Why as a nation are we so obsessed with tv ratings esp when it comes to the soaps?

Each soap i think attracts a different age range corrie for the older, eastenders for the late teens and early 20-30's and hollyoaks and emmerdale for the teens and early 20's.

So what if corrie got huge ratings on monday, emerdale will prob get big ratings for their 40th aniversary and eastenders will get big ratings if they do big storyline or at Christmas.

But why are we so obsessed i wonder?

whilst better than last weeks ratings, Whitechapels ratings this series are no better than S2s. Still they are healthy I think this series has proved the creators can move beyond copy cat killers, and TBH the Steve Pemberton character sometimes feels surplus to requirements.

Meanwhile I am trying to work out if its just me or is DC Kent meant to fancy Chandler?


you could almost ask why are we obsessed with soaps, when the rest of the world is quickly loosing interest.

Corrie's two eps last night averaged 10m and 10.2m respectively.

Corrie's had a massive peak of 11.4m (incl +1) last night as Frank's body was discovered in Underworld.

Source: https://twitter.com/#!/Mike_Large

Well arguably the Brits have lost interest too over the last 15 years or so - but it's one thing TV companies have been keen to protect rather than replace in the schedules.

Really good night for NBC in the US. The Voice performed brilliantly and capitalised on the weaker opposition. The rise for Smash must be a huge relief too - they invested so much in that show it would have hurt to see it sink. Yes, it's not doing particularly amazing by other network's standards, it loses a majority of Voice viewers and looks like it could easily bomb elsewhere on the schedule - but NBC won't be picky. The important thing is they've another hour they can add to (what should be) a very short list of carry overs to next season.

Only relative to an overall decline in network audience share, plus the advent of multichannel television. Soaps are still up there among the most watched shows on TV.

Not really fair to say it did no better than S2, as based on overnights (all we have complete so far) S3 has averaged 6.1m (inc +1) whilst S2 averaged 5.2m. Also whereas S2 ended on a low (4.8m for its finale) S3 had a nice little boost for its finale to 6.2m last night, a sign of the higher standard of this series. I agree with the rest of your post, it's really found its style and niche this time and established itself as a renewable hit. Series 4 must be in the bag, and will hopefully not take too long to air.

BBC Four certainly delivered exceptional ratings last night. Dirk Gently had 737k at 9pm, then a Storyville documentary on gypsies managed 925k across 90 minutes from 10pm.

Dirk Gently was very good!

So which broadcaster is going to be the first to do a new drama based on gypsy life?

I don't know!

hopefully now S3 has proven it does not need to be a crime tribute act, S4 will come quicker and be easier to write.


hopefully none of them, whilst im normally quite a liberal guy, my tolerance for gypsies is quite low.


dropped maybe but not as much as elsewhere in the world, and ITV are protecting Corrie and Emmerdale for two reasons

1) they have nothing else to fill those hours
2) the ratings are still normally good enough for the Top 5 to be mostly soaps on any given week night.

As Hollyoaks has shown, even now, when a soap starts to fail it can be saved.

Oooh, only four parts, so with that and two new Inspector George Gently eps, there are still nine or ten Sunday 9pm slots up for grabs in the autumn.

Can someone tell me what the ratings were last night for Watson and Oliver on the BBC at 9:30pm?

Im convinced its the worlds worst show and want to see if the ratings back me up.

A drama about a man called Michael, who sets up a gypsy motorcycle courier business: Mikey's Pikey Bikies?

Crikey. EastEnders was about 2 million behind Corrie on 8.12m (32.6%).

Full soap ratings: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s3...9-million.html

Any news on how Skins did?

I expected EastEnders and Emmerdale to take advantage of Coronation Street drawing in an audience and climb - instead both were down on last week.

Emmerdale 7.77m (could be inc. +1) to 7.51m
EastEnders 8.32m to 8.12m

Think we can officially say EastEnders is now in crisis. This has to be cause for concern for the beeb. Its shedding viewers at an alarming rate.

Excellent rating for CS, no crisis for EE until it drops to EM levels, just to reassure those who panic that EE repeats incredibly well at 10pm on BBC3. 8.66m total last night for a regular episode, up against a massive storyline on ITV1.

I think EE will have a change of producer soon. It's losing ground on Corrie and it was reported that some weirdo has been harassing the production team which I presume includes Brian Kirkwood. I can't see him wanting to stay or the BBC wanting him to stay much longer taking everything into account.

I know Corrie is riding high off the back of a big storyline but even before Frank's murder EE was falling behind.

I've defended EE on here before but after 2 years I think it's time for some new blood there.

No Graham, EE recorded a bad rating (comparative to what it normally gets for the repeat) on BBC Three too. It's all very well saying "it's going through a phase that all soaps do and it will be back up soon" which may or may not turn out to be true, but we can't predict the future, we can only talk about what is happening now. And currently it is rating below par.

Compare to the same night last year:
Corrie (7.30): +200k
Corrie (8.30): +700k enhanced by major story climax
Emmerdale (7.00): -200k
EastEnders (8.00): -1.2m
EastEnders (10.00): -140k

Brian Kirkwood is stuffed! He wont last much longer.

Ken

EastEnders 'only' managed 8.6m including the BBC Three repeat.

The only reason why I'd say it didn't do well last night is because there was a soap audience of 10m (including 200,000 EastEnders viewers who watched last Monday's episodes) floating around between the two episodes of Coronation Street yet EastEnders saw no advantage whatsoever from it.

I really don't think we can say any of that.