American soap ratings: General Hospital lowest rated soap

Days of our Lives and General Hospital continue to struggle in the ratings.

As ever CBS’s The Young and the Restless was the top-rated soap of last week with 4.4 million viewers but it was down a fair bit on the same week last year – nearly 400,000 viewers. Fellow CBS soap The Bold and the Beautiful meanwhile hit the 3 million mark but only just – a slight rise on the previous week. ABC’s One Life to Live remains the network’s top-rated soap despite being cancelled earlier this year. OLTL is due to come off-air in January when it will re-launch online. Last week it averaged 2.5 million viewers – the only soap to be up on the previous week and the previous year.

NBC’s last standing soap, Days of our Lives, continued to struggle in the ratings and was only just ahead of General Hospital. The NBC soap had 2.393 million viewers compared to General Hospital’s 2.317 – not a huge amount of difference. That makes GH the lowest rated soap on the week and its future doesn’t look any the more secure after it was reported that Katie Couric’s new chat-show has been cleared to air in 60% of the country. The  chat-show, which will launch next year, will occupy the slot of GH leaving some wondering whether its time is nigh.

(via TV by the Numbers)