March 27-31, 2006

[RogerNewcomb]

On Thursday, GL had more total viewers than Days, AMC and OLTL and more than Days on Monday. All the soaps are so close that you can go from 3 to 8 very easily if you're not careful.

I still don't get why in this day and age, we can't know exactly how many people were watching something. Or at least those who have cable/satellite, which is most. The technology should be there to do away with this sampling. But I think the networks are scared to change the system.

[Angela]

All cable boxes should have a chip that can read what the viewer is watching, that's the most accurate way to go about it. But eh, probably will take another 20 years before they go there.

Day-To-Day HH Ratings - HH/Total Viewers

MARCH 27-31, 2006

01..Y&R: Friday, 3/31: 4.2/5,784,000

02..Y&R: Tuesday, 3/28: 4.3/5,538,000

03..Y&R: Wednesday, 3/29: 4.4/5,515,000

04..Y&R: Monday, 3/27: 4.3/5,348,000

05..Y&R: Thursday, 3/30: 4.3/5,128,000

06..B&B: Tuesday, 3/28: 3.5/4,407,000

07..B&B: Wednesday, 3/29: 3.3/4,252,000

08..B&B: Friday, 3/31: 3.1/4,246,000

09..B&B: Monday, 3/27: 3.3/4,232,000

10..B&B: Thursday, 3/30: 3.2/3,875,000

11..GH: Monday, 3/27: 3.1/3,801,000

12..GH: Tuesday, 3/28: 2.9/3,591,000

13..OLTL: Monday, 3/27: 2.7/3,411,000

14..ATWT: Thursday, 3/30: 2.6/3,402,000

15..ATWT: Monday, 3/27: 2.7/3,386,000

16..ATWT: Tuesday, 3/28: 2.7/3,361,000

17..AMC: Monday, 3/27: 2.8/3,355,000

18..DAYS: Friday, 3/31: 2.4/3,333,000

19..GH: Wednesday, 3/29: 2.8/3,320,000

20..ATWT: Wednesday, 3/29: 2.5/3,311,000

21..DAYS: Tuesday, 3/28: 2.5/3,257,000

22..ATWT: Friday, 3/31: 2.3/3,206,000

22..OLTL: Tuesday, 3/28: 2.6/3,206,000

24..AMC: Tuesday, 3/28: 2.6/3,120,000

25..GL: Monday, 3/27: 2.5/3,112,000

26..GH: Thursday, 3/30: 2.6/3,085,000

27..GH: Friday, 3/31: 2.5/3,079,000

28..DAYS: Wednesday, 3/29: 2.4/3,050,000

29..AMC: Wednesday, 3/29: 2.5/3,045,000

30..DAYS: Monday, 3/27: 2.4/3,032,000

31..OLTL: Wednesday, 3/29: 2.5/2,999,000

32..GL: Wednesday, 3/29: 2.3/2,974,000

33..GL: Tuesday, 3/28: 2.4/2,930,000

34..GL: Thursday, 3/30: 2.2/2,927,000

35..DAYS: Thursday, 3/30: 2.3/2,837,000

36..GL: Friday, 3/31: 2.1/2,830,000

37..AMC: Friday, 3/31: 2.4/2,700,000

38..AMC: Thursday, 3/30: 2.2/2,667,000

39..OLTL: Thursday, 3/30: 2.2/2,660,000

40..OLTL: Friday, 3/31: 2.3/2,644,000

41..PSNS: Tuesday, 3/28: 1.5/2,074,000

42..PSNS: Friday, 3/31: 1.4/1,880,000

43..PSNS: Monday, 3/27: 1.5/1,789,000

44..PSNS: Wednesday, 3/29: 1.4/1,765,000

45..PSNS: Thursday, 3/30: 1.3/1,593,000

[Gray Bunny]

Bad week for ABC and NBC (I'd love to be a fly on the wall listening in at the NBC offices!) but a great week for Guiding Light! Look up above and you'll see they are not dead-last in any demographic for the first time in a long time!

I guess alot of ATWT fans don't like gimmicky stuff like the sitcom episode (I personally thought it was cute and a fun break from the usual melodrama) but I bet their Monday anniversary episode drew in alot of viewers.

DAYS.... wow. Unexpected nosedive.

[edgeofnik]

One thing is for sure -- people tuned in to see Sharon expose the affair to Nick. Even though HH were down by .1 from Thursday to Friday, the number of viewers increased by 655,000! There's no denying the the Nielsen boxes were right on the money for that! I can't wait to see what this week's numbers will be. (Also, nice to see Y&R, B&B & GL up from last year, and ATWT down slightly.) CBS shows have really tried to step it up. Hope the trend continues (and starts spreading to the other networks).

