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<blockquote data-quote="Daniel Avery" data-source="post: 419757" data-attributes="member: 27">It really is a stretch to attempt to apply lessons learned during the run of Passions, since 1999 was a very different era in TV and Passions was not a &quot;normal&quot; attempt at furthering the soap genre.&nbsp; One thing no one seems to mention is that during the entire run of Passions--even its premiere weeks--it never got ratings equal to, much less higher than Another World, the soap that it had replaced.&nbsp; The Talk, which replaced As the World Turns, actually did achieve ratings parity with ATWT for about a year but couldn&#039;t hold onto that once they started replacing hosts and playing with the format.&nbsp; In this premiere week, BTG got higher ratings than The Talk (something like a 78% increase over what that slot had pulled last year), which if nothing else says that people want to try something new, even if it is using older blueprints.&nbsp; CBS will crow about the ratings increase, of course, but they will need to crunch the numbers (in secret, over time) to see if they&#039;re making money off this new soap, since The Talk was so much cheaper to produce.&nbsp; I see no real benefit from trying to draw large conclusions right now from a week of shows, since the sampling audience might or might not stick around.&nbsp; I&#039;d say the best gauge of audience reaction would be audience retention after +/- 6 mos.&nbsp; And though it feels like many people want to draw conclusions about the health of General Hospital&nbsp; (like saying that if BTG succeeds, then GH will get cancelled), I don&#039;t subscribe to that feeling at all.&nbsp; As long as both soaps continue to stay within their budget and both sell enough ad time to pay their bills, neither network would opt to cancel because they&#039;ve seen other formats like talk and news shows not fare any better.&nbsp; When the networks went on soap opera cancellation sprees in the 2000s and early 2010s, they did it assuming they&#039;d replace them with something that would improve upon their ratings while being more profitable....but instead, what they developed to replace soaps never really caught on and ended up driving away potential viewers.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Daniel Avery, post: 419757, member: 27"] It really is a stretch to attempt to apply lessons learned during the run of [I]Passions[/I], since 1999 was a very different era in TV and [I]Passions[/I] was not a "normal" attempt at furthering the soap genre. One thing no one seems to mention is that during the entire run of [I]Passions[/I]--even its premiere weeks--it never got ratings equal to, much less higher than [I]Another World[/I], the soap that it had replaced. [I]The Talk[/I], which replaced [I]As the World Turns[/I], actually did achieve ratings parity with ATWT for about a year but couldn't hold onto that once they started replacing hosts and playing with the format. In this premiere week, BTG got higher ratings than [I]The Talk[/I] (something like a 78% increase over what that slot had pulled last year), which if nothing else says that people want to try something new, even if it is using older blueprints. CBS will crow about the ratings increase, of course, but they will need to crunch the numbers (in secret, over time) to see if they're making money off this new soap, since [I]The Talk [/I]was so much cheaper to produce. I see no real benefit from trying to draw large conclusions right now from a week of shows, since the sampling audience might or might not stick around. I'd say the best gauge of audience reaction would be audience retention after +/- 6 mos. And though it feels like many people want to draw conclusions about the health of [I]General Hospital[/I] (like saying that if BTG succeeds, then GH will get cancelled), I don't subscribe to that feeling at all. As long as both soaps continue to stay within their budget and both sell enough ad time to pay their bills, neither network would opt to cancel because they've seen other formats like talk and news shows not fare any better. When the networks went on soap opera cancellation sprees in the 2000s and early 2010s, they did it assuming they'd replace them with something that would improve upon their ratings while being more profitable....but instead, what they developed to replace soaps never really caught on and ended up driving away potential viewers. [/QUOTE]

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