Emmys: Triumph (?) of the blogosphere?

The Daytime Emmys aired last night. This was an unusual year. The major broadcast networks didn't want to air the show, so a production firm (ATI) cobbled together a deal that used an "available" night owned by MGM on the CW (which is owned by CBS). The show was shipped to smaller venue (The Orpheum in Los Angeles).

Production wise, others with more inside knowledge have far more knowledgeable stuff to say than I. I will say I personally thought the show elevated the game over previous years, without screeching fans who drowned out the actors, and comedians dashing through banquet-style dinner tables screeching about the show. The CW broadcast was carefully constructed to promote CW fall shows (which should appeal to soap fans).

The only weakness of the show was that too much time was allocated to early awards, and Vanessa Williams (beautiful, talented) got one song too many to sing (to promote her forthcoming album)...and this led to a tribute for 72-year old Guiding Light be cut off, omitted 10-second clip packages for the final (big) awards, and the best show winner not having time for a speech.

Errol at Soap Opera Network (via Twitter) has said that, on this little network, smaller viewership numbers are expected. He has also said that if the show didn't pull in 2 million viewers, it may be toast in the future.

SoapOperaNetwrk@MarkHsoap If the show can pull in more than 2 million viewers at best, there is some hope. If not, it's done on broadcast.6:12 PM Aug 29th from web in reply to MarkHsoap

(As I type this, Errol tweets:

Emmy Ratings: Telecast pulls in 2.4 HH Rating with approximately 3 million viewiers! Highest Ratings on The CW in many months!)

But my main point is that, more fully than ever before, this broadcast showed that the BLOGOSPHERE has emerged as the "journalists of record" at the Daytime Emmys.

Evidence:

1. On the CW pre-show, "expert panelists" handicapped the awards. Two of the three panelists (Jamey Giddens of DaytimeConfidential.com; Nelson Branco of TVGuide.ca) have mostly on-line followings. Only SOD's Stephanie Sloane was the lone print refugee. (Did anyone think she lost some credibility by arguing that Peter Reckell and Days of our Lives should win, when her Days-love was roundly criticized last summer?)

2. Several online sites provided real-time live-blogging and live twittering, including DaytimeConfidential, Soap Opera Network, Soap Opera Source, and Daytime Royalty.

3. The pre-show has been well supplemented by CBS pre-show interviews that are more detailed and more informative.

4. NaVell Lee, Roger Newcomb, Damon Jacobs and Jamey Giddens all converged as a visible force at the awards. They are providing/will provide more of a real-time report; by the time SOD/SOW get the news out, it will be "old"

5. Twittering stars provided real-time "you are there" perspectives. Michael Muhney wins top prize for showing his co-stars in the Orpheum seats, but Christian Leblanc wins "artistic merit" for showing the red carpet from an actor's POV!

Is there really any relevance left for the print press in this situation?

It's hard to know what this all means? Does it mean that (like many niche genres) "buzz" for soaps has now really left mainstream press, and moved to the blogosphere? And that a movement to the media-of-the-future bodes well for the future of the genre?

Or is it that, in the last gasp of a dying industry, "free" media is the only one that will still cover the industry?

As a soap fan whose love of daytime is DNA-coded, I hope it is the former!

The soap magazines hung on better than the soaps!

Today, I was fiddling around with my usual ratings charts. What started it was the claim by Brenda Dickson (to TVGuide.ca's Nelson Branco) that when she came and left to Y&R, that coincided with Y&R hitting and leaving #1 status. That seems palpably false, since she last left Y&R in 1987 and Y&R didn't hit #1 (where it has stayed) till the 1998-1999 season. This figure illustrates the point.



You can't help but look at those lines after 1990, though, and just click your tongue at the unrelenting bleeding.

So then I got to wondering, "how badly did this all this soap decline hurt the magazines"? The figures and tables below provide some data about this, and they are somewhat surprising. During the 2000s, the magazines have pretty much "held on". Indeed, Soaps in Depth emerged in this decade, and quickly overtook Soap Opera Digest (both the ABC and CBS versions separately overtook SOD in newsstand sales). Some caveats:

A. Data come from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, and only are available free/to the public from 1998 forward (with 1997 data embedded)
B. Public data are limited to the top 100. Soap magazines dropped out of the top 100 in total circulation after 2002, and only Soap Opera Digest appeared in the top 100. So, I don't know about later data.
C. Looking at "single copy sales" (newsstand), the story is less bleak--it actually seems to show relative stability. 3-4 soap magazines appear in the top 100 in every year from 1997-present. Soap Opera Weekly dropped out of the top 100 in 2008 though, so I estimated its average newsstand circulation (at 100,000) for 2008. That may be an over-estimate. (The bleeding circulation for SOW may explain some of the Carolyn Hinsey sacking? Even though it was probably not her fault).

