19 minutes ago, MichaelGL said:

EDGE sure shot up in the ratings during Aug 25-29

That was the week that April and Draper were reunited at the amusement park. Back in March, Draper had been presumed dead after being involved in a train crash.

More so that all 4 NBC soaps, DAYS included, took a tumble. 

On 6/18/2023 at 1:03 AM, AbcNbc247 said:

Interesting how Nina Laemmle was always blamed for the massacre. When we were discussing late 70s-early 80s Days a while back in the classic Days thread, it got pretty clear that all the firings and all the changes were spearheaded by Al Rabin. They started as soon as he got there. 

Luckily, he was able to turn the show around after all this. And was able to last through most of the 80s.

Laemmle was announced in Jan 1980 and as a replacement for Elizabeth Harrower and so there was a delay between Harrower leaving and Nina starting.

Maybe when Al Rabin came in, he quickly hired Ruth Brooks Flippen to clean house for him, possibly so Nina could come in with a "clean slate" 

Would be interesting to know what the deal was. 

1 hour ago, will81 said:

Laemmle was announced in Jan 1980 and as a replacement for Elizabeth Harrower and so there was a delay between Harrower leaving and Nina starting.

Maybe when Al Rabin came in, he quickly hired Ruth Brooks Flippen to clean house for him, possibly so Nina could come in with a "clean slate" 

Would be interesting to know what the deal was. 

Possibly.

Maybe the network or Betty Corday wanted Laemmle but Al Rabin wanted Flippen and they forced her on him. 

I wish we knew what really happened.

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 9/1/80-9/5/80 & 9/8/80-9/12/80:

 

ATWT the #1 CBS soap and AW still tanking.

Edited June 23, 20232 yr by Soapsuds

September the kids are back in school so there's going to be a drop off.

7 hours ago, JAS0N47 said:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 9/1/80-9/5/80 & 9/8/80-9/12/80:

 

Summer dropoff for the top 3 shows GH, AMC and OLTL but still strong...nearly 2.0+ higher than Restless, GL and ATWT ABC dominating.

Re Days and the early 1980 headwriter situation.A possible scenario.

All involve agree that the show needs a shakeup , not only a new headwriter but a revamp of the cast. Decisions are made as to who will get the chop. 

Nina is contracted and wants to work on her new characters and stories, not wanting to spend her first weeks killing off/writing out  the axed characters.

So Ruth Brooks Flippen is called in and given the assignment of writing out those characters, so Nina can pretty much start fresh.

On 6/11/2023 at 7:56 PM, JAS0N47 said:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 1/28/80-2/1/80 & 2/4/80-2/8/80:

February 8, 1980: Eric Braeden debut on Y&R

On 6/20/2023 at 12:56 PM, JAS0N47 said:

FROM THE VAULT: WEEKLY DAYTIME NIELSEN RATINGS: WEEKS OF 7/14/80-7/18/80 & 7/21/80-7/25/80:

 

July 22, 1980: Terry Lester (RIP) debut on Y&R.

Edited June 24, 20232 yr by kalbir

Seeing GH with a share of 40, 39, and 39 for three weeks is incredible.

Once again thank you so much to @JAS0N47your DAYS records are fascinating for all the soaps in these threads.

Edited June 24, 20232 yr by titan1978

A note on the ratings. I will be pausing the posts on the ratings for a bit due to time constraints. Look more towards probably August for the regular ratings posts to return. And 1980's ratings fans, as a teaser, you now have a LOT more to look forward to than just the first year (1980) of the decade!!

On 5/23/2014 at 10:11 PM, Paul Raven said:

From Broadcasting magazine

 

NBC's success in prime time has tended to cloud its performance in daytime, where it lags behind the other two networks. But here, too, NBC executives said there are signs of improvement, albeit not as fast as perhaps they would hope.

