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How are classic Bold & Beautiful episodes faring?

10 moved quickly to address a shortfall of new episodes. Did soapie fans follow through?

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When 10 realised they would run out of new episodes of The Bold & the Beautiful episodes they moved quickly to address a shortfall by re-licensing 50 “classic” episodes.

That led to a lot of Stephanie and Brooke, Liam and Steffy, wedding dresses, Forrester Creations rivalries, hair pulls, love affairs and lo-o-o-o-ng looks.

It was a nimble move to keep fans watching, but has it paid off?

In the three weeks prior to the change, first run episodes averaged 271,000 / 263,000 / 260,000 in metro viewers.

On Wednesday April 29 the show switched to classic episodes, drawing 274,000. As viewers noticed the change it started to dip with 213,000 / 190,000 for the remainder of the week.

Across last week it averaged 188,000 and yesterday drew 189,000.

So the show has lost some 70,000 in metro viewers, but presumably would have been much higher if 10 had not responded.

TV historian Andrew Mercado is one who has been enjoying the nostalgia.

“Watching classic eps of Bold has been one of my highlights of isolation. Unfortunately it highlights that after over 8,000 episodes, how are you supposed to remember it all? I had totally forgotten that Patrick Duffy from Dallas once played Brooke and Katie’s father. So it’s fun and I love it, but like Derryn Hinch, who tweets about it most days, it is ‘doing my head in’ too,” he said.

“I get that they have been doing themed weeks around the Best Weddings and Fashion Parades, but it might have been easier to follow if they had jut screened all episodes in chronological order.”

15 Responses

  1. Foxtel must also be having “running out of episodes” trouble. ‘The Young and the Restless’ has vanished altogether and ‘Days of Our Lives’ are repeats from a few months ago.

  2. Definitely of the opinion that classic means pre-2010, pre-2000 even. A sequence of episodes that run at a week’s minimum would engage interest. Episodes involving villains like Sheila and Morgan, or the fake daughter Angela would be awesome.

    Ten need to fix up the episode on tenplay titled Catfights: Quinn vs Brooke vs Shauna. That one is 8267, which just involves chat. They really need 8257, which has Brooke slapping Shauna and then Quinn smacking down Brooke to the floor. They need to fix this as they will end up airing a tame episode on TV when they really want the slapdown from 8257.

      2. The first major shocker of the show…Stephanie hiding a daughter Eric didn’t know about for 25 years – with some even bigger twists and turns to follow. The current show could take notes on what made the show so good back then. Stephanie’s absence whilst visiting the daughter was teased for months, before it all got revealed to the shock of the audience, and the family, who never knew they had a sister and daughter. They were amazing soap days!

  3. I’m loving the nostalgia but I wish they would just pick a story line and stick with it till they get back to current story lines- it’s like half way through the episode you pick up the threads of the story and the next day day its a story from 5 years in the future- just roll with the episode and let it continue

  4. Every time I tuned in, it was another wedding. It would have been more interesting if they mixed things up, and showed a different classic episode or two in between the multitude of weddings.

  5. interesting to see the ratings for the 3 weeks prior to airing these “classic episodes”. Understandably, there would be a drop. But I hope it doesn’t drop too much further.

  7. These are not classic episodes. Like what has been said: Sally Spectra, Sheila Carter, Stefanie Forrester even. I’d love to see the episode where Sally and Stefanie were drunk and Sally gave Stefanie a haircut (finally ditching the wig Stefanie wore for decades) again. Or when Brooke took control of Forrester in a board room coup. When Stefanie almost shot Brooke at big bear. When Sheila’s psychologist was arguing with her and fell over the balcony to his death. That was drama! Liam and Hope getting married on a beach again from 5 years ago is a slap in the face to long term watchers.

  8. Thanks David. I credit Network 10 for relicensing episodes, however they should stick to actual ‘classic’ episodes. Week one went back to years 1990-1994, the curiosity is reflective in the ratings for that week and 10 received praise on socials. However, week 2 & 3 they have aired 2014-2018 episodes, sorry not classic. Less weddings and more gritty drama please. There are plenty of Sheila Carter (Kimberlin Brown) moments from the 90’s that had fans hooked.

    Side note, 10play promised 50 episodes however 10 have deleted quite a few before they’ve even aired. The 10play Apple TV app doesn’t match the website offering.

  10. I’d be interested to know whether episodes from the 80s, 90s, and early 00s fare better than repeats from the last 10 years (as it seems that they’re playing a bit of new with the old).

    They should perhaps focus more on episodes that feature current/popular members of the cast and have a current cast member briefly provide some context before the episode.

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