![]() So what is driving the decline of soaps? And is there a way back from the brink? Now just three soaps – The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young and the Restless, and America's longest-running soap General Hospital – remain on terrestrial TV, following the move in September of Days of Our Lives to streaming platform Peacock, after dwindling ratings on NBC, so marking the end of an era after its 57 years on the network. In the US, the field of soaps has narrowed significantly in the last decade, with the cancellation of long-running shows such as All My Children and One Life to Live creating a " Soapocalypse", as it was dubbed by US media outlets. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal's David Luhnow and Santiago Pérez wrote that competition from Netflix has prompted Mexican media conglomerate Televisa and other South and Central American broadcasters "to develop real-life, edgier dramas and crime stories to replace the soaps that that once enthralled millions". In South and Central America, where telenovela soap operas reigned supreme for decades and became popular with international viewers too, there are also signs of decline. In July, iconic Australian soap Neighbours came to an end after 37 years, when Channel 5 pulled out of the deal to broadcast it in the UK, its biggest market, due to dwindling viewing figures. And it's not just EastEnders: "While TV viewing as a whole fell by 9% between 20, Coronation Street's audience fell by 19%, while Emmerdale's went down by 22%,” noted Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian earlier this year. Last Christmas, just 2.9 million tuned in for the Christmas Day Eastenders episode, making it only the 10th most-watched programme on Christmas Day overall, where it used to regularly top the ratings. But the reality is that Britain is no longer as engaged with the soap genre as it was. The rivalry between these two soaps endures today, with Coronation Street back on top – for now. It shook things up and brought Coronation Street back to life too." Why was it so popular? "On Coronation Street, the scenes in Rover's Return had become sedate: nobody passed the camera, there was no background noise, no one was fighting to be heard," Cashman says. But in just one year, EastEnders had beaten Coronation Street's all-time most-viewed episode by 10m viewers. It was about a community in the East End of London and it moved as sharply or as slowly as their lives."ĮastEnders debuted in a crowded field of British soaps: Coronation Street was already 26 years old, while Emmerdale and Brookside were popular too. There were no lingering shots or long reactions. ![]() "The dialogue was quick and the scenes were fast. You were a fly on the wall," Michael Cashman, who played Colin Russell in the soap from 1986 to 1989, tells BBC Culture. ![]() For Britons, it might be hard to imagine that the soap was ever brand new, but, back in the mid-1980s, EastEnders was different from anything viewers had seen before. Even people who have never watched it can hum its opening theme music. Now, 36 years since that momentous TV event, and 37 years after EastEnders began, the BBC's flagship soap is part of the UK's cultural furniture. – The 11 best TV shows to watch in October ![]() The nation was on tenterhooks as "Dirty" Den Watts finally handed over divorce papers to his wife Angie, with the episode drawing higher ratings than The Queen's Speech. In 1986, 30.1 million people tuned in to watch the Christmas Day instalment of BBC soap EastEnders.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |