Ratings from the 80's

[Contessa Donatella]

@JAS0N47  So Betsy & Steve wed on May 30, 1984 and ATWT had a rating of 7.8 so at this time how many people was that? I have no sense at this point what a rating point equaled. Thanks!

So two people on UglyX found this for me. And, with it a resource that is new to me, anyway. Don't know if you know it already. 

https://www.ratingsryan.com/2021/03/weekly-nielsen-ratings-1984-85-tv-season.html

So, at this point a ratings point represents 849,000 which means Steve & Betsy's wedding had 6,622,200 which is a far shot below the 20 million claimed & also significantly below the 16 million Doug & Julie claim. It also debunks that they are the second highest watched daytime wedding. 

Edited February 8 by Donna L. Bridges
more info

[JAS0N47]

Since Donna was asking, I tracked down the page in the books that has the info, so for those interested:

TV Households per season (equals 1 ratings point):

Sep. 1980: 799,000 (revised from 778,000 based on census in Jan. 1981)
Sep. 1981: 815,000
Sep. 1982: 833,000
Sep. 1983: 838,000
Sep. 1984: 849,000 
Sep. 1985: 859,000
Sep. 1986: 874,000
Sep. 1987: 886,000
Sep. 1988: 904,000
Sep. 1989: 921,000

Rest of years (1989-2021) on my website at bottom of this page: http://www.jason47.com/days/weeklynielsens.html

As to your post above, yes, RatingsRyan is the lead on the Nielsen project, so that's where the full books will eventually be posted once they are scanned.

Edited February 10 by JAS0N47

[Contessa Donatella]

This is fabulous,   @JAS0N47, thanks as always!!! 

[JAS0N47]

 

I think the Nielsen ratings for those two weddings are reported as correct. You just made me do math, which is my least favorite subject, but I think I did it correctly below! I looked at the weekly charts for these two weddings, and if you use the Total Audience number, that gets them a little higher. (Again, these are the averages for the 5-episode week, so it's possible that the wedding episode got a really high number, and the remainder of the week got much more normal numbers, which would bring down the overall weekly average):

 

GH-Luke/Laura 1981 (said to be 30 million viewers):

Avg. Audience: 13.8   

Total Audience: 17.1 (13,936,00 viewers)

Their season average at the time was 10,840,000. So if you assign that average to the other 4 episodes (10,840,000 x 4) that gets you to 43,360,000 (4 episodes) plus 1 episode of 30,000,000 = 73,360,000 divided by 5 = average for the 5-episode week of 14,672,000 (pretty close to the 13,936,500 that the Nielsen book has for Total Audience; so it means the other episodes that week had higher-than-usual daily averages as well)

 

ATWT-Steve/Betsy 1984 (said to be 20 million viewers):

Average Audience: 7.8

Total Audience: 9.9 (8,296,200 viewers)

Their season average at the time was 6,540,000. So if you assign that average to the other 3 episodes that week (6,540,000 x 3) that gets you to 19,620,000 (3 episodes) plus 1 episode of 20,000,000 = 39,620,000 divided by 4 = average for the 4-episode week of 9,905,000 which equals a little higher than the 8,296,200 total audience number reported; again like GH meaning that the week had higher-than-usual daily averages as well).

[Contessa Donatella]

Okay, now I am totally turned around. It is at this point where I don't understand the process in computing ratings. But your saying it could have been 20 million? 

[JAS0N47]

Yes. I don't fully understand either. But along with the Average Audience (the number we are used to using), in the 1980's at least there was also a Total Audience number reported, which was much higher than the average audience. Plus, the numbers you were using to say the ATWT wedding was way lower than 20 million was the 4-episode weekly average (they were preempted once that week, so there was only 4 episodes, not 5). You didn't take into account that the first 3 episodes of that week would have much lower ratings (more normal ratings; or a little higher than normal ratings) and the wedding episode itself would be the 20 million episode. Based on that math I did above, it seems certainly possible that the 5/30/84 episode had either an Average or Total Audience of 20 million. And the same goes for that 30 million number for the GH wedding in 1981.
 

So my best guess is that they may be reporting the TOTAL AUDIENCE number for the wedding episodes (not the usual AVERAGE AUDIENCE number that we use for the ratings data each week in the charts).

Edited February 10 by JAS0N47

[Contessa Donatella]

Okay, thanks! It's the correct information that matters. We'll just have to stop being catty about some imagined member of Meg Ryan's team inflating the numbers! 

[DM James Fairbanks]

What is fascinating is that the common belief when a show drops so badly is that it is not being carried well (like Dark Shadows in the fall of 1970).  But according to this, Another World has 99% coverage, SFT 93%, and Texas 91%.  Those are healthy numbers.  The Doctors only has 71%, but Edge of Night with 80% has double it's audience. So, the bottom line is that Search was pretty reachable by the CBS audience, but they simply choose not to come over, because they had become involved in Y&R (unless some key markets were missing in that 93%).  Same with Texas.  Unless key markets (any of the top 33 markets) had pre-empted it, it should have performed much better.  Does anyone know of the 33 largest markets (which is what Nielsen uses), which may have had pre-empted Texas, SFT, or TD?