April 17-21, 2006

[OneLife Fan]

OLTL will have better numbers for the month of May.

[Pine Charles]

YAY! AMC beat General Poop in total viewers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[OneLife Fan]

I like that too!!

[Angela]

It's the Tad/Dixie finally seeing each other card (they beat Y&R in the ratings in 1993 for it) - the SUPERCOUPLE card, and AMC just might have built itself nice momentum (they have a realtively intriguing sweeps planned, hacking aside - which 5 out of 9 daytime HW's unfortunately do a little too much), but you never know with the ratings.

If JER handles S/K's return well I'm sure they'll have a much better summer than they had of-spring (and I'm an AMC fan, but I don't see McTavish being able to keep momentum past the end of May - early June at the latest - so summer is on JER's table to lose).

[PhoenixRising05]

Great post Steve. All I can say is if most people get what they want it will be another Higley type writer Days gets. They can't afford to get a big name and we have already seen soaps not willing to go outside of the typical mold. Days had a goldmine in C&B and they carelessly let them go.

Nobody can and should complain about the cast use on this show. The balance has been great.

I couldn't agree with you more about comparing shows to their heyday. Everyone does it including me. When I discuss Days I often compare certain things to what JER did before. In the 90's people didn't compare. They sat back and watched and waited to see everything on screen before making judgements. People weren't as picky too (not a dig but its true-we are all picky as soap fans nowadays). Everything now is fans wanting the 80's back or the 90's and so on. Times have changed-everything has changed and like Steve said we can only hope things get better for everyone. I will say two things: Days will rebound next week even if its a little and mid May-summer is there for JER to really bring the house down. Its Days' time to shine.

On a side note-I am very worried about Y&R next week given the Soapnet affect. I still think Days and the ABC soaps get hurt by many watching those shows on Soapnet so I am interested in seeing next week's numbers for them.

[shipperx]

I'm somewhat surprised by AMC's ratings. I'm not sure that the writing is any better. I suppose there is something to be said for Dixie being discovered by Tad. However, I'm not sure that they will maintain the rating because my experience on the boards is that there's been a lot of unhappiness and I don't see it changing much in the near future.

OLTL seems to be doing well (for OLTL). I don't keep up with it enough to really have a feeling about the storyline versus the ratings, but relatively speaking that seems like a decent ranking for OLTL.

Days ratings are a big fat OUCH, but it's a case of getting what it deserves. Trotting out endlessly repeating, go-nowhere stories and boring quadrangles from hell isn't actually an inspiration to bring in ratings. Frankly, until they actually have a few stories that make some sense and go somewhere I don't think they can reverse (for any extended period of time) it's slow downward slide. I would anticipate rising ratings in the upcoming weeks due to the big casting news. That should help them from this all time sucky rating, but not even big comebacks can save in the long haul. If they want ratings to rise and STAY up they're going to have to do the one thing they havn't been willing to do in years -- write stories that aren't repetitive cartoons. (I'm not holding my breath). I do predict a bounce back from this abyssmal low in the upcoming weeks due to casting, though. The question is whether it will go sour on the fans half as quickly as the Austin/Carrie return has.

Has Passions been renewed yet? Isn't its contract running out? They should really be pulling out the stops to try to do SOMETHING to get out of the ratings basement just ONCE.

Good on ATWT though. Looks like they've inched up just a tiny tad. I don't watch, but I've heard good things.

[shipperx]

Well, hopefully she'll be cured of her current bout of brainwashing considering we already have another amnesia victim waiting in the wings.

Reilly/Days is a broken record of repetition.

Then again McTavish's "let's throw JR off the rails" every few weeks on AMC isn't exactly keeping the show pushing the envelope in new directions.

Daytime in general DESPERATELY needs an infusion of new blood in the writing departments.

So is the argument to keep wrongheadedly going with a story which is alienating fans such that the show is sliding in the ratings? Let's remember that the show had been sliding badly in the ratings and that was the reason why the show backtracked. It's not just that viewers were screaming, it was that they were tuning out.

There may be valor in sticking to one's guns, but it's not valor to just be stubborn when something isn't working. That's just being recalcatrant.

And it's not like being told to change things is anything unique. It happens everywhere -- primetime as well as daytime (look at the WB interfering with Rob Thomas (the headwriter not the singer) of Veronica Mars both last summer and in the wake of more recent ratings falls). This happens. It's part of the industry. It's not unique to any one show, so it's not really a defense of Days. Just an example of their creating a story that so alienated fans that they had to try to re-write it as a last ditch effort to stop a ratings slide only to wind up with yet more go-nowhere stories.

