Things we learnt today in the Ratings Thread:
*The soaps are DYING (from someone who doesn't like soaps).
*Football SUCKS (from someone who doesn't like football).
See also what we learnt yesterday and the day before that.
I don't mean to be rude but predictable and repetitive opinions like this do not constitute analysis and for some reason it infuriates me when they are dressed up as such. Sometimes we must simply begrudgingly accept that things we don't like rate well and vice versa, and not try to frame all of our posts around our own personal habits and tastes, as if we're that on the button that our preferences are reflected nationally! I think we've already established by now that the regulars here almost exclusively have very irregular tastes, and if you were to plot our data on a graph alongside "average Joe" viewer profiles, ours would stand out like sore thumbs (mine included).
That said, the general soap decline is undoubtedly of interest. But the answer is unlikely to be found in the number of episodes, which has been very high for years and has not recently changed, so could not even be considered as a potential factor. As for demographics, there are no issues here and the makeup of the audience is not relevant to a fall in Total People anyway unless there is evidence to suggest more viewers have been lost within one subcategory than any other. And it's also pointless comparing to the US market where daytime soaps is a genre in its own right, and aside from occasional specials that's where they've always aired.
It seems likely to me that any shift away from our soaps is at least partially as a result of evolving viewing habits generally. No **** Sherlock, I hear you all cry. Unfortunately the freely available data only gets you so far. It'd be interesting for example to study in depth the profiles of the "lost" viewers. Are they simply watching less television? How many have actually stopped watching in favour of something else on live broadcast TV?
More crucially though I think, is what effect the current catchup culture is having. And by that I don't just mean the reduced overnights we've come to expect. But instead that this idea of everything being available for a finite period across multiple different mediums, in turn giving viewers ever more reasons to watch content on their own terms, some viewers are being driven away from appointment-to-view television almost completely. And soaps, being the day-to-day anchors of the primetime schedule on the major channels, are always going to feel the full force of this more than other types of programme, as whilst there's no reason why somebody couldn't watch these exclusively on catchup, get out of the habit of watching Corrie at 7.30 three or four nights a week or whatever it is and the habit of watching at all could be broken with more ease. Not to mention more casual viewers who may tune in as part of a longer session in front of the box dictated by the schedulers, but are also increasingly driven towards non linear forms of content delivery.
In short I think it's a bit more complicated than saying viewers are just growing tired of them or tastes are moving on. I don't see much evidence of that at all. And we hear a lot about the standard of the writing and storylines, which again I don't feel is necessarily relevant when we're talking about something we're seeing right across the board. Similarly I don't see the point in singling out any individual title at this moment in time. Sure, some may be down more than others, and I guess that's of interest to an extent, but the problem is clearly widespread. And maybe in hindsight we were too harsh on EastEnders last year. What we were seeing then was not necessarily a health warning for that show, but a warning of what was to come more generally in the genre. And the most worrying thing for the TV bosses will be the potential impact on the key 9PM programming, with strong evidence certainly in ITV's case to suggest that the size of the lead-ins from the soaps can have a significant impact here.
