Ratings from the 80's

[kalbir]

Y&R summer 1987 #1 streak ends at 5 weeks.

Things should stabilize in August.

September one year of Oprah, debut of Geraldo, and Nielsen people meters.

[Soapsuds]

They are going to hurt CBS soaps.

[JAS0N47]

Does anyone know who the poster VanessaReardon was? That person last posted in 2020, but posted complete weeks of Nielsen ratings for 1987. 

Luckily, one of the weeks posted is one of the missing weeks we need, 10/19/87-10/23/87. They posted most of 1987, but not December 1987, where we still need the week of 12/14/87-12/18/87.

Just wondered if anyone had contact info for that person. They posted some shares as well when soaps tied in the rankings, so it looks like maybe they have the shares that they could post for 10/19/87 too or might have the week of data we need for 12/14/87.

I spot-checked the data they posted for around the time frame of October 1987, and it matches the Nielsen books exactly for the weeks of 9/28/87, 10/26/87, 11/2/87 and 11/9/87. 

The only differences I found was the week of 10/5/87. They posted AW got a 4.4, while the Nielsen book says it was 4.5.  Also, the week of 11/16/87, they put YR getting a 7.7, but Nielsen book has 7.9, which actually makes YR (not GH) the winner of that week. 

So, based on all of that, it looks like the data they posted for the "missing week" of 10/19/87 will be as close to correct as possible, and I will put that in the Nielsen chart for that week as a placeholder (crediting VanessaReardon as the stats poster), which was this:

10/19/87-10/23/1987
GH 7.8
AMC 7.6
Y&R 7.4 (higher share)
OLTL 7.4
DOOL 6.4
ATWT 6.1
GL 5.5
B&B 4.9
AW 4.6
SB 4.5
LOV 4.2
RH 3
 

Edited October 14, 2023 by JAS0N47

[beebs]

I joked that they were secretly Jill Farren Phelps (they became extremely defensive whenever anyone would disparage JFP's work as EP), but ultimately, no I don't think anyone ever confirmed/retained contact with them after they left. They were a somewhat...caustic personality. I've also caught some errors in their ratings posts (certain shows being either .1 up or down, usually...though I have found one or two instances of some rather major differences on certain shows), so while it's beneficial to have their data in the thread, we shouldn't take it as gospel either.

[JAS0N47]

That's why I checked other weeks surrounding the missing week. So, out of the 72 ratings points that I checked, VR matches the Nielsen book for 70 of the 72 soaps (12 soaps a week x 6 weeks), only differing one tenth of a point for AW one week and two tenths of a point for YR another week. 

So getting 70 out of 72 ratings correct with the Nielsen book is a 97 percent success rate. She obviously didn't just "create" them out of nowhere, but had some sort of official ratings lists from somewhere. That's why I feel pretty confident for using the data for the week of 10/19/87 as a "placeholder" at least, until hopefully that Nielsen book is tracked down somewhere.

On a good note, there is a possible lead on one of the two "missing" books from 1991, so if we get that one, we will only need 1 week from 1981, 2 from 1987 (but we now have VR's ratings for one of those two weeks) and one from 1991 (the two from 1991 would just be getting us the additional info: Demos, Affiliates, Clearance, Preemptions) since we already have the ratings for those weeks from SOD.

So, if we add in VR's ratings for 10/19/87, that means we will only be missing ratings for just 2 weeks from 1979-Present (8/24/81 and 12/14/87).

The two differences I noticed actually both involve "breakouts": The AW 10/7/87 Wednesday broadcast is a breakout, 4.1 rating, not listed in the "normal" ratings. Same for the YR 11/18/87 Wed. broadcast, another breakout (this one 22 minutes long) with a 4.6 rating. By taking that low 4.6 rating out (for a third of the Wed. episode), that could have easily pushed YR's rating up two-tenths of a point as the Nielsen book has.

 

Perhaps the lists VR had access to were lists that had the ratings including those as "regular" episodes, before the network notified Nielsen to count them separately. It does add a little more credence to VR's data, at least in my opinion.

[beebs]

Fair point! I did notice a few more discrepancies than you did, as I have been following week by week with the data I have (which I copied into Excel as they were posting them), but you are correct that the numbers were almost always spot-on and in-line with what you have, so I don't mean to cast doubt over their work entirely, but just to point out that there are some differences here and there, usually with only one entry on a week. Your point about breakouts makes their data make a lot more sense as well.

[JAS0N47]

Yes, it will be interesting to see if the Nielsen books will differ some with what was posted in SOW as of Fall 1989. I an typing up July 1988 tonight, so I am about one year ahead of the charts I am posting here. I am going to try to keep typing up 4 weeks a day (as I post 4 weeks a day here on SON), so that I will keep being a year or so ahead in the posted charts. I might slow down once I get to 1990, since all of the SOW charts are already posted on my site. So, once we get to the end of 1989 here, there will probably be a little slow down of my posts on here until I can get 1990-1992 typed up/sorted/cropped and finally posted here. 

