4/91-2/10/91:

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Week of 2/11/91-2/17/91:

 

Week of 2/18/91-2/24/91:

 

 

[TEdgeofNight]

Joe Willmore was terrible for GL. One of the worst EP's the show ever had.