[PJA]

I have never been a dedicated Days watcher but that is exactly what I saw when I watched Days for a week earlier this year. The storylines seemed like your basic soap storylines that could be intriguing...but the dialogue and the actual carrying out of the day to day plots was like nails on a chalkboard.

[R!ck]

Speaking of, Here are the season to date ratings on total viewers and 18-49 viewers

Sept 19, 2005 - April 23, 2006

Total Viewers

1. Y&R 5,529,000

2. B&B 4,372,800

3. GH 3,465,400

4. ATWT 3,383,000

5. DAYS 3,295,700

6. AMC 3,214,700

7. OLTL 3,151,700

8. GL 2,888,700

9. PSNS 2,175,000

Women 18-49 Viewers

1. Y&R 1,352,000

2. GH 1,274,000

3. DAYS 1,236,000

4. OLTL 1,179,000

5. AMC 1,173,000

6. B&B 1,069,000

7. PSNS 908,000

8. ATWT 879,000

9. GL 811,000

You can now see the season to date numbers for viewers in the original ratings post.

[King]

I don't think the rest of the show was very good. I am not happy DAYS got the ratingd, but I can't say I'm too surprised either.

The show has been very good this week, yeah. And based on spoilers, mid to late May should be great, and we all know what is coming in June. I think DAYS will rebound from this, but it's never good when you hit a new low.

I agree. The most enjoyment I got from DAYS this month was writing for it in my blog.

Don't be silly!

[PhoenixRising05]

I think they will rebound next week for sure. I am not surprised either but I thought they would get the bad ratings the first week of April and they went up so it always ends up being the opposite of what you think.

I just wanted to apologize because I have been very testy of late regarding Days and I have even been so in my responses to you and the usual Days fans here so I just felt I should apologize in case anyone felt I was being a little too defensive about my show.

Oh and your blog has been good. Wait to you all see mine Monday (shameless plug ).

[sungrey]

Did you see that Friday rating?? GL tied it at 2.1 and actually beat it in terms of viewers.

WOW. Wonder how long before we see that "The Plan to Save Bo and Hope!" SOD cover...

[ValnMal]

I think that's part of the problem is the way they go about hiring writers. I heard Ken Corday's advice to some young women on how to get into writing on soaps (I happen to be standing with him.) Here it is: Try and get a job as a gofer for one of the writers and work up from there. How lame is that? They have auditions for the actors. Why not writers? They must be missing a ton of talent doing it this way.

Secondly, why do they constantly change direction in the story? Countless re-writes?!! Certainly it can't be to please viewers because clearly they aren't doing that. Listening to viewers means occasionally dumping a storyline that's not working, not changing the direction of a story as you go along based on what you think viewers want or more importantly what you think the viewers may have guessed is going to happen. That's like checking to see if the wind changed directions every 15 seconds. What an insane way to work!

Yes, people want family back on soaps but that doesn't mean having a funeral where 3/4's of your family don't show up or walk out of it in the middle of. Or bringing a character back like Carrie and not have a SINGLE interaction with her parents (meaning the ones who raised her for the most part, John and Marlena) in FIVE months or a single scene with Frankie and Carrie who were so close as kids. It doesn't mean skipping the reunions we viewers always look forward to and then pretending like they saw each other while we weren't looking. It doesn't mean having a wedding (Shawn & Mimi) and not having current cast members attend such as parents and siblings! It doesn't mean having your parents be there only to walk out before the ceremony (Brady & Chloe's). Bringing family back to Days doesn't mean ignoring some of your kids and not letting others breathe on their own and/or treating them as "only" children (Belle). Bringing family back doesn't mean compartmentalizing every single storyline so only the same old people interact on a daily basis. Bringing back romance doesn't mean having a wedding that thrills a fanbase only to have the entire wedding dwelling on a third person. Sorry but that's not romantic. Sure, fighting for your lover is great romance but the characters need not all be dumbed down just to move the story along. It need not be clumsily written so all the characters at some point or another come off seeming to be mentally challenged. Everyone knows that you can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. However, we should be able to expect intelligent storytelling and dialogue. We need a headwriter or two who is willing to work with his or her writing staff. We need to know that these writers really *know* the characters at least as well as we do.

[sungrey]

Exactly. JER's falling back into old habits (too many "gotcha" scenes, too many flashbacks) and it's showing on air. The Patch/Kayla stuff and the return of Jack should help the show...

[Viking GL]

Soap almost always have their lowest ratings on Friday & Mondays are the highest. I notice that almost every weeks, except for maybe the past 2-3. Also Spring time always seems the time ratings go down to new lows for numerous shows.