Sylph asked me, in early June 2008, "Mark, what happened to viewers Lynn Latham stole from ABC soaps?"
Do we have evidence she did this? I know her ratings spiked twice (John dies; Pheila returns). Did either of these claim ABC viewers?
I'd love to see that analysis!
But, my guess is that they are gone. Indeed, that is a fascinating proposition...
(1) If raters move to Y&R because they are disgusted with ABC, and they hear LML seems to be doing good stuff, I would argue such viewers are BY DEFINITION fickle. ("Real" soap viewers stick with their shows through thick and thin. I know there is disagreement about that on here, but I think this statement is generally true).
(2) So, fickle viewers (soap-switchers) come to Y&R. They have no emotional investment in the show. So, if the show goes bad..or if it just fails to engage their interest, they go away.
This raises a FASCINATING hypothesis, Sylph!
What if the APPARENT growth and stability of early-LML's Y&R was REALLY due to the migration of fickle ABC (and DOOL) viewers? So, when we saw ratings stability and ratings growth during LML, it REALLY masked the departure of long-term stalwart viewers and their replacement by this more fickle pool.
In this scenario, once Y&R returned to its' more traditional pace (which by all accounts it has), the ABC/DOOL viewers--fickle in nature because they have already proven to be soap-abandoners--flew away in droves. That would explain the sudden recent plummets.
I wonder if anyone has the data to track this kind of thing.
Tamron Hall Show Achieves Notable Highs Among Women 18-49 and Women 25-54
-
Tamron Hall is keeping up its strong performance. For the week ending Feb.
26, the talk show, which has recently achieved gains in important
demographics, ...
21 hours ago
No comments:
Post a Comment