Victoria Konefal (ICE Starlets), Kelly Kapowski (ICE-TV) (Channel 7)
KELLY GREEN FRIDAYS UNLEASH ITS POWER ON ITS OPPONENTS
Baby ICE is here and they look like they're going to be trouble for the other networks to go against as they took the day before off and came back today with their regular soap block and slapped the other network into the dirt on the first Friday of the season. Teen CEO Paige Van Buren continues her hot start to the season and this time recaptures 1st place back for the network over her new rival Lucy Hale at ROD.
This was new Daytime President Ashley Benson's first real day on the job so let's see how she did today.
ICE started the day red hot with some good performances by Janit O'Day repeats leading into Tahj & Arielle which nabbed its highest ratings over the first three days of its run getting 41.4 million viewers which topped its season premiere on Wednesday by about 10 million viewers which had a slew of stars come on the radio podcast style show in Bridget Satterlee, Lorenea Rape, WFL quarterbacks Malena Morgan & Elle Alexandra who previewed their opening weekend games, and Diamond Girls perform their music live on the show as they made their first appearance of the day there with Tahj Mowry, Arielle Kebbel, Romeo Miller, and rookie TV personality Konny Jablonski.
From there ICE kept their viewers intact with the season premiere of New Girls in Town Pageant Xtra and that lead into All My Children which kicked off its 45th season on the air and second season on NITRO Television after ICE rebooted it last season back in the fall of 2013 for their daytime block. AMC has a partnership with the Sheila Carter primetime soaps on ROD so they will start a crossover event on Monday but for today the viewers showed back getting 37 million viewers this morning.
PYPER AMERICA IS HERE & SHE IS SPECIAL
One of ICE's best trades on draft night back in 2016 was getting RTN's original selection of Pyper America who is one of Jennifer Aniston's nieces and Pyper has been powerful as hell to start this new season in her timeslot as she's really killed everything in sight even ROD's Midday Show with Chachi Gonzales as It's High Noon with Pyper America achieved a series-high 56 million viewers which just like Tahj & Arielle topped its premiere by 5 million viewers. That tops all daytime talkers and variety shows this season so far except for Amber Montana's show from Wednesday which got 59 million viewers and was boosted by Team ICE. Right now Pyper America has created many problems in that slot this might be the one slot in daytime that networks are going to have avoid competing in as Pyper has a hold on this timeslot.
It didn't hurt Pyper America that she had the Diamond Girls on today as music guests and her guest lineup was huge with ICE Phederation President Molly Ephraim, the Terrible Twins Jesalyn & Vanessa Moe, Dasha Dereviankina, and Bridget Satterlee all on as guests.
Now getting into the Love in the Afternoon soap block here ICE did a significant amount of damage to the competition which was soaring the day before. Love in the Afternoon Live was brought back this season with 75% retention out of It's High Noon and Hunter Tylo as guest who previewed the new season of Star 80 which grew out of Love in the Afternoon Live to 45.50 million viewers that helped give Another World which will be airing for two-hours over the next week before Staying Alive is ready to come in on September 17th and Another World which has a loaded cast led by Nicole Meyer grabbed 50 million viewers. That was enough to give last season's most watched soap in NITRO Youthful Daydreamers which grabbed a series-high 54.35 million viewers and it made the official debut of ICE's 6th round draft pick Victoria Konefal to the cast who we will spotlight in just a moment. The soap block overall came back real powerful but we'll see next week where it settles in at for its regular ratings.
Since it's Kelly Green Fridays you know we're going to have a concert special in daytime and with the new slot getting more viewers from kids that are coming home from school the Diamond Girls gave the season premiere 73 million viewers on the dot that helped last year's struggling game show series Friday Night Family Game Night get a series-high 58 million viewers achieving 79% retention out of Kelly Green Fridays Music Jam. Ashley Benson did a great job here as she's gonna get different ICE Starlets involved in the show every week as this week it was Rowan Blanchard and Lisa Grantham who were the guests. Without this new format or addition to the show Friday Night Family Game Night might've slipped below 70% retention but it stayed 9% percentage points over that so nice work there as this could be a new hit series and easily the #1 game show on all of NITRO depending on how the primetime stuff does this season.
