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The decline of soaps down to less people watching?
I've just had a theory, could the decline of soaps be attributed to the lesser amount of people who watch them now? Back when soaps were at their best, they were watched by mass audiences in excess of 15 million or more. The ad revenue they brought in meant the soaps would have a much bigger budget which in turn meant employing better talent, producers, writers, and so on.
With viewing figures on a continued downward spiral this has led to an increase in the number of episodes to make up for the smaller budgets due to the lack of revenue. But all this is doing is further depleting the quality. No rehearsal time, working the actors harder, writer deadlines, longer hours, ect.
Particularly in the last 5 years, the quality has fallen dramatically. Now typically drawing around 6 million.
Though i know the BBC doesn't have to rely on ad revenue, but it has suffered terrible budget cuts.
With viewing figures on a continued downward spiral this has led to an increase in the number of episodes to make up for the smaller budgets due to the lack of revenue. But all this is doing is further depleting the quality. No rehearsal time, working the actors harder, writer deadlines, longer hours, ect.
Particularly in the last 5 years, the quality has fallen dramatically. Now typically drawing around 6 million.
Though i know the BBC doesn't have to rely on ad revenue, but it has suffered terrible budget cuts.
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You could have a point there. The quality of television in general has gone down since the days alot of genres would have a mass audience. Soaps being no exception. Sitcoms have really suffered aswell.
But there's still quality programming being made elsewhere such as Peaky Blinders or Planet Earth II.
Are you mad?
We're in a golden era of movie quality TV shows at the moment.
I probably should've stated 'British tv in general' But drama is still strong in that regard.
Continuing drama, not so much.
The decline of soaps due to less people watching?
or
Less people watching causing the decline of soaps?
There's probably an argument for either and its probably a combination of both.
I think soaps are vying for more of a niche market these days - a declining demographic - hence another reason why soaps have become incredibly homogenous.
They're increasingly competing for the same viewers, and therefore, more likely to play to the populist soap narratives that keep this audience watching.
As others have said, I think it's just a matter of people having far more choice of channels to watch now, coupled with a change in the way we watch programmes nowadays, ie pretty much whenever we feel like it.
But Soaps still remain the most consistently watched programmes on ITV and BBC1 so "decline" is a very misleading word anyway.
British Network TV, definitely.
- There are so many Digital channels nowadays and everyone has Freeview or Sky, compared to 10/20 years ago when most people only had a handful of terrestrial channels.
- Thanks to all the catch up services and repeats on TV, a lot of people don't bother watching live TV anymore.
- The soaps have all peaked and virtually everything we see nowadays has been done before (and often much better.) Twenty years ago, a murder or a big stunt would hit the headlines but nowadays we're so used to it that it's not a big deal anymore. There isn't as much of a shock impact.
- The fact that there are so many spoilers around (especially on social media) means not much is kept secret anymore so some people only tune in if something big is about to happen.
Netflix is the future of TV and will conquer the planet by 2020, mark my words.
I honestly can't remember the last time I actually watched the soaps at the time they are broadcast.
The BBC is not obliged to have 4 episodes of EE a week. It does not need to have advert revenue.
I think the lower viewing figures are down to more episodes. It is a serious committment to watch all episodes
If you miss a few episodes you can be a bit lost. This is not attractive for the more casual viewers.
NB. An end to detailed spoilers would also be very good.