[shipperx]

Why are Days ratings so low? Perhaps because the show has become so very, very lame. I can't think of a single storyline on it that I have any interest in seeing. A hateful brat like Chelsea behaving stupidly (she isn't even entertaining enough to hate with any sense of glee. She's just dumb and annoying. Seriously, as if Bo and Hope won't even speak before getting a divorce... except on Reilly's soap he might actually have them not speak). Carrie having a bidding war for who gets to fertilize her womb? Not only is it stupid, it's downright offensive. And even more stupid that she's willing to marry someone she doesn't love because she cannot consider adoption. The whole story is revolting. The unending amnesia/brainwashings of Marlena? Yawn. The tri-annual 'let's kill Jack to pair Jennifer with some other guy' story that has only been done more times than I can count and hasn't worked yet. Having the entire Shimi wedding revolve around Belle (then having her tag along on the honeymoon). It's just all so very dull and puerile.

Plus, the dialog is atrocious. The plots are silly (and not just silly, but boring and repetitive too). The pacing is glacial. And if it's Days fans always complaining, all I can say is that if Reilly wasn't quite so generous in his doling out drivel, there would be less to complain about. (And it's not an all or nothing argument. There's area between "everything happy" or "everything crap." It's called knowing how to pace your stories so that there's advancement and balance on the canvas rather than the same characters having the same conversations countless times while producing endless variations of the exact same plots.) As it is, complaining about Days is far and away the most entertaining thing about it. If Days ratings are woeful, it's because the show inspires fewer people to watch than used to. That simple.

And, honestly, poor AMC is bad condition itself. The unending saga of "All My Laveries" wore thin a year ago. The writers cannot decide what's up or down with JR and Babe. The two, even when I sometimes like them, give me whiplash the way McTavish writes them. Kendal seems to have had a lobotomy. They broke up Zendall without even paying off with sex. Dixie has been lurking around somewhere since Christmas and honestly, it's hard to work up enough enthusiasm to care any more. (Don't even get me started on the spoilers. They sound like something that Days would write -- and, yeah, that's an insult as it's code for "this is gonna be dumb.)

I'm sorry that AMC's ratings are so very low, but I have to say, given what McTavish has been putting on screen the last few months, it's deserved.

If daytime doesn't wake up and realize that the way to save daytime is to stop treating the audience as though they don't have three braincells to rub together, they deserve their ever approaching demise. If the nets have any desire to save their shows, hiring writers who have a modicum of creativity and who can write stories that don't require both the characters and the audience to be morons would be an awesome place to start. Frankly, at this point, I think the nets have simply ceased to care and are just waiting the ratings out, seeing how cheaply they can make the shows until there's no audience left so that they can cancel them without a blink of remorse.

[Angela]

If Friday was the reveal day, it ranked #11 of 131 Y&R episodes so far in the 2005-2006 season (there were 136 episodes this season, late-Sept - ongoing, but SON only starting putting up the daily numbers one week after the season started). I liked that they got pay-off, #11 is very, very good in a week that "devestated" ABCD/NBCD.

[PhoenixRising05]

I can't understand how Days could suck up HH but do pretty good in demos and total viewers not to mention they are up from last year. Oh well at least there are some positives-its ok the soaps will recover next week there is no way so many soaps could fall and not recover or stabilize next week. If they don't things will be really depressing. April is typically a bad ratings month so it will be interesting to say the least.

[shipperx]

I keep remembering the NYT article a few months ago about soaps and ad rates. NBC's soaps were in a precarious position because, with their ratings, the network had to give their advertisers compensation ads to make up for the difference between the "estimated rating" promised to the advertizers when they bought the ads and the actual ratings Days and Passions were producing. While all the networks had areas of trouble, NBC was the only network where the deficit was such that they had already given out all of their possible daytime rating compensation ads for the entire year, such that they were having to compensate advertisers by giving them free primetime ads to make up the discrepancy in estimated audience numbers versus actual audience. I cannot see any network happy with this and thus far neither Days nor Passions has produced any substantial sustained gain. No network is going to enjoy losing money (which is essentially what is happening when they're having to dole out free ads to compensate advertisers for audience deficits).

