If CBS and Sony aren’t trying to destroy their number 1 rated soap opera, they’re behaving pretty strangely at this point.
“Tne Young and the Restless” scored only 3.95 million viewers for the week of September 17-21. The show was down a whopping 463,000 fans since the same week last year.
Four of the five days that week were under 4 million. The number of people watching declined every day from Monday through Friday, when the total was a measly 3,846,000.
Firings of veteran actors, public discord among the actors on social media, fan disapproval of storylines, is killing the show. I’ve said before, the only explanation that works is CBS wanting to get out of the soap business for good.
But what will they replace it with? More “CBS Morning News”? Unlikely. And with Julie Chen out of “The Talk,” the network has a new problem at 2pm. More syndicated talk? No one wants it, frankly. ABC is going to try and launch Tamron Hall soon. But the buzz simply isn’t there.
Simultaneously, something has also gone wrong at the CBS companion show, “The Bold and the Beautiful.” They lost 399K viewers year to year from September 17-21. Their total was down to 3.1 million. Both CBS soaps have lost 1 million viewers in one year.
With declines like these, the network will have the ammunition to cancel their remaining soaps — and soon. It’s the same game they played in 2010 with “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light.” It’s as nefarious as a soap villain’s evil plot.
