I notice the Hollyoaks ratings don't include +1 as the rest of the C4 data does. Does anyone know how Hollyoaks did on +1 yesterday (C4 and/or E4)?

Only 30k watched on C4+1, bringing its total audience to a lowly 690k, still lower than Home & Away's 714k in an earlier slot. H&A was ahead by an even bigger margin than that if you include the first look episodes.

Great share for Neighbours yesterday by the way- nearly 11%. Holding up very well again despite the weather. In fact, it even managed to marginally increase its audience week-on-week. The return of soap legend Harold Bishop should keep that going tonight.

I've no idea how Coronation St will rate tonight, but EastEnders won't rate any better than the 5m it got on Monday night, because the scheduling pattern is the same as Monday.

With hotter weather, EastEnders will be between 4 and 4.5m tonight, and a particularly early finish, like last night's, might even knock it just under 4m.

That really is quite a shocking figure. The show, to be frank, is a mess at the moment. Far too many characters for a show shot with a single character - meaning to give any character a storyline they become such a big focus and then disappear into nothingness immediately after. Stories come and go without being mentioned for weeks. And to top it off the talented actors (of which there are many, despite popular belief) are sidelined for shoddy actors who are clearly on a "number of episodes" contract and are as such being "burned off"!

I can't speak for Home and Away but Neighbours is on a creative surge at the moment. Just the right amount of characters to allow decent levels of development, successfully character driven storylines, good pacing! I'm glad the ratings reflect the quality comparisons!

I think Neighbours might finally have turned a corner, in terms of its quality, after a miserable four or so years.

It's had its moments in that period, but they've been brief, and for the most part it's fluctuated between average and poor, but the last couple of of months have been its most consistently assured period for quite some time.

Finally, a reward for loyal fans who have spent the last few years wondering why they were bothering.

Harolds return has done WONDERS for the show in Australia, it may not appear so due to the small numbers involved, but the show has gone from the low 300,000s to the high 300,000s, one week topping 400,000 twice. I hope it does the same here.

As for Hollyoaks ratings are low, but I wonder if Product Placement will save it, it certainly is serious about attractive product placement, but the show really needs to stablise its rating, and start to grow, it hasnt done that for a long time now. At this stage I would normally say its time to axe it.

Those most impressive thing about Neighbours rebirth is that its being done by the same producer who fans wanted sacked.

To be honest I'm not too surprised by what we're seeing with Hollyoaks at the moment. As I pointed out earlier in the week, it was about a year ago today that it fell to a record low rating. Yesterday's episode wasn't far off "beating" it. I think tonight due to a combination of factors not in its favour, there's a fair chance it will go even lower than the 640k it recorded on Friday 4th June 2010. Interesting to hear from a fan's perspective though where it's going so wrong.

I agree that Neighbours has upped the ante quality wise. The move to Eleven was probably the best thing for it, creatively.

The whole programme needs another shake up and not just the content, but the scheduling too. Hollyoaks Later seems to work well, so permanently turning it into a twice weekly 60 minute 10pm drama could work better than its current format. If that fails, then its time for the axe. It just isn't working, especially during the summer. Fridays always rate low, and paired with the weather tonights show could well be heading for its lowest ever rating.

Good to see BGT bounce back last night and interesting that the results show finished ahead of the main show when +1 is included. I did expect worse considering the weather. Corrie is holding up very well this week. Hopefully the conclusion to the Stape storyline can end on a high tonight. Emmerdale's 38% share is fantastic.

The assessments of Hollyoaks problems are spot on. They do not seem to know what mood to adopt. They regularly mix the cartoon gangsters of EastEnders with the love affairs of Emmerdale and the character humour of Corrie and have slow burn stories that are rushed through then left to hang as if nothing much has changed (eg the way the Jasmine/Jason storyline was handled)

The show works best in short bursts when they tell a story or two and stick to these in a week of dramatic episodes. It is much weaker maintaining any continuity or momentum over longer stretches and it is far too easy to go away, miss a dozen episodes and return without needing to ask what you have missed as it will be in effect now't much.

In fact it might work better more as a series of one hour week long 'specials' three or four times a year. They could probably tell the stories that way anyhow minus all the long spells with nothing going on and the viewing figures would improve.

In other words it works better as short run drama not soap.

I think moving to 11 has been the making of Neighbours, possibly because they've probably had to slash their budget so become much more focused on a smaller number of characters.

Hollyoaks have well over 50 members of the cast now and the show is suffering for it, especially as they keep bringing in new characters when characters introduced last September are still getting relatively little screentime.


There is no way it would get £12m in product placement a year with less than a million watching. Indeed that would probably work out more than Britain's Got Talent is getting in traditional advertising this week. C4 have certainly changed their tune - they opposed PP and claimed it would bring in a pitance, and I actually think they were right as even if they did get the £12m in product placement, that money isn't going to come out of thin air and will most likely be offset by a loss in traditional spot advertising.

The worrying thing about Hollyoaks is it has already played it's trump card. It bought in a new, experienced, producer, it made the axings, it bought in new characters, it revamped it's look, it got the promo campaigns and up until recent weeks had actually really improved on where it was a few months earlier - but ratings just have not recovered and we're now looking at the possibility of it going sub-500,000 in the summer when a couple of years ago it rarely went sub 1.5m.

The problem though lies with the management and structure at Lime as at the moment it's going through exactly the same problem as it went through this time two years ago and this time last year - the transition from one executive producer to the next. When Bryan Kirkwood quit his storylines began to fade out and the show seemed to go on hold until Lucy Allan took over - then when she was sacked it was six months before episodes under Paul Marquess made it to screen - and 2-3 months more before he really could put his stamp on it, then once again with PM losing the role in January the show is very much going through the motions again and despite him being absent for 5 months, he is still credited as the Series Producer.

How can a show be expected to recover when it takes a good six months for any change to make it to screen - Hollyoaks hasn't got that luxury of time at the moment. Although I don't really follow the other soaps I know they've pretty much all changed the senior/executive producer in the last 12 months or so and they don't seem to be suffering such problems everytime the management changes.


It is a soap, not a 10pm drama. If it needs axing it needs axing - after all, look what happened to The Bill and indeed before that Brookside - why delay the inevitable?

At the moment it is being saved by the mess C4 is in - compared to other shows Hollyoaks struggling to break 1m everynight doesn't actually look that bad - plus I'm not sure E4 could afford losing Friends, Hollyoaks and Glee in a matter of months.

And after the missed opportunities so far in the wake of the axing of Big Brother I'd be concerned whether C4 would refocus the Hollyoaks budget wisely. I'm not too bothered so much with what replaced Hollyoaks directly in the slot - indeed I'd be tempted to move everything from Countdown onwards half an hour later rather than commission anything for 6.30pm - but how they spend the money is crucial.

I doubt they'd get two and a half hours of drama a week out of it, but they should get at least an hour a week, which I'd refocus on extended primetime series - not so much the traditional 10pm shows, but getting a foothold in at 8pm/9pm with a US style teen drama - plus some drama for T4 too, possibly in the style of The Cut where it could play in 5 minute daily slots online then air as a 30-minute show at the weekend.

I think if they axed Hollyoaks, they would probably replace it with filler shows like Four in a Bed, Coach Trip, CDWM. If they find a chat show at 5pm that rates they could have daytime sorted with Countdown at 3.15pm, DOND at 4, a chatshow at 5pm alternating with repeats of the fillers, Simpsons at 6 and CDWM, Coach Trip, Four in a Bed etc at 6.30pm.

It was a drama series when it first started out and turned into a soap. If Hollyoaks Later gets healthy ratings, then theres no reason why, in theory, moving Hollyoaks to 2 weekly hour long slots couldn't work. The success of Hollyoaks Later could be due to the 'event' feel of it, but theres nothing to say it won't work weekly, There is only one way to find out.

Brookside is a different matter, that was moved erratically around the schedules, moving to a Saturday afternoon for 6 months and then shunted to a weekday 11pm or midnight slot, well out of the way of viewers. The Bill is different too, that was just a bad error of judgement.

I wouldn't say it is being saved by Channel 4 because of the mess it is in. If it was in that bad a state, Channel 4 could easily dump an extra episode in and get a bigger audience at a much lower cost. But if you think Channel 4 is in a big mess, then I don't understand your earlier logic to axe Shameless. That is one of their better rated shows and one of their only returnable dramas.

would a move to E4 do the same for Hollyoaks? Actually I dont why I bothered I dont think it would, it already airs first look on E4, so im not sure what would change.

