Soap Opera Ratings Race: Bad News for GH, Worse News for DAYS

The soap opera ratings race for the week ending July 8 shows “General Hospital” with a viewer loss in every category, and “Days of Our Lives” breaking a new low rating record.

Poor Salem Performance
DAYS’ overall viewer rating brought in a new low, averaging just 2,045,000 viewers, down 49,000 from the week before and 299,000 from the same time last year. The perpetually fourth and last place soap also lost viewers in all key female demographics, except women 18-34, where it gained a meager 3,000 average viewers from the week before.

Port Charles Loss
ABC’s GH did not hit an all-time low, but it also lost viewers in every major female demographic, as well as in its overall average. The 53-year-old soap pulled in 2,587,000 viewers, down 170,000 from the week before and 136,000 from the previous year. Its biggest demographic hit came in the 18-49 female category, where it lost 20,000 average viewers from the week before and 28,000 from the week before.

Better News at CBS
“The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful” both kept their number one and number two spots respectively, with gains overall from the previous week. Y&R pulled in 4,666,000 total viewers, up 94,000 from the week before, but down 258,000 from the same time last year.

B&B, which lost a significant number of overall viewers the week ending July 1 gained back 141,000 average viewers in one week. It also pulled in 62,000 more total viewers than the year before.