‘Bold’ and Booming in Ratings

CBS continued to have reason to celebrate as Bold, and the Beautiful continued to improve its season averages while surging versus last year. This past week, 3.047 million viewers tuned into B&B, giving the half-hour soap its second-best performance of the season after the week ending 8/6 (not counting the 3.622 million viewers who tuned in during late February in which the impeachment hearing preempted schedules resulting in only one episode airing that week for any of the soaps).

Bold, Beautiful and Booming

B&B was up 605,000 viewers from the 2.442 million viewers who tuned last year, an increase of 25% .For the 2020-2021 season to to date, B&B is down 200,000 viewers from last year, marking a 7% decline in total viewers- the second smallest drop of any of the four soaps (after General Hospital). Like its peers, B&B saw huge declines after returning from the pandemic-fueled production shut down last summer. The soap was the first to return to the air in July 2020 and saw its audience drop to series lows.

B&B has rebounded from its low of 2.033 million viewers during the week of July 27, 2020 by over a million viewers. This past month saw B&B’s best month since April of 2020, averaging 3.045 million viewers, up 50,000 from July’s average of 2.945 million. Compared to last August when the soap averaged 2.368 million viewers, B&B is up 27%.

B&B also continues to perform well in the key demographics of women 18-49 and 25-54. This past week the soap ranked second with a .39, up .01 from the previous week and ahead of its average season to date. In women 18-49, the half-hour soap opera is in second place season to date with a .38 rating. Compared to this week last year, B&B averaged a .31 and increased 26% .

Giving Viewers Big Memorable Moments

B&B is down 14% in the demographic year over year. B&B is averaging a .64 rating in women 25-54, a decline of 11% compared to its performance last season. B&B has dropped the least in the demographic year over year compared to the other three soap operas on the air.

B&B is doing these numbers for one reason: the audience is loving it. Chalk it up to Steffy acting as much more than a damsel in distress since the wedding reveal and the insidious return of Sheila. Add in the continued fall-out of Quinn and Carter, the soap has definitely put in the work in recent months and it has paid off in great nunbers. I don’t regularly watch B&B but I have watched the moments where Steffy slaps Sheila again and again. Some of the best things in soaps are the simpler things.

‘Bold’ and Booming in Ratings