They should have kept it a summer show...

The ratings were good during the first season, when it was a summer show and had very little competition. The problem was, not many people knew about it. But at the same time, when it was airing in the summer, who cares, because it was getting more ratings than the reruns of the other shows.

The problem came when they put it against the established shows that had a fall-spring running season. Even more problematic was that season 2 premiered in February. Not many people would be willing to stop watching a show they have already been invested in for half a season to watch Summerland. Hence the low ratings. Then to compensate for the low ratings, they started making the storylines pretty outlandish and annoying. They wanted us to be like "WHOA!" in every episode, but it eventually just turned into "yawn!" The further the story got, the more ridiculous it became:

-the Johnny/Ava/Simon love triangle was drawn out for too long, then when Simon and Ava broke up, they put Mona in between Johnny and Ava, so that was another triangle we had to deal with. Then Mona died? Okay. Then Johnny and Ava were about to get together then you find out that Johnny had sex with one of Ava's friends YEARS before and she got pissed. It just became too much. By the time they actually got together, I didn't even care anymore.

-Bradin became so unlikable that I didn't give a crap what happened to him anymore. He used to be my favorite character when he was struggling with his parents death and then with his own morals when he was dating Sarah. Then he started seeing Callie and that was all good. Then, once again, season 2 came around and it turned to crap. He turned into a tool when he got on the surf team and then became sponsored. Then he became a sex-maniac, which made me hate him a little. They were trying to make him see conflicted so we'd stick around to see how it all turned out, but really they just made him into a douche. I saw some hope when he met his friend's sister who was looking at colleges and she seemed to appeal to his moral compass. But then he started dating Erika and I was literally like "WTF?!" and that was the last nail in the coffin of Bradin's character.

-Then Jay and that woman... I dunno, I hated that storyline. Then she thought she was pregnant. It seemed like they were just trying to give Jay something to do.

-Derek just got more and more annoying. And when he turned skater-punk? Wow. That was awful.

-Nikki and Cameron were fine from what I remember. Some of their storylines were kind of "high school" but they were in high school, so that was fine.

What they should have done was kept it a summer show. It would have had decent ratings because there wasn't much going against it. Get it a little more established and develop a stronger fan-base before trying to pin it against the other network shows. Granted I don't know how continuing the show beyond a second season would potentially affected Zac Efron in High School Musical or Jesse McCartney with his music (maybe the show would have prevented Efron from gaining fame from HSM) but if it didn't interfere, that definitely would have garnered more viewers.

I really think they just messed it from a business sense, which affected the story and the quality of the show.