As of 8/31/87, Nielsen switched to the "people meter" system, and began reporting final numbers every week. Final numbers have been reported every week from then on through the present day.
The stations column lists the # of stations that Nielsen counted for the ratings in a particular week. The % column is the amount of the country that received the soap. For some reason, those two numbers seem to fluctuate each week. The notes column lists all of the full and partial preemptions for each soap.
Extra Note: The Nielsen book for the week of 12/14/87 is not, as of yet, available. Ratings & shares data for that week was found in Daytime TV Magazine. I am posting those ratings here as a placeholder until the Nielsen book is tracked down. Full-episode preemption data can be figured out from the the following Nielsen books, so all soaps are confirmed to have aired 5 episodes during this week, although there may have been "partial" episode preemptions, which are unknown at this time.
