The GH ratings kind of make me sad. Whatever one's opinion of Geary, he's a soap legend and his exit should've been the kind of thing that brought back lapsed viewers, especially with Genie and JJ back to facilitate. Instead the show is hitting new lows. That breaks my heart for the genre and for GH.

IMO, Carlivati is burned out. Even from the beginning, he didn't have nearly as much creativity as his cult members claimed but what he DID have was a deep love for OLTL. However, enthusiasm isn't the same thing as skill. RC had too much of the former and not nearly enough of the latter. After OLTL's cancellation, his enthusiasm shifted from making good soap to keeping his One True Show alive. Then came the PP debacle and his enthusiasm shifted to finding ways to tell PP to go [!@#$%^&*] themselves. He needs a break. A long break. Not just from GH but from writing and especially from Twitter.

Perhaps he needs to try getting a gig on a LOGO or SYFY show.

The problem with TG exist is that he has been on way too much this past year and a lot of viewers are probably sick of his character. So giving him another lame story again drove away the viewers.

I am sure Carlivati is sweating it out. He is one awful writer who shouldn't be writing any show on daytime or primetime. He needs to join TG in Amsterdam ….LOL

I love soaps too (been watching for 35 years), but that doesn't mean I get to masquerade as a writer.

If he was simply masquerading he wouldn't have been on staff at OLTL for over a decade before getting the big chair.

And before you say it, it's not about defending Ron Carlivati - there's no defending what he's doing that's caused this. It's just about being even-handed. I think RC was probably a very talented staff writer, much like Jean Passanante is allegedly a very talented breakdown writer. But she couldn't handle the big chair, she's a horrific HW, and Ron quickly succumbed to his worst weaknesses when left to his own devices with no control variables. God knows EricMontreal and I argued for years over Megan McTavish, who IMO was only good at AMC in the early '90s when she was backstopped by everyone from Agnes Nixon and Francesca James to curb her foolishness.

Unless we're dealing with Brian Frons there is no pure good or pure evil in daytime. There rarely ever was. There's degrees of competence and incompetence, and ego, and successes marred by catastrophic flaws.

Edited July 14, 201510 yr by Vee

Getting away from GH for a moment, it looks like Y&R is doing a little better under Pratt. He did the same thing at AMC. He was an !@#$%^&*] but he managed to bring up the ratings.

It's crap, but it's not crap in the same sort of car-accident way at the moment. Even the Marco/Jack storyline has calmed down somewhat.

I will never stop grinning that ratings went up the moment Jason was written out, Carly got no story and Sonny's mob , Liz and Sam were sidelined, and the moment the whole Guza crew came back for revenge the audience ran for the hills.. No one wants to see Jason, Sam and Liz. That seems evident.

The bump came from 2 lost soaps. Check the archives and see when GH actually began to go up. ABC Daytime viewers were desperate for a soap and they settled for GH, something they didn't watch prior to the cancellations. Gradually, Craptini tried to shill their pets and then put them front and center while the GH cast became their co stars. This is when the show began to tank. Killing off AJ was the beginning of the end because this was THE moment you knew Craptini didn't give 2 sh!ts about GH and was going to put their energy into OLTL 2.0. GH viewers showed them, didn't they?! Once they learned they'd get back the pets from OLTL, Craptini no longer cared about the vets they told you they loved. Can't used the vets now to bring in viewers because they've cried wolf too many times. The fans tune in only to get burned. The jig is up!

Getting away from GH for a moment, it looks like Y&R is doing a little better under Pratt. He did the same thing at AMC. He was an !@#$%^&*] but he managed to bring up the ratings.

That is frightening considering how bad Y&R is to me right now.

That is frightening considering how bad Y&R is to me right now.

I watched a bit yesterday and it was kind of good. Very soapy.

So are we getting a 12 straight week of a new low this week?? Thats 3 months of new lows for GH.

I agree GH is crap lately, but this whole idea that JJ doesn't bring in ratings is built on this willing blindness to the real people who don't bring in ratings: Maurice Benard, Laura Wright, Kelly Monaco, Rebecca Herbst and all the others who have been on year in and year out failing every week to deliver ratings. They, and all the soap regugees fail to bring in ratings each and every week for years on end. It seems ridiculous to expect Jonathan Jackson to be able to affect ratings when Maurice Benard has been working his ratings "magic" for 20 years in the opposite direction. No one ever says "why is Nancy Lee Grahn on, she never raises ratings" but for JJ or Genie Francis they somehow are expected to have magical powers to erase all the months of suck delivered by the day to day cast.

But they've always been around, we know they don't bring in ratings.

JJ was supposed to bring ratings in when he returned in 2009, and they just kept falling.

Nostalgia, especially nostalgia for a period that was in itself not all that great after a few years, isn't going to bring ratings.

I think what's holding up Y&R are the performers in the face of either lame or just ridiculous storylines - Peter Bergman, Gina Tognoni, Justin Hartley, etc. are all giving it 110% and selling every inch of it and they're on constantly, and not just for thirty seconds either. Poor Jessica Collins is also doing her best, to say nothing of Daniel Goddard, someone I'd usually never credit with anything good.

The ratings crashed by Pratt's last month or two at AMC so I assume the same will happen here.

JJ was supposed to bring ratings in when he returned in 2009, and they just kept falling.

Nostalgia, especially nostalgia for a period that was in itself not all that great after a few years, isn't going to bring ratings.

That was about the show as a whole, not Jonathan. Nothing was able to keep it going, not Vanessa Marcil, not anything or anyone. And honestly, I loved those original years with JJ in the '90s. There were lowlights and bad periods, but there always are in any semi-golden age of soaps. That is the nature of cranking out product 365 days a year, every year, for 50 years.

It's a dumb, rushed story. But if they had taken more time to develop it right and do it better, and not frontloaded a series of other incredibly bad stories alongside it, and not been following from the ridiculous year-long Fluke caper, it would have done better numbers-wise IMO. In the scheme of things, alongside Denise, Franco, Nina, Ric, Madeline, Morgan, Kiki, etc. this crap is almost small potatoes.

Sad part is, they knew since January Geary was leaving. That was enough time to craft something reasonably decent. Instead, they wasted time and energy trying to pretend history matters. I think Tom/Lena should have been revisited because they wasted an entire year of our lives with Fluke trash, the high note should have been him healing. Pulling Frank and daughter (what is her [!@#$%^&*] name) into this and then Ethan? Holly? That was a waste. Ratings increased by over 100k when Laura showed up and dropped like a hot rock the week after. Nothing meaningful is happening EVER.

The ratings crashed by Pratt's last month or two at AMC so I assume the same will happen here.

Maybe. People thought they were going to crash by now, and they didn't. I think one thesis may be correct: Y&R fans used to a slower, more character-intensive show may be enjoying the 'junk food' speedballing approach that is Pratt, where everything is all right here, right now.

The ratings crashed by Pratt's last month or two at AMC so I assume the same will happen here.

Yeah, just like Carlivati's awful writing took time to show in the ratings so will Pratt's…Im sure we will see Jack in another ridiculous storyline as well….Im just surprised it has been going up lately considering how bad the stories are on the show.