Ratings for the week May 18-22, 2020

So GH got it's number 1 but with new lows in the 18-49 and 18-34 demo. These shows need something and they need it fast. 

Edited May 27, 20205 yr by GLATWT88

Fire Corday and Carlivati and Meng and Alaar.  If NBC wants to save Days hire Wendy Riche

Again, I wonder if a lot of these pandemic viewership losses will be permanent. When casual viewers break the daily habit (see O.J.), they are awfully hard to get back.

The utter failure of DAYS is embarrassing but not surprising. 

41 minutes ago, Faulkner said:

Again, I wonder if a lot of these pandemic viewership losses will be permanent. When casual viewers break the daily habit (see O.J.), they are awfully hard to get back.

If they rush back into production and treat it as “business as usual” then I think those viewers are gone. Instead, I’d plot season premieres for the shows, PROMOTE their returns and make an event out of it. If they come back with the same ole then they’re screwing themselves. Plus I would just film as much as I can and try to get at least 2-3 months ahead just in case we have to shut down again. I wouldn’t go back to air with 2-3 weeks in the can. 

46 minutes ago, Chris B said:

If they rush back into production and treat it as “business as usual” then I think those viewers are gone. Instead, I’d plot season premieres for the shows, PROMOTE their returns and make an event out of it. If they come back with the same ole then they’re screwing themselves. Plus I would just film as much as I can and try to get at least 2-3 months ahead just in case we have to shut down again. I wouldn’t go back to air with 2-3 weeks in the can. 

I agree with you on this. If they think they can just pick up whenever production starts rolling and start airing when they have episodes ready and expect those that have already tuned out to come back without doing some major promo - it's just not going to happen.  

1 hour ago, Faulkner said:

Again, I wonder if a lot of these pandemic viewership losses will be permanent. When casual viewers break the daily habit (see O.J.), they are awfully hard to get back.

Definitely worrisome. I will say that unlike during O.J. viewers are aware that there is a hiatus of sorts and that soaps are airing repeats and that there's going to be an extended break. While during, O.J. the impression I've gotten from reading about its impact on soaps and from that documentary on ABC is that viewers just didn't know when to tune in, whether their show would get preempted that day and if they did know their show would often be scheduled at some odd hour in the middle of the night so they had to program their vcrs. I wonder if those viewers lost all those stories that were played out those months since it seems like networks were still trying to air the soaps just not at very convenient times. 

Edited May 27, 20205 yr by GLATWT88

2 hours ago, Chris B said:

If they rush back into production and treat it as “business as usual” then I think those viewers are gone. Instead, I’d plot season premieres for the shows, PROMOTE their returns and make an event out of it. If they come back with the same ole then they’re screwing themselves. Plus I would just film as much as I can and try to get at least 2-3 months ahead just in case we have to shut down again. I wouldn’t go back to air with 2-3 weeks in the can. 

Some of the Spanish soaps have gone back into production with some actors opting to not return. I wonder when the US soaps will go back into production?  @Errol

The big thing with OJ wasn’t just the daily disruption.  It was that an entire new kind of programming replaced it and was also airing 5 days a week.  Never before had cable or a 24 hour news cycle done so much to disrupt viewing habits.

 

Talk shows got more lurid and trashy.  Court TV covered real life crimes all day long.  The Real World was really taking off on MTV, where young viewers were getting their soap fix with what would become kind of a template for modern reality tv.  OJ leads into the Jenny Jones crime and trials, followed quickly by President Clinton on television saying he did not have sexual relations with that woman.

 

Now the question to me is if these folks won’t come back because they finally broke the habit, not so much have discovered all this new content which isn’t as big a revolution as it was then.

3 hours ago, Chris B said:

If they rush back into production and treat it as “business as usual” then I think those viewers are gone. Instead, I’d plot season premieres for the shows, PROMOTE their returns and make an event out of it. If they come back with the same ole then they’re screwing themselves. Plus I would just film as much as I can and try to get at least 2-3 months ahead just in case we have to shut down again. I wouldn’t go back to air with 2-3 weeks in the can. 

THIS.

 

And that would be a shame if they don't promote anything at all. Especially with B&B and Y&R which both ended their last new episodes on cliffhangers (B&B being an old school one at that). 

1 hour ago, Soapsuds said:

Some of the Spanish soaps have gone back into production with some actors opting to not return. I wonder when the US soaps will go back into production?  @Errol

I don't know anything, But i think July/August

 

43 minutes ago, titan1978 said:

The big thing with OJ wasn’t just the daily disruption.  It was that an entire new kind of programming replaced it and was also airing 5 days a week.  Never before had cable or a 24 hour news cycle done so much to disrupt viewing habits.

