General Hospital has surged back into third place among the four daytime dramas. In the Nielsen ratings for the week of May 14, 2018, GH saw a huge gain of 162,000 viewers.
Three weeks ago, Days of our Lives displaced the sole remaining ABC soap as the third most-watched soap. GH now holds a 2.45 million to 2.25 million viewer edge.
The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful remain numbers one and two, respectively.
Aside from who's number one and which show is ranked number three, there is good news all around for all of the soaps. Not only did all four of the soaps see their ratings tick up from the previous week, but each of the soaps also tallied more viewers when compared to the same week in 2017.
Days of our Lives saw the biggest gains, picking up 281,000 viewers compared to 2017. The Bold and the Beautiful increased by 133,000 viewers from the previous week and by 83,000 from the same week in 2017. The Young and the Restless is up 54,000 viewers from last year and leads the pack with 4.1 million total viewers.
There are a couple of items of note in this batch of ratings. There were scattered preemptions on Tuesday, May 15, due to a presidential address. Also, the ratings totals count only viewers who watched an episode live or later that same day. Many primetime shows now cite "Live Plus-Three" and "Live Plus-Seven" ratings, which count viewers who watched the show from the initial airing up to three or seven days after that airing. Those "Plus" totals can, in some cases, boost a show's viewership astronomically. Recently, CBS's The Big Bang Theory and ABC's Grey's Anatomy saw their ratings rise by over 60% when "Live Plus-Three" ratings were factored in. Ratings for NBC's Chicago Fire nearly doubled when the additional viewing window was factored in.
Do you believe that soap opera ratings are accurate? Why or why not? We want to hear from you -- so drop your comments in the Comments section below, tweet about it on Twitter, share it on Facebook, or chat about it on our Message Boards.