[JAS0N47]

UPDATE: On 11/3/19, VR posted this: "I’m going to suspend posting the Daytime TV magazine ratings because I have a better source and have found weekly ratings pretty much from 1985 on, with a few missing weeks. But in the meantime, to confuse everyone even more, I have found that the ratings posted in Daytime TV’s March 1987 issue were the actual ratings for week of August 25-29, 1986 and the April, 1987 issue showed the ratings from October 6-10, 1986. So the magazine was several months behind - even moreso than I thought. It will be much more clearer going forward for me to post clearly defined ratings -ratings for a specific week, instead of these were in Daytime TV but I don’t know which week they represent. Look forward to sharing this stuff that was in my basement."

So, we now know these complete weekly ratings were in VR's basement in 2019. Where are they now in 2023??

 

In a later post about the Iran-Contra week, VR states "The week of 7/6 to 7/10/1987 has to be taken with a grain of salt because Y&R aired only on Monday that week and there were massive pre emptions. AMC, DOOL,LOV and RH had the least pre-emptions."

 

So, obviously VR had some sort of Nielsen lists which even listed the preemption dates (not ever posted in soap magazines), so that points to some "un-final" Nielsen lists in VR's possession.

 

I did contact someone at SON tonight to see if it was possible for them to still be able to find VR's email address (when last a member at SON in 2020) and to email them and tell them that Jason47 would like to get those two specific weeks of Nielsens. So, that's as much as I can do to track down VR. Now we wait!

 

Just checking this thread PAGE by PAGE, has found that VR did post the 12/14/87 weekly ratings, yay! (I didn't find that week originally by doing a general search in the search box, but did now by reading through this thread):

 

12/14/87-12/18/1987

AMC 8.2

OLTL 8.1

GH 8.1

Y&R 7.9

DOOL 6.8

ATWT 6.7

GL 5.9

B&B 5.3

SB 5.2

AW 5.1

LOV 4.2

RH 3.2

 

I stopped checking the thread, but it looks like the 12/14/87 ratings post was VR's last-ever post of ratings data. Of all the years for VR to post, they post 1987, the one year that helps fill-in our two last missing weeks (other than 8/24/81, a fast weekly week).  What are the odds of that?? Yay, VR, whoever you are!!

 

Ok, so now we need contact from VR to confirm the shares and preemption data for the two weeks from 1987. And preferably to email me scans of those two weeks. Fingers crossed! 

[GLATWT88]

That's great, @JAS0N47. I appreciate you sharing all of this data with us, especially since you're putting so much time into typing it all out and organizing. 

Woo-hoo at finding that missing December 87 week and a very interesting week at that. AMC and OLTL above GH with YR at their heels. 

[JAS0N47]

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 7/27/87-7/31/87 & 8/3/87-8/7/87:

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FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 8/10/87-8/14/87 & 8/17/87-8/21/87:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS (FAST NATIONALS): WEEK OF 8/24/87-8/28/87:

Note: This is the final "fast national" week. Nielsen started reporting final weekly numbers for every week as of 8/31/87. 

[kalbir]

Iran-Contra hearings really messed up summer 1987. 

Y&R got 8 non-consecutive weeks at #1. 

GL July 1987 Pamela Long returned as head writer and she couldn't get there fast enough. Joe Willmore/Pamela Long era lasts until June 1989.

 

[soapfan770]

No kidding. GL finally went on a creative upswing in the fall of ‘87. 
 
Looking at that last batch of ratings I’m surprised to see how close both Loving and SB came so close to overtaking AW….wow. It’s interesting SoapNet chose to start their AW reruns from that roughly that same summer time period. 

[kalbir]

I think summer 1987 was Anne Heche (RIP) debut. Maybe that's why SoapNet started with those episodes.

Edited October 14, 2023 by kalbir

[JAS0N47]

WEEKLY DAYTIME RATINGS CHARTS BEING POSTED HERE:

I've started posting all of the weekly Nielsen charts that were posted here from 1980-1983 on yearly pages at my website, so all of the 1980-Present ratings charts will be available on this index page. 1978-1979 and 1984-1987 will be posted there in the coming days, with 1988 & 1989 to follow once they are posted here.  Click here for all weekly Nielsen charts available from 1980-Present: http://www.jason47.com/days/nielsensweekly.html 

[JoeCool]

@JAS0N47  Thank you for all your work. You are to be commended. So dedicated. Great website. Just bookmarked it. Kudos to you!!! Very grateful.

Joe