Soaps Down The Drain
I've loved soap operas as long as I can remember. And I've watched them all, at different points in my life. One by one they're being cancelled. They swear up and down that people aren't watching anymore. Which is true - the people that used to watch them en masse aren't really the same anymore. They went out, got jobs, moved into the workforce. Then they all got VCR's, and then computers, and then DVR's.
Where does the fault lay?
Partially on how the numbers are measured. Nielsen only measures the people that are watching right that very second. It's not measuring the people that watch on SoapNet, or online when the eps go up, or people like me who are totes dorks and download the eps whenever the mood hits us.
Partially on the writers of the soaps that write crap that doesn't flow with the histories of the show. They take our favorites and backburner them for people that can't act and put the people that can't act on all day long. Then when they do show the people we've seen all our lives, they write them in ridiculous stories that are driven by plot and not by character. Just arrrrrrgh.