 

Talk shows got more lurid and trashy.  Court TV covered real life crimes all day long.  The Real World was really taking off on MTV, where young viewers were getting their soap fix with what would become kind of a template for modern reality tv.  OJ leads into the Jenny Jones crime and trials, followed quickly by President Clinton on television saying he did not have sexual relations with that woman.

 

Now the question to me is if these folks won’t come back because they finally broke the habit, not so much have discovered all this new content which isn’t as big a revolution as it was then.

 

Right, I feel like the OJ Simpson trial was a catalyst for the decline of soap opera viewers. While some soaps had witnessed declines in viewership in the early 90s, the declines were modest. On the other hand, some soaps actually had grown or shown stable viewership, such as AMC, BB and Y&R. Decline in viewership at the time also correlates to the decline in the traditional audience (housewives) as younger women were forgoing  traditional roles and joining the ever expanding married female workforce (similarly, single parent households increased and both parents working increased during the same time and continue to do so). It's not surprising daytime court shows also increased post-OJ, Judge Judy being a big one that premiered in 1996. The landscape of daytime also made changes in the late 80s and 90s which were already reflecting the desire for "realtiy" with sensational talk shows popping up across the networks and growing throughout most of the 90s. While traditional viewership for soaps were slightly down pre-OJ there's no real way to know how many people were still recording their soaps - there's some information floating around but no concrete data that would help understand what viewership was like and part of it stems from networks not being concerned with VCR viewership because most viewers weren't viewing commercials anyway. Also, the increase of cable in households and the increase of original programming on cable also dipped into soap viewership. One of my other theories is that when soaps started targeting younger demos they ended up neglecting their core, older audience. That's the audience who eventually passes down soap viewing to the younger generations. When I was reading everyone's response on how they got into soaps, the overwhelming majority said they started watching with mom or another family member(s).

 

While I believe that daytime soap operas would have experienced decreased viewership regardless, I believe the OJ trial definitely expedited that decrease and forced away many viewers. Bad choices to bring younger viewers after the declines then drove away dedicated viewers. With the growth in cable programming, and now streaming programming, changing work habits, internet, smartphones, a decline was inevitable. Look at primetime ratings for the same networks. 

2 hours ago, Soapsuds said:

Some of the Spanish soaps have gone back into production with some actors opting to not return. I wonder when the US soaps will go back into production?  @Errol

July/August. Once California gives them the go ahead they’ll have to find out what actors are willing to work and who they can’t use. Plus they’ll have to reassemble the writing staff and write new or edited scripts and also they’ll have to clean the studio and those old sets. It won’t be an easy undertaking. 

I think this could be the end.  Y&R got renewed for a few years but I don't think viewers will be back after this.  I'm shocked at how well Y&R is doing with the younger demo with repeats.  It doesn't make logical sense.  

13 hours ago, Chris B said:

July/August. Once California gives them the go ahead they’ll have to find out what actors are willing to work and who they can’t use. Plus they’ll have to reassemble the writing staff and write new or edited scripts and also they’ll have to clean the studio and those old sets. It won’t be an easy undertaking. 

Wouldn't the writers just keep writing anyway?  Do they actually go to the studio anyway or do they work virtually?  I'd think they'd be working from home alot anyway.  

I just find it amusing that GH is back at #1 after how many years 🤪

1 hour ago, Fevuh said:

I think this could be the end.  Y&R got renewed for a few years but I don't think viewers will be back after this.  I'm shocked at how well Y&R is doing with the younger demo with repeats.  It doesn't make logical sense.  

Wouldn't the writers just keep writing anyway?  Do they actually go to the studio anyway or do they work virtually?  I'd think they'd be working from home alot anyway.  

 

The writing can absolutely be done virtually. My last project was 90% online (or second to last, I guess). The writing room, which will be the least problematic aspect of the creative and production areas, can be assembled virtually via Zoom or Google Meet.

 

Y&R studios has been rumored to be particularly dirty, so a professional cleaning service that can deal with COVID-19 will have to be contracted, not only to clean before production ramps up again but to clean on a consistent basis during the workdays.

Another caveat is that a number of the actors may fall into the most vulnerable age groups  (50+), which will have to be given a lot of consideration, in terms of mapping out shooting schedules. Not to mention the idea of intimacy, etc. Quite a lot for these shows to reckon with, coupled with their already shaky status' ratings-wise.