Just three months after Guiding Light aired its last episode, CBS announced the cancellation of As the World Turns.  These cancellations have nothing to do with a lack of viewer interest in soap operas, but rather a lack of profitability caused by a steady decline in daytime PUTs (persons using television).

 Both shows have respectable viewership for daytime programs, but nothing close to what they generated 20+ years ago, and not enough to justify their production costs.  By abandoning soaps, the network is signaling a shift in focus to programming genres that are less expensive to produce.

 One can only wonder, if soaps represent the most watched but most expensive daytime programs, to what extent does the production cost of a program correlate to its viewership?  And will a greater reliance on less expensive programs result in lower ratings and a continued slide in overall daytime viewing?  Television advertisers using daytime should keep a close watch over PUT trends and consider altering their daypart mix if less expensive programming fails to hold the daypart’s viewers.