Those Canadian Y&R Ratings

Roger Newcomb has a bit at a recent blog that suggests that Y&R beat the usually-hot Canadian Idol in the ratings last week. The source BBM ratings are here.

An interesting figure is that Y&R had 896,000 viewers, which was EIGHTH PLACE (of ALL TV shows!). Canada has 33,390,141 residents. The US has 301,139,947 residents, or about nine times as many residents.

Using this to pro-rate the Canadian figures, it implies that the equivalent number in the US would be 8,081,024...slightly less than double the number of counted viewers in the US.

WOW.

I've posted before about the importance of later timeslots internationally, and specifically how Canada got to have a late broadcast, but I am stunned by these numbers.

Canada and the US are different (as a Canadian-American, I should know)...but not THAT different. The lifestyles are not THAT different. Can only timeslot explain the difference?

Here is my hypothesis: I think BECAUSE of the timeslot (after work), Y&R is much more woven into the fabric of Canada. People actually TALK about it at family gatherings and what have you. (They sure do in my extended clan).

Could a soap ever do this in the US? I sure wish I knew what it would take....

One possibility is not the network affiliates...let's face it, they want those Oprah/news hours.

But I don't understand why Soapnet isn't using this potentially lucrative period of 4-7 pm? That is the "money" hour for soaps in many European countries and Canada.

Right now, Soapnet fills the 4-7 slot with One Tree Hill and its' ilk.

They ought to try AMC, OLTL, and GH at 4, 5 and 6. Then, again as they do now Y&R, AMC, OLTL, GH, and Days sometimes) from 7-12. What I'd like to know if, with that experiment, the soaps pull in better numbers than the kiddie shows they're now airing.

The only thing I can't figure out is whether this is purely that the later timeslot works. How much of the success in Canada and Europe is in fact CULTURAL (i.e., in other lands the family sits down together)?

If the timeslot is the fix, why wouldn't the networks try to work it out? SON's UKBoi has this sad speculation:

The thing is, US TV execs are ashamed of the soap genre, while in other countries soap operas are the most watched shows and have the best wriitng, acting and production values; they're given the best timeslots and lots of promotion, the TV execs are determined to make the genre thrive...whereas in the US, it's a genre they seemingly want to kill (especially the P&G shows and NBC)

Could this really be true?

Canada: Why does Y&R have a late timeslot and day-ahead episode?

Elsewhere in this blog I have written that I think the later time slot of soaps in the UK and Germany (and even Canada--Young and Restless to be specific) is an important part of their success. People--whole families--can be together to watch their daily serials.

Someone asked me why Y&R has a day-ahead slot in Canada...and I think it is a lucky accident of history. As near as I can tell, because I was there, this is the story....

(a post like this is really just to get some history on the internet...I can't imagine anyone is really interested )

It began in the 1970s with a single station. An independent channel out of Hamilton Ontario (then CHCH Channel 11), about 45 minutes west of Toronto (but with Toronto, Hamilton and the Niagara Peninsula as its viewing area) negotiated to show Y&R on a day-ahead basis and at 4:00 pm. I do not know whether this was prescient or lucky...but it did the trick. At that time of day, with the advance-viewing feature, Y&R became Toronto's explosive soap hit, even beating long-time Canadian ratings champ Another World.

[To this day, Canada-wide, Y&R regularly rates in the top twenty of all television shows...a feat soaps have not accomplished in the US since Luke and Laura on General Hospital].

Shortly after Y&R went to an hour (early 1980s), a hot bidding war ensued, and young national network Global Television (later, CanwestGlobal) acquired Y&R licensing rights.

In their waning months, CHCH resolved to kill the show before losing it. They gave up the day-ahead broadcast, and they moved it to 12:30 pm (concurrent with the US broadcast).

Global planned on how to minimize the damage. Global aired daily recaps (to tell audiences what they were missing--back then there was no internet). In addition, Global celebrated the return to afternoon day-ahead broadcasts (which they had also negotiated) with a hugely promoted (and highly rated) primetime special. The special was a kind of cocktail party, and the entire cast was there. Show hosts moved from table to table as the actors "caught us up" on the story.

[This time in history was personally relevant. When Y&R moved to 12:30 pm, and I couldn't watch it during that brief period, I saved all my money and bought a Sears Betamax VCR. That was my first recording machine...and it was Y&R that made me buy it).

Global differed from CHCH as a national network, which surely was part of the reason Screen Gems/Columbia (then either still a Coca Cola company or about to become one, I think) sold them the license.