ETA: While certainly anything is possible, I can't see a great deal of motivation for ABC to buy broadcast rights to Days of Our Lives (which is essentially all that they would be buying as Days is owned by Corday productions.) ABC owns all of their other shows and as such they get extra profits out of airing the shows both on ABC and SoapNet. Days would simply cost them money with little direct benefit to the network (since they wouldn't own the show). Since Days isn't substantially better off than any of their current shows (even OLTL beat out Days ratings a couple of days a week), and yet all of the ABC shows have the advantage of actually being owned by ABC (where Days does not), I don't particularly see what real financial incentive ABC would have in buying the show. In fact, it might be to their advantage to see the death of NBC soaps in the hopes of acquiring those viewers for their own established (and owned) soaps. Why share with Corday productions?

Then again, anything is possible.

ETA2: I wonder, though, how much longer is the 'demographics matter more than you think" paradigm going to last in the wake of the WB's death. It seems that line of thought may be going out of style since the number one proponent of that line of programming thinking was the WB, which is slated to cease to exist at the end of the season. Ultimately, demos weren't enough to save the network where attractive youth demos was their primary selling point. Warner Brothers is now combining with UPN in the hopes that by combining their audiences they can perhaps produce enough overall ratings to be financially feasible (and even the WB has now completely chucked the 'demographics matter most' line of thinking earlier this year when execs started speaking of now seeking older audiences so as to up their overall ratings. With the WB biting the dust, I wonder how long the major networks are going to continue with the 'demos matter more than households' line of spin thought as, at this point, the only network which is benefitting from it (with the WB and UPN dual death) is ABC primetime.

[SteveFrame]

I totally agree Phoenix. I just want to know where these 2 or 3 were at last week when Days took the big jump. They were no where to be seen or heard from. It's sad that they can only show their face when ratings drop and then bash Days. It gets old.

Their arguments really don't wash this week when all the shows took ratings decreases.

[PhoenixRising05]

Agreed-nice to hear from ya Steve. Hope things are getting better .

[SteveFrame]

Thanks Phoenix. They are some better. Mom is doing a littel better and hopefully will get to come home in the next few days. My sister and I are not having to be there all day any longer so I got to come home and do a little posting tonight. But not much longer - got to hit it back at 5:00 a.m. in the morning to meet with the doctor at 6:30 a.m.

Thanks for asking. I have missed the gang here the last few days. And really missing my shows - they are just so hard to watch in waiting rooms and all.

[Evan]

I admire all of you loyal DAYS fans, trying to find the positives.

Steve and PhoenixRising, I assume it's me, Ponz and a few others you're having a shot at.

Sorry, but Jack/Jennifer fans are hardly likely to have a positive opinion of Reilly or DAYS, and with good reason. We've been burnt too many times lately.

[PhoenixRising05]

Evan I understand-I love J&J too but they are not the only reason I watch. I love the whole show. Its just that you all only show up when the ratings decrease. Why not when the show does well? It just gets irritating when J&J are constantly brought up as a reason for why the show stinks and its also annoying how the "Days sucks" posts only become more prominent when the ratings bomb. That is what Steve and I were referring too. You all are certainly allowed to state your hatred or dislike for Days but be consistent. If you don't like the show state your opinion on it even when the show goes up in ratings otherwise it only looks like kicking a show when its down. I do think some of the arguments this week regarding Days are wrong though since most soaps went down, not just them.

I don't mean to put you, Ponz, or anyone else on the spot or offend you in anyway so I am sorry if you felt like that. You just have to see the side of those who like the show right now and understand how we feel too. Beleive me I know you have been burned-my frustation is not with you its with the fanbases who are controlling this show and hindering it.

[SteveFrame]

Evan, my posts were not toward anyones in particular either. It is just strange that the last 2 weeks when the show's ratings were up and were very positive, the loyal fans who post week after week even when the ratings are low - were the only ones who came out and posted at all. Like we do every week we tried to analyze why the ratings were up. On the weeks they are low we usually try to analyze why they might have been low that week. Now we did stop to bask in the glow of such a great increase. This week we are saddened because our show took a hit. But so did so many other shows.

As I said I did not mean my comments toward anyone in particular. But it is just sad that once again when Days ratings take a drop the Days bashers come out and even begin calling for even new record lows.

I like Phoenix would just love to see some consistency and I will just say again and I don't mean it in a cruel way but Days of Our Lives is not the Jack and Jennifer Show. The show is an ensemble show. No soap opera should ever revolve around one person or one couple. That is the problem now with the soap opera genre is that too many of the shows are trying to do that. And I personally (even though I love Matthew Ashford and Melissa Reeves) hated the show when it was all about Jack and Jennifer. I want some balance and that is what we are getting now.

[R!ck]

Everyone comes out of the woodwork when DAYS has a bad week