Y&R Gaining Steam, Number 1 in All Categories
Young and the Restless led all four soaps once again in total viewers, women 18-49 and women 25-54. Y&R managed to pull in 3.502 million viewers, up 60,000 viewers from the previous week. This week was the second most watched for Y&R this season just behind the 3.523 million who tuned in for 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) and was up 2% from last week.
So far this season, the hour-long CBS soap opera is averaging 3.247 million viewers, a decline of 9% compared to last year when it averaged 3.575 million viewers. However, Y&R has seen its audience grow over the course of the season. This is very encouraging for the CBS soaps. The first episodes back after the pandemic production severely underperformed. In fact, the same week last year saw Y&R collapse to its lowest ratings in the soap’s 48 year history with just 2.542 million viewers watching. Compared to the same week last year, Y&R added 981,000 viewers for an excellent 39% increase.
August Marks Best Month Since April 2020
August marked most watched month since before it went on hiatus in April of 2020 with a total audience of 3.48 million viewers. August was up 120,000 viewers from 3.36 million in July and up 240,000 from the month of June’s 3.24 million. Any way you look at the audience for Y&R, one things is clear: viewers who were slow to return to watching the soap are returning with each passing week.
The positive message continues in the soap’s demographic performance as well. Y&R averaged a .45 for the second week in a row among women 18-49. The network is averaging a .43 for the season to date, down 13% from last year’s .49 average. Despite the decline, Y&R has seen consistent gains in the demographic as the season has progressed. In the last fifteen weeks, Y&R has dropped below the .43 mark just once, a sign of the stable performance and upward momentum of the show.
Y&R surges from LY
Compared to last year, the soap opera was up .16 from a series low .29- a massive increase of 55% year over year. In the last fifteen weeks, Y&R has dropped below the .43 mark just once, a sign of both the stability of its audience and upward momentum. In women 25-54, Y&R hit a .75 up .01 from its performance a week earlier. Y&R was up from last year’s
disastrous .52 increasing by 44% in the key demographic. The soap is down year to year in women 25-54 by 15% with an average of a .70. Y&R currently leads its competition in every category season to date.
Oddly enough the audience response appears to be mixed as to what’s happening on-screen. For every viewer honoring Victor Newman on Twitter, that many more are incensed that Stitch was revealed to be the culprit in the kidnapper story and further complaints about the show’s glacial pace. But the pacing is as it always has been, slow paced but familiar to those viewers who step in and out semi-regularly. This formula has been a good one, keeping the show at number one since 1988.
