Courtesy/ABC

So just how was the first week post-One Life to Live for the four remaining soaps? Well three of the soaps went up and one drastically went down! And the one that went way down was General Hospital! Looks like with a big assist from OLTL’s tanking replacement The Revolution now being the lead-in series before GH, people were tuning out! Couple that, with fans dislike of most of the current stories on the GH canvas, and the once mighty soap of the ABC Daytime line-up lost -348,000 viewers with total household average of only 2,209,000 for the ratings week of January 16-20, 2012.

The Young and the Restless however boosted its overall eyeballs to over 5,061,000 and was up +274,000 viewers expanding its top spot in daytime programming.   Could the “Who killed Diane?” conclusion ( Nikki did it) finally have made fans tune-in for the resolution, along with Sharon voting Victor’s proxy?

The Bold and the Beautiful also had another good week!  The show was up +137,000 as Liam,  Steffy, Katie and Bill Spencer drama picked up!   Days of our Lives was also in the positive after losing viewers the following week.

ABC really needs Ron Carlivati and Frank Valentini’s new episodes to hit the airs, STAT to help GH, if the the network is going to continue with The Revolution, and to reconfigure some of the storytelling in Port Charles.   As for the other soaps, they probably partially benefited from OLTL being gone from the day-part.  Only time will tell, if One Life’s soap fans, will stick (or turn) to other soaps in its place, or just not watch any of the other shows, altogether.     Of course, it would be best for the genre as a whole, if fans tuned in so there is a future! Read more >