The figures are actually encouraging to me, because it suggests a kind of levelling off of circulation (relative to the shows themselves). From 1997-2000, the single-copy sales include Soap Opera Digest, Soap Opera Weekly, and Soap Opera Update. (In 1997-98, Soap Opera Magazine is also included). After 2000, Soap Opera Update disappears, but is replaced by Soaps in Depth (CBS and ABC) in the newsstand top-100. Interestingly, from 2005 on, Soaps in Depth (both versions) actually EXCEED Soap Opera Digest in newsstand sales.

Since the soap magazines held on better than the soaps themselves, it does make one wonder if viewers who "lapsed" in watching the shows continued to "keep up" by reading the magazines. And if this is the case, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Does the availability of spoilers, recaps and pictures actually hurt the original product?

If anyone is interested, I have the magazine-specific data, and can share it at a later date.

Total circulation of Soap Opera Digest during the years in which it appeared in the Audit Bureau Top 100 Total Circulation



Newsstand circulation of Soap Opera Digest from 1997-2008



Total newsstand circulation of all soap magazines listed in the Audit Bureau top-100, 1997-2008.
(Note, 2008 figure for Soap Opera Weekly is an estimate)

Cast Melody Thomas Scott as Beth Logan on B&B

The picture above is a dated composite of Beth and the Logan girls, created before the advent of good image manipulation software

Nelson Branco reports that Melody Thomas Scott is being written out of Y&R, since her contract negotiations are not going well.

I am dismayed.

This is the wrong thing to do. There are 20 (I'm not exaggerating) less interesting cast members who should be cut first...I'd give up 10-15 folks for Melody as Nikki. This (cutting core veterans for financial reasons) is the sickness that has killed the rest of daytime. It has been happening for a while on Y&R (Victoria Rowell, Jerry Douglas, Don Diamont), but this is the worst. Clearly, Eric Braeden is probably next. It's wrong, wrong wrong.

But, okay...even though this is just wrong, but I'm over it. Because the perfect role exists for Melody.

Melody as Beth Logan on B&B. Hear me out:

- Melody in catfights with Susan Flannery's Stephanie. Priceless.
- Melody as the mother to Heather Tom's Katie. SUPER-PRICELESS. Nikki and Victoria re-united.
- Melody as the mother to Jennifer Gareis' Donna (after cussing her out for years as Y&R's Grace Turner). Priceless
- Melody having confrontations with Don Diamont's Bill Spencer Jr. (after Nikki's many years with Brad Carlton). SUPER-PRICELESS.

Plus, Melody's skills at broad comedy and archness would fit in excellently in the campy B&B universe. I'd love to see her "counsel" grandchildren Rick and Bridget in their wicked romantic ways.

Sadly, Beth (save for a few days when she was played by Marla Adams -- Y&R's former Dina Mergeron) has been dull as dishwater. It's time to amp her up, and make her a mother SUITABLE for her Logan-slut daughters.

I just think Melody and Katherine Kelly Lang's Brooke would just SHINE in scenes! I'd love to see MTS's Beth constantly "coaching" Brooke in how to get her various men back.

I even think Melody sparring with Alley Mills' Pamela would be a hoot.

Universe, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make this happen! I'll even send money.

The Old and the Restless? Who skews older?

On SON's message board today, user CSF (Classicsoapfan) asked about my expression of the legend that B&B skews older than all of the other soaps. So, I decided to look at that using this week's data.

In the table below, I used the data provided by Toups at Soap Opera Network. I took this week's total viewers and subtracted women 18-49, girls 12-17, and men 18+. The "residual" in the second-from-right column is the leftover viewers. While a few boys under 18 and girls under 12 might be included in the residual numbers. These would be negligible. So, the column on the second-from-right mostly represents older women. What it shows us is that B&B is second only to Y&R in absolute number of these (mostly) older women. More importantly, the right-most column shows is the PROPORTION of all viewers that are older. This is a fascinating number, no? It does show in absolute terms, at least last week, that B&B has highest proportion of older viewers. But its' number is only 1% greater than its next neighbors.