Over all I really dont know how Hollyoaks can turn the corner, as mentioned its already played the cards that soaps play to turn there fortunes around, all of them have done it, but Hollyoaks is really struggling with it at the moment.

I don't think Hollyoaks needs axing just yet. They are in the now unfortunately predictable "summer slump" ratings wise. It will pick up in September. But this is where they should be targetting. From recent cast updates it seems they are shooting 6 weeks ahead so if they take the opportunity and act now then we could have a solid show in time for more people tuning in and create a buzz again.

The way I see it is the deadwood need to go between now and September, they don't all need big exits but Silas (the village killer) should show his stuff and knock off a couple before he becomes comic. Then have a cast of much stronger characters to focus on. And if the issue is with characters being overly featured then nto featured at all - how about they run 3 main storylines instead of 2 at any one time (or 3 instead of 4 etc.) thus meaning they have more time to spread the drama out. Main stories can be funny/dramatic/sad/happy. We don't need constant bleak drama.

This way when more people are picking the show back up it's more refined and controlled. There's less of the ability to tune out for weeks and not miss much because "filler weeks" would become a thing of the past.

That's quite a rant and probably just a paragraph of thoughts not particularly well thought through but I'm sure you get the idea.

true that these ratings are low in part due to it being summer, but im sure year on year the figures would still be down.

moving on I think maybe it should have taken the Summer off, and revamped itself off screen, give that Hollyoaks is about a univeristy town, maybe it should have a scheulde pattern like say Casualty, possibly taking the June - Septmember off, meaning that characters have a natural end, at the end of the school year, and you always return with new ones in Septmember. So it would be about 40 episodes a year.

I did read in the Soaps Forum a few days back that it needed to be 'consistently under 500,000' for it to be axed, not sure how much truth there is in that though.

that sounds like one persons speculation, and I think that figure is too low, I dont see how the show could survive if it wa regularry no more than 600,000, heck I struggle to see how it could survive at 800,000.

How is it?
EastEnders got 4.9m (or there abouts) on the Friday last year and tonight the Very Hot weather and BGT will dent it alot.

Corrie is on at 9:00pm (It's alot darker at that time) it's not rating against anything big and it's the final to the storyline.

The Big Eastenders storyline thats been running this week hasn't been promoted at all and only the fact that 'David Essex' enters tonight has.

Exactly.
EastEnders started ontime on Monday but last night it started at 7:27 and was over by about 7:55

Friday''s are their weakiest night anyway and then add that to the hot weather and the fact it's against BGT

Hollyoaks is now the soap equivalent of British Leyland, so many rebrands and changes at the top, but the fact is this is a substandard product that people don't want. Like British Leyland/ Rover it seems to be in a lingering death phase now. If Hollyoaks doesn't improve in the ratings, I predict it will be gone by the end of the year.
However, fair play to Neighbours, this is a cult programme now which plays to its 2 million loyal fans and seems settled on Channel 5 now. Same as another cult will be joining it in 2 months time.

I just updated my digiduide, when did Chelsea Girls, become Made in Chelsea?

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s143/...ls-series.html

Its not stupid scheduling, its scheduling that maximises advertising revenue. Sometimes ITV prefers to make more money than risk dropping a place on the DS most watched list.


For once I agree.


Dont agree with that though. You mean the conclusion to the long-running John Stape storyline that has been building for years isn't a big thing?

Hollyoaks is stuffed period. It is now attracting the sort of ratings Brookside attracted in its last days. However, since it is made by Phil Redmond, no doubt this paranoid egomaniac will blame the powers that be at Channel 4 and the media for destroying Hollyoaks in the same way he made the same rantings nine years ago about Brookside. In fact he became so deluded he even tried to sue someone for making derogatory comments about Lindsay Corkhill, a soap character FFS. No doubt if Channel 4 wield the axe, then will see entire episodes with two characters setting the worlds to rights and someone making a coded attack on Channel 4 in the last episode.

EastEnders started at 7:59 and ended at 8:27