February 13-17, 2006

[Drew]

I think it had more to do with John Abbott being sentenced.

[Cheap21]

I watch all 3 ABC soaps and the only similiarty they share is in their bumper promos. They are ALL different and watching one doesnt make me relate to or like the other bc trust me I dont. I think most viewers are more intelligent than that. They are all doing different stuff, have different styles and cosmetics aside, I cant see how they are supposed to be interchangeable when you get to the actually writing and inside of the soaps

[dragonflies]

All 3 ABC Soaps are all different. I can barely tolerate OLTL or GH, but love AMC. The writing and acting is different for each soap.

[RogerNewcomb]

ATWT is too inconsistent and doesn't feature enough of it's talented cast. If you're sick of Paul, Jennifer, Carly or certain characters always on, then you're SOL. My favorite story was the Luke story then they totally derailed it by bringing on this Jade character. I think it's about to get back on track, but I know a lot of people that tuned in just for that story then wondered what the heck happened to it.

Can someone explain the total viewers to me? Is this the number of people that watched during any given time? How can ATWT be .2 behind it's timeslot competitor OLTL but have more viewers than both OLTL and Days?

Also, ATWT went up by 120,000 viewers but people seem to think it tanked?

[SteveFrame]

I think from looking at Friday's show and then the spoilers, I think the writers took a step back with the Luke story to bring Jade in as a cousin and confidante for Luke. She didn't rat him out on Friday's show and she could have done so to pick up more points with Lily. Then the preveiws states that she is the one for whom Luke confides in about his feelings for Kevin. Hopefully she will continue to prove to be a friend to him and not use the friendship in the future. Luke will need family and friends around him. I am not sure why they couldn't have used one of the existing teens on the show as a confidante for him, but maybe Will and Casey are going to be too involved in their own stories to be there for Luke as he is going to need them.

I don't understand some of the numbers on the ratings either. I will be anxious to see some of the explanations that hopefully you will get.

[Ms. Walsh]

For Total Viewers, I think ATWT did well, and it did go up in most dems. But the past two or so weeks haven't been that great. I think that this week was better IMO, and the show's starting to pick up again.

[edgeofnik]

Just another example of how HH rating is misleading. HH doesn't take into account that more than one person is watching from same home. Look at Wednesday. AMC had a 2.7, ATWT had a 2.5, but ATWT had 150,000 more viewers. Even more telling, OLTL had a 2.6 that day, but had 200,000+ fewer viewers -- and they are in same time slot in almost all country. Last week was first full week of Olympics which always messes up HH. Disappointing the DAYS and PASS didn't do better with Olympics lead-in.

[BadZoe]

How does Y&R go up by 22,000 viewers in households yet drop .1 in the ratings? B&B on the other hand goes up 228,000 and yet stays the same?

[RogerNewcomb]

So OLTL had more unique homes watching, but in their fewer homes, ATWT had more people total watching? I guess that makes sense, but I don't see the value in knowing the number or share of homes watching if they aren't all equal (some have one person and others may have five).

[King]

ATWT seems to be putting a lot of focus on the kids. That's never good.

DAYS going up is always a good thing.

[RogerNewcomb]

But Days lost 95,000 viewers so how did they go up? More homes but less people? Do the advertisers look at the ratings points or the actual # of viewers?

[Steveo4]

I agree. The status quo is not cutting it anymore. Remember when Hogan Sheffer came to ATWT a few years back and just completely revamped the entire thing? That is the only period of time I watch the show, for a little more than a year. Yes, the stories will still stories you might expect on a soap opera...but they were different somehow. Hogan was the breath of fresh air that ATWT, and the industry, needed. I think alot of the soaps would do well to get someone in who either has never written for soaps before, or people who wrote 15+ years ago do come in and revamp their shows. Yeah, you're not gonna recapture entire lost audiences. But what Sheffer did for ATWT for that period of time certainly isn't out of the question for other soaps.

[Adam]

Yeah Hogan Sheffer pretty much brought ATWT into the forefront again and after many years of not being recognized and doing poorly in the ratings, all of the sudden they are a top 4 soap and racking up the emmy wins. I agree, new blood is needed to refresh the industry because IMO that is what has led to its downfall, recycling of writers.... Megan McTavish is on her 3rd go around with AMC, she has been fired from every job she ever had but yet keeps getting rehired, even by the soap who fired her twice before. Why not promote some of these staff writers who have been in the background for more than a decade? Jeff Beldner and Victor Miller have been with AMC for ages.... move them up see what they can do.

[SteveFrame]

Hogan Sheffer was the 3rd (in my opinion) that the industry got a big boost from bringing in an outsider and changing the format of things. First one was when Another World brought in Harding Lemay who had very very little soap experience. He brought AW's ratings up, turned AW into one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the time. He brought in performers who had stage training and really brought the caliber of acting on the show up.

Then the 2nd time I think it happened was when OLTL went out the norm the first time and brought Michael Malone in (definitely not the 2nd time but the 1st time). I cannot remember what his writing background was at the time but he stirred things up. I can remember he changed so many things that were the norm for soaps and people really noticed. I remember one thing I loved about this first stint was that most shows of the time featured that days performers in the first few minutes of the show. But not Malone, he would pop in surprise performers each day. You couldn't tell who might be on the show unless you watched the whole thing. IT wasn't just the stories on the first part of the show that were featured. He brought OLTL's ratings up and really stirred things up.

And then the 3rd time was with Hogan Sheffer. The excitement of this has already been stated.

I know there are some others that were noteworthy too. I think of Henry Slesar being brought into The Edge of Night, and then Lee Sheldon on the same show later. Pam Long being given her first chance to head write a show when all she had was acting experience. This was on Texas. All these were good but to me they didn't have quite the impact of the others.

I know that Irna Phillips, Agnes Nixon and William J. Bell and others came up in the ranks and they wrote many shows (some even at the same time), but they had a talent that many people will never have. Many writers can strike gold with more than one show - Douglas Marland is one of those. But the norm is that most writers use their ideas on one show and then just repeat them over and over again on each show. And a writer like McTavish who keeps coming back to the same show, just disguises the same story with different characters on the same show (i.e. the Josh story is just another version of her Kendall story).

The soaps definitely need to look beyond and bring in new talent. If they don't have soap experience then pair them with someone that does at first. I applaud Y&R for going out on a limb with Latham who has very little daytime experience. Maybe she can breathe some new "traditional" touch stories in the show.

Not only do we keep getting the same writers bouncing back and forth but we get the same producers going back and forth from one show to the other. We need new blood all the way around.

[Steveo4]

Amen!