The implication is definitely this: If the advertisers truly only value the 18-49 demographic, we can see that CBS has a serious problem...and we have an understanding of why (despite lower numbers) Days remains alive. It is the youngest of ALL the soaps. Why would NBC want to kill that?

One hopes that CBS is able to show the marketing value of reaching such a strong older audience. After all, ads for Depends and Centrum Silver have to run somewhere (just joking)!

SHOW	TOTAL	18-49	12-17	MEN	Residual (mostly women over 49)	% of viewers who are older
Y&R	4,874,000	1,085,000	18,000	1,104,000	2,667,000	55%
B&B	3,369,000	691,000	17,000	718,000	1,943,000	58%
OLTL	2,560,000	848,000	27,000	411,000	1,274,000	50%
GH	2,550,000	905,000	49,000	386,000	1,210,000	47%
DAYS	2,527,000	802,000	42,000	470,000	1,213,000	48%
AMC	2,518,000	793,000	8,000	461,000	1,256,000	50%
ATWT	2,394,000	530,000	17,000	488,000	1,359,000	57%
GL	1,951,000	434,000	15,000	396,000	1,106,000	57%

ETA: Carolyn1980 at SON tells me that the 18+ male figure includes men over 50 (of course) which, she says, constitute the MAJORITY of the male soap viewers. Thus, she is saying the proportion of older viewers is even higher than my right column would indicate. You could probably inflate those numbers by a substantial percentage. Wow...that is definitely an aging genre.

ETA2: I added the figure above to help visualize.

Y&R: "Rating" the headwriters

[Click on the link below to see the full version, if it is trucated]

ETA. SON User Paul Raven was able to give me 1999 ratings, which fleshes out data for Kay Alden. The pattern of data was identical to what I had published in an earlier draft, but it gives me more confidence in the Alden results.



Last week at Daytime Confidential, writer Jamey Giddens wrote an eloquent review of Tom Casiello's first breakdown at Y&R. It was a terrific review, and I agree with almost all of it.

But a funny thing happened in the comment thread. Jamey and a user named Monamis got into a debate about the relative impact of Lynn Latham on the ratings. Monamis points out things really went south with current headwriter (HW) Maria Arena Bell took over, but Jamey Giddens argues that Latham lost a million viewers.

What is the truth? Well, it sounds like a data analysis, and that's my thing.

Here is what I did. I wanted to go back to the start of Kay Alden's regime as solo Headwriter, but Toups' ratings archive at Soap Opera Network only gives me weekly ratings as far back as 2000. Okay, I'd start there.

Because different tenures lasted different periods of time, I thought I should post average weekly changes. These represent the slope coefficients that result when the household (HH) ratings are regressed on week. They represent the single best way to express ratings change in a common metric, despite the varying writing tenures on the show.

The figure at the top illustrates the data graphically. You can see that, as always, there was a lot of week to week variability. So, I am just extracting the linear trends from these data.

I divided the tenures this way:

Alden = Alden solo, before the arrival of Jack Smith
Smith = any period after Smith returned to the show, but before Latham joined
Latham = any period after she was formally named HW, even while Alden and Smith were still there
ArenaBell&Griffith = the disastrous (for ratings) period that began with the WGA writer's strike of 2007, and continued until Griffith's ouster in early 2008
ArenaBell = the post-Griffith period, in which she led a team that included Hogan Sheffer, Scott Hamner, and mahy others.

I further broke Latham's tenure into two pieces. 2006 was when she still had the legacy team (Alden, Smith, Ed Scott and many others) for most of it, and 2007, when she essentially had absolute control over her team without any "legacy" interference.

The table looks like this:

HW regime	Average weekly HH ratings change
Kay Alden	-0.010
Jack Smith with Kay Alden	-0.004
Lynn Latham (overall)	-0.003
Lynn Latham (2006 with legacy team)	+0.001
Lynn Latham (2007 without legacy team)	-0.006
Arena Bell/Griffth	-0.028
Arena Bell	+0.004

What do these numbers show?

It means the worst regime for the show was that Arena Bell/Griffth collaboration, that coincided with the WGA writer's strike and the sudde dismissal of Lynn Latham. Story-wise, the rushed introduction of Sabrina and her whirlwind romance with Victor seems to caused so much disgust that viewers tuned out in droves.

Alden's solo regime was next in problematic ratings. On average, she lost about 0.5 HH ratings points a year, which is a lot.

