Thursday, February 24, 2011

Daytime on the Bubble: Renew/Cancel Index for Daytime

TVByTheNumbers has accurate "renew/cancel" index for primetime. A show's 18-49 rating is divided by network's average. See http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/the-renew-cancel-index for details.



I computed a renew/cancel for daytime,, dividing each show's 18-49 rating by the average of all 6 soaps. I couldn't really do a network-by-network renew/cancel (like the parent site does) because the pool of soaps is too small. I guess I could use the network daytime average (if I could find equivalent ratings for The View and the Talk, etc)...but I think what I did is already pretty informative.

In the Renew/Cancel index, numbers above 1 (the further above, the better) are "safe", around 1 are "bubble" and below 1 are "likely to be cancelled.

Renew/Cancel Index for Daytime, as of last week:
Y&R 1.43;
DAYS 1.05;
GH 1.05;
OLTL 0.95;
B&B 0.76;
AMC 0.76




Now, what makes this intriguing is the rumor, at Daytime Confidential, that ABC is seriously considering the future of its daypart, and whether to cancel a soap to make room for a talk show.

As once-stalwart (now lapsed) viewer of all ABC soaps, but especially AMC, this would make me sad.

Looking at those numbers, one wonders by B&B isn't similarly on the bubble?

Well, first of all, maybe it is. But, secondly, Les Moonves last year implied that it was one of the "special soaps", and therefore might survive. What could save B&B? Presumably the fact that it is the world's #1 most watched soap, and the international revenue helps the Bell family keep licensing costs extra-low for CBS? With a brand-new high tech opening sequence and a recent two-year renewal, B&B will survive at least as long as Stephanie Forrester (who currently has Stage IV lung cancer).