The Young And The Restless Canceled? No — But Ratings Are Down [Debunked]


Has The Young and the Restless been canceled? That’s the question fans are asking after rumors of the long-running CBS soap’s demise began circulating, as they do from time to time. Fortunately, however, rumors of Y&R‘s cancellation are just that: rumors. As of this writing, the show has not been canceled — and doesn’t appear to be in danger of cancellation anytime soon.

Whenever you read something that is salacious, shocking, or heartbreaking on the internet, it’s always a good idea to do some fact-checking. Consider your sources, too: are you reading a meme that was shared by a friend-of-a-friend on Facebook, who posted it without any evidence to back it up? If you read it online yourself, is the website you’re reading known to put out “fake news.”

And of course, check the date.

Yesterday was April Fool’s Day, and as it turns out, the source of the recent round of rumors that Y&R has been canceled was an April Fool’s hoax.

On Friday, March 31, Soap Hub posted a video and a follow-up article with the attention-grabbing headline “ABSOLUTE DAYTIME SHOCKER: Soaps Cancelled!!”

In the video, the hostess delivers the bad news.

“A devastating announcement made by NBC has confirmed the horrible rumor that spread earlier this week. Both The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful are being cancelled, effective immediately.”

Right away, you should be able to pick up on a major clue that this is a hoax: the announcer said the cancellation of the two popular soaps was confirmed by NBC. The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful air on CBS, not NBC.

If that wasn’t a big enough clue, the article then goes from “slightly plausible” to “downright silly” a couple of paragraphs later.

“There is no word yet on what programming will replace these beloved daytime dramas, though some have speculated that a show about a wisecracking garden gnome will fill the time slots. Regardless of what happens, this is certainly an unexpected start to the month of April.”

If the last sentence of that paragraph didn’t clue you in, the author confirms in the last sentence that the whole thing was an April Fool’s joke.

“And, by the way – Happy April Fool’s day (It’s April 1st somewhere, right?)”

Of course, not everyone gets that they’re being April Fool-ed. What’s worse, people sometimes have a tendency to just see a headline and believe what they see — and spread the information on social media — without reading the entire article. So, an April Fool’s Day hoax, a convincing headline, and a general public that spreads misinformation without fact-checking makes for a perfect storm sometimes, causing some Y&R fans to get suckered.

That’s not to say that everything is good in Young and the Restless-land. Ratings are down for the popular CBS soap. Specifically, according to Soap Opera Network, Y&R lost viewers in the Women 18-49 category the week leading up to March 23. However, even that bit of bad news needs to be seen in context: a quick scan of recent headlines on Soap Opera Network shows that Y&R’s ratings, like the ratings of other soaps (and indeed, all soaps), are up and down from week to week and even day to day.

Regardless of the ratings situation, one thing is abundantly clear: The Young and the Restless has most certainly not been canceled.

[Featured Image by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images]

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