What that means is that the most disastrous period in the Toups/SON ratings archive is the several month period in which Arena Bell was writing with Josh Griffith. During this period, which encompassed the writer's strike and brief period thereafter, there were non-trivial declines on a week-by-week basis. "Bleeding". Many internet bloggers/message boarders blame this on the "damaged ground" that these writers inherited from Latham, but the descent was so precipitous, I have to believe that the introduction the much-younger Sabrina and Victor's whirlwind romance with her provoked a "disgust" response that led to massive tuneout.

More impressive is that in the time since Griffith left, Arena has actually stemmed the bleeding, and she is the only HW since Bill Bell to show ratings GROWTH.Now the growth is actually fairly anemic (.004 HH ratings points per week, on average), but in this climate, any growth is breath-taking.

Ratings-wise, the second-most difficult period in the post-Bell era was Kay Alden's solo regime, at least in the period beginning with 2000. Every ten weeks, on average, the show could be expected to lose 0.1 ratings points, or about 0.5 ratings points a year.

It seems that Alden's collaboration with Smith stemmed the tide...during this period, a much slower rate of decline set in.

And here is where it gets interesting. Latham was brough into shake things up. But, overall, her weekly rate of ratings decline (-.003) was only trivially different from the Smith & Alden era. She was not any more destructive to the ratings than her predecessors, but she was also not helpful. The truth, of course, is that Latham's era can be broken into "early Latham" and "late Latham", with these distinguished by when she had Alden/Smith/Scott around and when she didn't. If you compare these periods (roughly delimited by 2006 versus 2007), you find this:

In 2006, Latham and the legacy team achieved a weekly ratings change, on average of +.001...or slight gain. But in 2007, when Latham was solo (i.e., no legacy team) her ratings changed, on average, to a weekly decline of -.006!

Thus, Latham-solo was almost as negative as Alden solo.

Jack Smith's addition did stem the flow, and the rate of decline was much slower...but continuous. Interestingly, overall, Latham's weekly rate of decline was almost identical to Smith's, even though she was brought in to "fix things up". Ironically, a closer examination shows that when she worked with Alden/Smith and other legacy team members, she was actually experiencing slight ratings gain. But, once she let go of the team, her solo rate of decline was actually almost twice as bad as that experienced by Jack Smith.

The optimistic closer, of course, is Maria Arena Bell's current trend, which is actually positive. There has been a slow but steady very slight ratings gain. A little hope for the future....

Rafe: And so it begins...

ETA: The incredible Anthony D. Langford has started a "Rafe's Story" series on Youtube. I have embedded the first video just beneath the photo.





If you watched the Friday 4/24/09 episode of Y&R, you heard this dialogue:

Lily: Hey, you're gonna find someone. You have to just get back out there. I thought you were gonna go on that, um, that dating site.

Colleen: (Scoffs) yeah, I have.

Lily: And? What do you think so far?

Colleen: Eh.

Lily: (Whispering) hey, do you remember the lawyer that helped ana?

Colleen: (Whispering) yes, I remember. He's cute.

Lily: (Normal voice) hey, rafe.

[snip]

Lily: Yeah. Thank you. Um, so, what's a, uh, a good-looking guy like you doing all alone on a friday night?

Rafe: Um, I'm heading to a, uh, friend's birthday party.

Lily: Uh, are you going with anyone?

Colleen: (Clears throat)

Rafe: Actually, no.

[snip]

Colleen: Bye.

Lily: Bye.

Rafe: Good seeing you.

Colleen: (Chuckles) she's subtle, isn't she?

Rafe: Obviously, she doesn't know I'm gay.

Colleen: Well, matchmaker Lily strikes again.

Rafe: Hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

Colleen: Right. But, you know, we should still check out that bar. We could look for guys together. (Laughs)

Rafe: (Laughs) definitely. It's a date.

and later:

J.T.: That rafe seems like a pretty cool dude.

Colleen: Yeah, he is.

J.T.: It's good to see you dating again.

Colleen: (Chuckles) we are just friends.

J.T.: Oh, give it some time. I'm sure he won't be able to resist you.

Colleen: Oh, I'm sure he will. You, on the other hand...

J.T.: What about me?

Colleen: Much more his type.

J.T.: Uh... oh. Oh. (Chuckles) hey, you taking off?

Rafe: Mm. I got court tomorrow.

J.T.: All right.

Rafe: It was good seeing you, J.T.

J.T.: Yeah, you, too, man.

Rafe: Good night.

Colleen: Bye.

Rafe: Bye.

Colleen: This was fun.

Rafe: We'll come back soon, go trolling together.