Global soon time shifted to 4:30 pm, and paired the show with a 5:30 pm newscast in Toronto/Ontario. That was brilliant, because their late soap paired with an early newscast had major timeslot dominance.

(I see now, when I travel to Canada, that this formula has not been universally adopted...in different time zones, Y&R airs universally in the late afternoon, but shows vary in exactly when or whether it starts on the hour or after the hour. Examples:

Vancouver - 3pm - Global Channel 11
Edmonton - 4 pm - CITV Global Channel 8
Saskatoon - 4:30 pm - CFSK Global Channel 5
Toronto - 4:30 pm - CIII Global Channel 3
Halifax - 1 pm - CJON [has me scratching me head...would they really show a day-ahead ep this early??]

Channels are approximate, and represent the placement of the main Cable provider in town

Usenet poster Tony has alerted us to the fact that in Newfoundland, NTV (which has a programming service agreement with Global, but is owned by the Stirling family and not Global) does something different. The show is aired same-day at 12:30 pm per http://ntv.ca/programSchedule.html . Consequently, Tony tells us it is not the hit in Newfoundland that it is elsewhere in the land.)

Timeslot matters for the soaps! And so does culture

I put this on SON today, as part of a thread focusing on a montage of UK soaps.

But, this little bit of timeslot research explains a lot, I think.

The US appetite for the daily serial format (which is dying). BBC America quickly cancelled Hollyoaks. We see no attempt to bring EastEnders or Coronation Street to the US (although the latter flourishes in Canada).

Americans predated the rest of the western world in women in the workplace (I'm not counting the former Communist countries), in fast food, and in the demise of communal activities (like bowling leages). It's go-go-go. It's work interfering with family time. It is parents and children not eating dinner together. It's microwave food.

Into that climate, there is NO WAY to slip in a daily soap or two. Most families--AND ESPECIALLY THE TARGET WOMEN--simply have ZERO capacity.

The rest of the world still has a higher proportion of at-home women (the social systems still encourage stay-at-home moms), there still less of a culture of Macdonalds and its' ilk, plus many of these shows are broadcast at more congenial times of the day.

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Let's start with the UK.

Today's listings say that Eastenders will appear on BBC1 at 8 pm! PrimeTime.

ITV1 shows Corrie at 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm. This is preceded by Emmerdale at 7 pm.

Channel 4 shows Hollyoaks at 6:30 pm.

Channel 5 shows Neighbors at 5:30 pm followed by Home and Away at 6 pm.

Look at the implications of this. FIRST, you can watch the full lineup after the work day (ignoring time shifting). This encourages intergenerational soap watching in real time. Basically, in the "pre-watershed" time periods, families can watch soaps together.

But look too at how the channels basically work together to make sure the soap viewer can watch an unbroken series of programs from 5:30 pm on WITHOUT COMPETITION.

5:30 - Neighbors
6:00 - Home and Away
6:30 - Hollyoaks
7:00 - Emmerdale
7:30 - Coronation Street
8:00 - Eastenders
8:30 - Coronation Street

Not only do I believe the culture allows this (families are still more home-based, there is still more intergenerational residence), but the scheduling supports this.

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Now, let's switch to Germany.

11:15 am, ZDF, Reich und Schoen (Bold and Beautiful)
5:30 pm, RTL, Unter uns
6 pm, ARD - Verbotene Liebe
6:25 pm, ARD, Marienhof
7:05 pm, RTL, Alles was zaehlt (rebroadcast the next morning)
7:40 pm, RTL, Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten (rebroadcast the next morning)
2:25 am, ZDF, Schatten der Leidenschaft (Young and the Restless).

Germany is still even more ingrained in the woman-at-home culture. Still, they schedule their Bell soaps for "off hours" (and the ratings ain't great), but their core shows are in that early-evening slot.

Hmmmm...lessons to be taken?

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Well, what about Canada. That shares a border with the US. What do they do?? Let's focus on the biggest market, Toronto:

1 pm, A-Channel, All My Chidren
1 pm, Global, Days of Our Lives
1:30 pm, CTV, The Bold and the Beautiful
2 pm, Global, As the World Turns
2 pm, A-Channel, One Life to Live
3 pm, CTV, General Hospital
3 pm, Global, Guiding Light
4:30 pm, Global, The Young and the Restless

And, guess what the number one show is?? Y&R! Hmmmm...could timeslot matter? Could absence of timeslot competition matter.

This is all so obvious to me. But there is a misogyny in US programming that has resisted migrating these shows to primetime. And we see the consequence....