How can EastEnders get such good ratings for such awful material?

I would love to know the exact age breakdowns and demographics of each soaps audience. Does anyone by interest have access to such info?

Good Idea, we would really be able to see which soap appeals to which audience, and the "teens like this and they where out" or "its on to late for the over 60's" excuses, used when a users favourite soap pulls in a low figure will be put to rest...

same day last year:
Emmerdale: 8.24m
down 750k y-o-y
Corrie: 10.06m/9.77m
down 1.43m & 1.04m y-o-y
EastEnders: 8.41m
down 50k y-o-y

same day 2010:
Emmerdale: 7.48m
Corrie: 9.94m/8.63m
EastEnders: 14.91m
(15.6m tapechecked)

Actually in my opinion Neghbours is the best soap on air at the moment. It's on a really good form and hasn't been this good in years. Yes it's not perfect but it is heading in the right direction.

Coronation Street - 8.27m (28.7%)

Eastenders had great timehsifts for the week ending Febuary 12th.

The highest of the week was Thursday with 9.85 nawwowly beating beaten with Corrie's 9.9million and Friday's episode rose from 8.2m to 9.4 by timhshift.

You've not added the HD figures into the equation for Corrie. The highest rated episode for this particular week was 10.66m.

Emmerdale - 7.66m (34.6%)
Coronation Street - 9.07m (38.8%)
EastEnders - 8.40m (34.0%)
Coronation Street - 9.09m (36.0%)

Not bad ratings for the soaps last night.

Would be nice to see EE closer to 9million though.

Neighbours grabbed 828k (10.4%) at 1.45pm and 1.04m (6.1%)

Nice to see it up once again, hope it's not just a one off like last week.

The lunchtime showing did well, but teatime is too low. It should be around the 1.2 mark at least at 5.30, at the moment it is dangerously close to falling below the million mark.

What do you think is causing the teatime drop, Dancc? Most people agree that the show is in its creative stride atm but it doesn't seem to be reflected in the ratings?

Perhaps some more promotion is needed...

Gameshows Pointless and The Chase are doing very well at the moment. When Neighbours first moved to Channel 5, it was much less competitive at 5pm because The Weakest Link was running out of steam on the BBC and ITV for love nor money could not find a hit show in this slot.

So what's probably happened is, more people have sampled Pointless/The Chase whilst Neighbours was on its break, and they haven't returned. A bit of a worry.

Problem is...I don't think C5 would ever consider changing the show's timeslot... :/

It's very risky. Obviously they must have thought about moving it to 6pm, with Home and Away at 6:30pm, but if they do that there's no going back and it could just make things worse.

You'd have thought Neighbours might be able to do better at 6pm though with mostly news as competition. And we know H&A can do well at 6:30pm as that is when it airs on 5* to good audiences.

Then you have the problem of Hollyoaks up against H&A...or would HandA hold up well against HO?

I think it'd be okay, they don't seem to share that many viewers. On Friday when it aired at 6.30 because of an episode missed due to the football it actually beat Hollyoaks, although obviously Hollyoaks is weaker on Fridays.

Neighbours traditional slot is 5.35pm. In this multi-channel age, it is important for shows to stay in established slots.

What they could look at is moving the lunchtime slot to say 12.00/12.30pm...which was it's original time slot on BBC1, back in the day.

At this juncture, it is also worth remembering that there are now many more opportunities to see Neighbours - which is a good thing - but it means the audience is split. Lunchtime, teatime, lunchtime+1, teatime+1, 5*, 5*+1 (in some cases), omnibus, omnibus+1 and online/On Demand. That is possibly ten times or more. All told, it is probably doing 2.5million per episode...but we all know that ratings don't reflect quality don't we.

Channel 5 really should be doing some high profile / peak time promos...and if necessary...use the other commercial networks to. The show is in a good place right about now, and the masses need to know about it. It is better, in my view, than some of it's prime time counter-parts on other networks!

Neighbours Australia ratings

Week 7 2012

Monday - 299,000
Tuesday - 288,000
Wednesday - 285,000
Thursday - 269,000
Friday - 244,000

average = 277,000

down 11,000 week on week, and down 33,800 year on year

Week 7 - 2011

Monday - 356,000
Tuesday - 311,000
Wednesday - 334,000
Thursday - 291,000
Friday - 262,000

Surprised that viewers stuck with Corrie for the second episode last night, the main plot threads were pretty dull. Even the Carla/Frank scenes are becoming 'B plot' standard at the moment in my opinion.

Not great all-round.

EastEnders - 7.98m (35.2%)
Emmerdale - 7.53m (34.9%)
Doctors - 1.51m (20.6%)
Hollyoaks - 1.21 (5.9%)
Neighbours - 733k (9.9%) & 1.03 (6.2%)
Home & Away - 852k (4.5%)

ED and EE very close yet again on a Tuesday which is traditionally EE's strongest night. The gap is already quite small on Thursdays, it's been closing in on Mon & Fri for a while, and seems to be doing the same on Tuesdays now.

How low will EastEnders have to drop for action to be taken I wonder

I'm wondering that too... Tbh though, I'm surprised EE ratings are still as high as 7-8m.