Colleen: (Clicks tongue) it's a date.

Rafe: All right. See you guys.

Colleen: (Laughs)

And with that, Y&R launched it's first gay storyline since Katherine Chancellor took a liking to Joanne, back in 1977.

The introduction of the story was...subtle. Rafe's gayness was introduced without controversy...it is an aspect of him, like hair color or eye color. Moreover, although there was a moment of discomfort with Colleen and JT (both of them were a little surprised...the default expectation still reasonably remains "straightness"), it quickly passed. There was no judgement.

Some critics have complained that making a recurring, non-central character is a "cheat", and demonstrates a lack of commitment to the show. But which of their hitherto-straight characters should they turn gay?

The proof will be in the pudding, as we see which characters Rafe hooks up with, and how truly committed the story seems to be to telling his story.

I'm not worried about Rafe's current status. The Williams family was originally introduced in the same way (on the back of recurring island character Paul Williams). So too was the Winters family (Olivia and later Dru were introduced around recurring Aunt Mamie, the Abbott maid...and went on to become a key family for Y&R for many years). So, since Rafe is already tied to the Newman concierge, Estella, I'm hopeful this could lead to the introduction of a whole hispanic/latino family. If the story flows, the character will grow.

It is delicious to speculate where Rafe might find love. My picture at the top of this post sort of signals my wishes...in part because I'd just love to see the boys in bed together. I'm being truthful. It seems like it'd be a delicious sight...for male and female fans :).

The trick will be tying Rafe to a family we care about.

If it is Adam, many of us like him, and he is tied to the Newmans. Maybe finally being honest about his (bi)sexuality will free Adam, and bring him to the light. So it works.

If it is Billy (my wild speculation, since he and Rafe were school friends), it means Rafe is on a wild ride with the town man- whore...again, that will make many of us care.

If it is Phillip IV, that works too...because while we don't know adult Phillip, we saw him conceived, born, and fought over. He's a real lynchpin character, and returning into the maelstrom of the Abbott-Chancellors these days will be interesting. He's already been defined as interesting, because he's a returning soldier. We know he didn't go to Iraq for money (Nina's loaded), which means he did it for "call of duty"...and that makes him instantly interesting to me. If he's a gay "don't ask-don't tell soldier"...and a "hero"...what a truly interesting and innovative character. If, then, as P-IV is introduced to us, he also finds love .. with Rafe...well, I'm popping the corn for that as we speak!

I doubt it is JT. That would be a hard pretzel to twist. On the other hand, we saw Thad play gay (or, maybe, opportunistically bisexual) on Nip/Tuck, and the boy has glutes-of-steel. So, if that is the ride we're going on, bring it on.

The only one I refuse to believe it will be is Kevin (Michael's too old for this arc...they're not going there...he's happy with Lauren). I am totally in agreement that Kevin COULD go that way...it's clear he has spent his life confused, and a lot of his emotions for women were animus, not love. His best female relationships (Mac, Amber) were pure platonic friendship with no real sexual overtones (though I intuit that will change). And Jana...well....there isn't a lot of sexual chemistry there. The actors (Emily O'Brien and Greg Rikaart) even admitted that...they're not the couple that are shown in bed together. And with Jana's headaches, it seems either the couple has more of a "soul connection" (her headaches are his pain), or it's a doomed romance. Either way, it could be Kevin.

But here is why I don't want it to be Kevin. 'Cause Kevin is SCREWED UP. What a message to perpetuate..."the screwed up guy is the fag". That just feeds into too much stuff. On the other hand, I suppose if the arc is "when Kevin admits his sexuality, he is finally free", I will buy it. But I'd really hope not.

Right now, my hopes are (1) Adam, (2) the to-be-seen Phillip IV.

The question is whether we'll get gay bed scenes on Y&R -- something ATWT has so far avoided. (Brothers and Sisters, finally last week, showed a bona fide shirtless kissing/foreplay scene, and I admit even I was scandalized...simply because we'd NEVER seen something like that on primetime before). I doubt Y&R will go there...but they were so beautifully nonchalant about Rafe's sexuality...it was like eye color...I'm hopeful everything about this arc will be natural, realistic, not so unhealthy.

My one worry is the Bell family experience with "disgust" and massive viewer tune-out in the late 1970s. Let's see how they deal with that this time. I think it means there will be a cautious, subtle introduction to this story...and activist gay viewers need to be patient and just go along for the ride. There is much to be rewarded by trust.

Daytime and primetime ratings: Pas de deux?

