Soap Opera Ratings Fall as Daytime TV Ratings Rise

In Monday's issue, Ad Age looked at the decline of soap operas ratings . There were some fascinating demographic data in there about how the changing role of women in the workforce has lead to a death spiral of ratings for this once-dominant genre. Here's a little more data about the evolving workforce. We wrote: That means that 58.5% of women over age 16 are working now compared to just 34.6% in 1952. That includes 76% of unmarried mothers, and 63.6% of mothers with children under 6 years of age. All of this led to a cataclysmic 80% drop in viewership -- an average of 6.5 million people tuned in to watch daytime dramas during the 1991-1992 TV season, according to Nielsen. By the 2009-2010 season, that average dropped to 1.3 million. In the story we suggest some explanations, but we asked Nielsen for a bit more data to help us rule out one cause. It's not that people are watching fewer daytime programs. Overall, viewership is up. In the 1991-1992 season, 14% of people overall were watching daytime TV. That has increased to 16.1% (including DVR playbacks) in the 2009-2010 season. The rise in unemployment certainly means more people are home during the day than we've seen in recent years, and they have a proliferation of other shows and channels to watch. So why aren't you watching the soaps anymore?

Soap Opera Ratings Fall as Daytime TV Ratings Rise

Featured Stories