VICTORIA KONEFAL'S HUGE IMPACT ON FRIDAY'S DAYTIME PICTURE
One of the real steals from the draft was former NGIT Pageant contestant Victoria Konefal who is getting a huge push by the network right now as she stars as Saved By the Bell's character Kelly Kapowski and has a starring role on Youthful Daydreamers so she made a huge impact on two shows that were taped live on Friday in one day. Victoria grabbed the 54 million viewers for YD and led all shows with 66.06 million viewers for the season premiere of Kelly Kapowski. There were questions originally why Kelly Kapowski wasn't airing in primetime and some of it was lack of space on the schedule but the other reason is the network wanted Saved By the Bell to have a presence on every level of their television schedule which is primetime for Adult Years, weekday daytime for Kelly Kapowski, and Saturday mornings for the Saved By the Bell reboot itself. Right now Victoria Konefal was an excellent hire by franchise owner Dustin Diamond. For Kelly Kapowski she could create problems here for the networks in that last little slot on Friday nights.
For the other networks they were all down from yesterday greatly too with Lucy Hale who finished the week in one of the top 2 places in daytime and avoided 3rd place or lower so that's the positive and they held on but everything was lower. Sunset Beach did the best after Hunter & Kacey with the added competition.
Things were not so good starting with RTN who held off SBC for 3rd place but after the day they had before they have to feel like this was a huge punch to the stomach and a complete tease what happened yesterday. Starting out it looks like Hotel is going to be the safest daytime drama for the network due to timeslot but everything else is not going to be safe. The biggest drop was Emma and Rachael with Allison Shields as this series dropped all the way down to 7.6 million viewers which gave Sheriff a poor lead-in and Sheriff had to go against All My Children today which was trouble. Workout got killed by Pyper America while Tracy Kimmell Live got mixed results the 14 million viewers was okay and not too bad but compared to 34 million viewers it got the day before that was a huge drop of 20 million viewers we'll still need to see how it settles in. The animation block was DOA and Party of Five is starting to sink with a good cast but the Petkovics are keeping The Runaways head over water right now. The concern has to be Gia Jolie who got in a fight the night before with Nia Seymour about being a potential draft bust and these low ratings aren't going to help her case at all.
SBC had a disaster of a day as well as Drama's Place and Fashion House did okay starting out but the rest of the soaps took a huge hit to the stomach once the ICE soaps came back today.
For the SBC talk shows the results were mixed as Mila Kunis and Joe Jonas experiment is not working people are still pissed off about the firings and not tuning in and Nick Jonas might not survive after today but Anna Kendrick tore into Tracy Kimmell's audience today and she did surprisingly well for her variety talker so good debut for Anna Kendrick but how long will it last? This will be an interesting battle to keep an eye on as for the first time this season SBC did some damage to their RTN rivals. Victoria Justice did well with the SBC Afterschool Special but Couples Cooking may have aired its last episode to close the night.
SBC has Team SBC later tonight so let's see how their day does then.
ICE averaged a new weekday daytime record 44.16 million viewers for their network average on Friday.
Things will calm down on Monday but we'll get a chance to really see how everything shapes out now that the ICE soaps are back and are having their regular episodes.
Tonight in primetime is the first slew of ICE comedies to have their season premieres as Molly in South Philly returns around a slew of female targeted comedies with new cast members and the big season premiere of New Girls in Town Pageant which could set a ratings record tonight. ROD brings in their new Sheila Carter spin-off soaps Steffy Forrester and Quinn Fuller against the pageant and already mentioned before Team SBC debuts.