A user over at SON asked “how tied have the fortunes of daytime and primetime been?” Is there any truth that as primetime declined on a network, so did daytime? The answer seems to be “yes, the fortunes of daytime and primetime have been tied together”. But it is somewhat more complex, because the ratings have shown stronger and weaker associations, depending on the network and decade. Data sources for primetime ratings are, and for daytime ratings are contained in the two threads linked below. Thanks are due to SON users dmarex, ReddFoxx, AllMyShadows and Sean, who helped me figure out which soaps aired on which networks.

I once previously examined primetime/daytime ratings overlap, but this is different. This analysis is more accurate, in some ways, than the overlapping slopes I presented before, for two reasons. First, this analysis breaks it down by network, and second, by now having coupled ratings for daytime and primetime in each season, we could more accurately examine actual year-by-year correlations.


We examined the association between primetime and daytime ratings (aggregate, averaged over all shows) for all networks from 1965 to 2009. I eliminated seasons before 1965 because, particularly for ABC, there was enormous initial variability as the networks grew.

What you see below is an analysis of variance table. The upshot of it is “the story is complicated”. The association between daytime and primetime ratings varied by network and by decade. But, look at that “R-squared” value, which says how much of the variance in daytime ratings we explained with this model: 94%. The legend, for the statistically minded: Dependent variable is Daytime Rating (D_Rat). Independent variables are Network, Decade, and Primetime Rating (P_Rat), and all possible interactions. (Click on the figure to see the full version, if it is truncated)



So, next, I examined the daytime/primetime associations separately by decade and network. The results look like this: (Click on the figure to see the full version, if it is truncated)



Now this is initially confusing, because it shows that the trends really varied by decade and network. “Green” means they changed together; “Red” means they did not or that primetime and daytime actually moved in opposite directions. The best way to visualize this is to look at the ratings, year-by-year, for daytime and primetime together. The next graphs show these: (Click on the figure to see the full version, if it is truncated)



Let’s note, overall, that a story I have told before – that soap ratings really began to decline almost from the beginning – is palpably obvious. ABC soaps grew through the early 70s, rebounded again with Gloria Monty’s GH, and then have declined ever after. In the 70s, ABC’s primetime lineup was growing at a faster rate than daytime…which was struggling with up-and-down. Just as ABC primetime was reaching heights (with Charlie’s Angels and Happy Days) its soaps were in descent. But then, beginning in the 1980s, ABC’s daytime and primetime lineups were yoked, falling in tandem. That association has broken a bit in the 2000s, as ABC primetime has experienced some upticks (Lost, Desperate Housewives, Dancing with the Stars) while the daypart has been on a linear decline trajectory.

For CBS, the story is quite similar. Remarkably, as you can see, the soap ratings were in decline through almost the entire period. That’s as close to a straight-line decline, for CBS daytime, as you’ll ever find. “OJ killed the soaps”. BALDERDASH. That slope of decline is remarkably constant since 1965, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. In contrast, CBS primetime was moving in almost the opposite direction all through the 1980s, as Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore and Archie Bunker and their network compatriots created a grand era of gain and maintenance… There was a late 80s fall, then a massive early 90s rescue, then freefall in the early 1990s from which CBS primetime has never recovered. Thus, from about 1993, daytime and primetime fell together. But again, by the 2000s, as with ABC, we see a separation of trajectories. Primetime has managed relative stability (CSI anyone?), while daytime has been in linear decline.

Except in the 1970s, for NBC, daytime and primetime have been a pas de deux. NBC daytime has been in decline, steadily, since the early 1970s. So has primetime, except for slow growth and decline in the 1970s that was followed by the mid-80s revolution that Cosby, Family Ties, and Cheers achieved, along with the early-mid 90s rebound that ER brought.

Looking at both the graphs, and the table above, we see that daytime and primetime had yoked trajectories, more or less, in eight out of 15 “decade-by-network” cells. Moreover, the overlapping trajectories were greatest in the 1980s and 1990s, as larger forces of global, systemic decline drove both sets of ratings down. This association has actually been weakened a bit in the 2000s as, for two networks, the rate of decline for daytime has been somewhat steeper than primetime (for ABC and CBS).

This last fact is, in my opinion, somewhat ominous for daytime. Although viewers are being lost all over the dial, if primetime is has declined at a slightly lower rate, it would seem to suggest extra vulnerability for the soaps. Indeed, I think that may be part of the reason CBS lost patience with Guiding Light.