The Numbers Lie
We all know that ratings, primetime or daytime are inaccurate. It is, push come shove, nothing more than a guess. For each Nielsen box they estimate how many people without that box are actually watching. There is nothing even remotely scientific about it. So it is no secret, we really don't know if the whole world is glued to the television set unless we are talking of rare cases where stores were closed when Roots and the final episode of MASH aired. And that is just dealing with those who sit at home and watch a program in their living room. Armed with this knowledge, this means that perhaps something that has strong numbers may also have misleading ones. One never knows for sure.
But there is something completely different when it comes to soaps' ratings versus soaps' popularity. While dwindling ratings definitely are a way to measure a lack of interest in the genre or specific soaps the same way the high numbers in the seventies and eighties were clear markers of soaps' popularity, there is a much bigger question mark that ratings doesn't solve. Which soaps are the most popular? Has the number one soap ever necessarily been the soap of choice for the general public?
Every soap has its' fans, from ones that really didn't deserve such loyalty to ones that didn't deserve to be cut short. Every television show, every film, every piece of music, touched someone. But the difference is that with film and music, purchases or the downloading numbers can be a clear marker of whether one is the minority or the majority. Soaps are not afforded that marker. Everyone I ever knew that saw Generations adored it, but the sluggish ratings weren't indicative of anything. It didn't prove that people passed it over, weren't engrossed, or that they didn't know it was on. All it proved was that not enough people with those precious boxes for some reason or another didn't watch. I know that in the beginning at least, Passions was incredibly popular with the one group that never has these boxes, Hollywood stars. That could explain why that although it was a buzzed about show from the beginning, it has taken it this long to even come close to getting out of last place (which is largely due to Guiding Light's ratings dropping and not to a significant rise in theirs). Sure, with such a low viewing audience for soaps period let alone a specific one, the amount of people who like and watch a soap with devotion is not necessarily gonna make a huge dent in the ratings. Port Charles is a perfect example of a soap that really began to be talked about and grew an enthusiastic legion of devoted fans, but didn't even budge in the ratings.
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