Canadians Love Soaps!
Not to make it seem like Canadians hate daytime, because it isn't just the primetime soaps that have Canadians glued to their sets. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians tune in to Canadian networks every day to the cities of Salem ("Days of Our Lives"), Genoa City ("The Young & the Restless"), Los Angeles ("The Bold & the Beautiful"), and, until June 25th, Bay City ("Another World"). Come July 5th, Canadians will have a new city to tune into -- Harmony ("Passions") will be newly available daily on CTV. Why don't they offer all the soaps? Well, even though the Nielsen ratings tend to be more or less the same, daytime soaps don't have anywhere near the same number of viewers in Canada as they do in the US. (The standard rule is that in Canada, they have 10% the numbers, because there is 10% the population -- "Another World"'s numbers are slightly higher in Canada, and "The Bold & the Beautiful"'s numbers slightly lower.)
Right now there are a number of Canadian fans up in arms about NBC's cancellation of the 35-yr-old soap "Another World", which has extended into a number of letter writing campaigns, articles in newspapers, and (by a small majority) a fraudulent petition expressing displeasure throughout North America. (Few writers with e-mail addresses have not heard of the petition and the not-quite-legal message behind it.) Even though Canadians represent slightly under 1/10th the total viewership in North America, they have been some of the most vocal. Internet message boards have shown that Canadians are HIGHLY represented, with some boards having as many as 50% of their posters (there is no way to count the lurkers) living north of the border. The most comprehensive Another World info site (http://www.intranet.ca/~awhp/awhp.html) on the Net is Canadian owned and operated. The oldest lobby group in North America dedicated to keeping the show alive (http://fly.to/angels4aw) is Canadian-run. National publications in Canada are running articles about the show's cancellation. Fans are calling for everything from picket lines to boycotts (of NBC, P&G, GE, "Passions", CBS, ABC, and/or CTV, etc). Even though there may not be a lot of viewers, the ones there are happen to be extremely loyal, and are making their voices heard.
NEXT WEEK: Hopefully next week's article will conclude the hanging article on CTV's fall line-up, and possibly delve into other Canadian fall line-ups. It depends if my main computer is back from the
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