 

All three networks are down in daytime ratings compared to a year ago. NBC has averaged a 4.9/18 rating for the first 10 months of this year (January- October), 4% off the 5.1/18 it averaged for the first 10 months of 1984; ABC averaged a 6.2/22 compared to a 6.4/22 last year, off 3%; CBS averaged a 6.3/23 compared to a 7.1/25, off 11 %. The stability of the prime time schedule now affords Tartikoff more time to spend on daytime problems -he says he spends twice as much time on daytime programming as he did a year ago when prime time was his main preoccupation. And daytime, according to NBC group vice president Robert Butler, is the principal reason NBC has not yet reached the operating profit levels of either ABC or CBS.

 

NBC's principal daytime effort has been the new soap Santa Barbara, which it intro- duced 15 months ago. Between July 30 -Oct. 26, 1984, the soap opera averaged a 3.2/10. But between July 29 -Oct. 25, 1985, Santa Barbara averaged a 3.6/12, a 13% gain.

Seems like it would have made more sense to put SB on at 2 pm and do AW at 3.  Same with Texas.  AW was getting bad but it still had more to fight with against GH and GL at 3 pm and being sandwiched between DOOL and AW may have helped get more viewers.  Even putting DOOL at 12:30 and airing SFT at 1:30 could have helped Texas & SB.

On 6/24/2014 at 9:04 PM, Dale said:

From the November 1981 issue of Daytime TV - these ratings are from August 1981:

 

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Looks like SFT was holding it's own pretty well before going over to NBC.  Did Capitol do better or worse for CBS after NBC took SFT?

On 7/22/2019 at 9:50 AM, robbwolff said:

I recall a Daytime TV article about the spinoff early in 1980. The series was then called Another World: Houston. There was no talk at all of Iris moving over to the new soap. Rather, Russ Matthews was going to be a core character. I believe Texas was originally supposed to debut in June.

 

 

Russ would have been a better choice to go to Texas.  He goes to Houston and meets Kevin and Rena and the show can have him commute back and forth for a case, he interacts w/ the folks and stays there eventually.  Iris stays on AW. 

But DB's Russ isn't that charismatic, so who knows?

Edited June 25, 20232 yr by mphs19952003

3 hours ago, mphs19952003 said:

Looks like SFT was holding it's own pretty well before going over to NBC.  Did Capitol do better or worse for CBS after NBC took SFT?

The Search for Tomorrow/CBS/P&G situation is weird to me. I'm going by things that have been posted in various threads over the years. P&G was not happy that CBS moved Search for Tomorrow from 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm even though the ratings I believe remained stable after the time slot change. CBS had enough of P&G complaining so they cancelled Search for Tomorrow in March 1982 but P&G found a new home for Search for Tomorrow on NBC at 12:30 pm. That move was an epic failure as Search for Tomorrow lost half its audience with the move to NBC since it was head-to-head w/ the first half of Y&R.

Capitol went on the air because CBS wanted something more glamorous to compete w/ ABC. It basically inherited the Search for Tomorrow 2:30 pm audience but I don't think Capitol performed any better ratings-wise than Search for Tomorrow did in that time slot. Oddly enough, Search for Tomorrow NBC run ended three months before Capitol ended. IMO Capitol was a placeholder/time-filler until Bill Bell had another show ready for CBS daytime.

On 6/13/2023 at 4:36 AM, JoeCool said:

All My Children very strong Number 1...Daisy and Palmer! Cliff and Nina. Nina's masquerade costume birthday party!! Y&R struggling after the time change and expansion but still strong. AW beginning its descent and ATWT no longer Number 1 but still strong.

I wonder how many markets shifted Y&R in Feb 1980. I looked at the Top 10 TV markets and most had already moved the show down an hour starting in April 1979 when CBS' new game Whew began. Those that didn't time shift in April 1979 also kept the show in the same timeslot even after its expansion to an hour.

I wonder if this happened in other markets and ultimately how many had to time shift Y&R on Feb 04, 1980.