That's what I'm saying. I think all this funk about the recent episodes is overdone. They are OK not brilliant but OK. The issue is the reveal which means bleugh.. Expectations were high that the reveal would trigger massive impact on Square. All it did was lead to Lauren and Peter leaving and a damaged Beale family. 30th is a massive part of the problem that EE have.

What? Where?

German plane in French Alps coming back from Spain

Unless there is at least one britain onboard Britsh TV News won't be that interested for very long.

South of France, Airbus of German Wings, 142 on board, all presumed lost

Presumably he was asked about it likely as he's been doing the rounds explaining moving the chart show from Sunday to Friday.

That's terrible.

Another high profile air crash.

I think EastEnders coming off such a huge week and discussing what went wrong to not hold on to any extra viewers is a valid topic here. Just about.

Oh, they'll find a link don't you worry. I full expect ITV Central News to mention it tonight, saying that a door on the plane was made in Leciester or something.

Some interesting figures here from the equivalent weeks

2013

Coronation Street 9.78m (40.1%) 8.30pm 10.12m (39.3%)
EastEnders 7.73m (30.8%)
Emmerdale 7.19m (31.9%)

2014

Coronation Street 8.44m (38.6%) 8.30pm 7.99m (34.4%)
EastEnders 7.23m (31.9%)
Emmerdale 6.71m (32.8%)

2015

Corrie 7.52m (36.1%) 8.30pm 7.37m (32.7%)
EastEnders 6.91m (30.9%)
Emmerdale 6.41m (33.0%)

Eastenders is level, Emmerdale up slightly, but Corrie is down a lot. Surely ITV can see a show that is sinking whilst the other two have stabilised.

Looking at Eastenders nearly 800k viewers are missing for a 0.1% difference between 2013 and 2015. Using that as a baseline, Eastenders and Emmerdale are fine, but Corrie has lost both paddles far up the creek.

I think there should be a separate thread for soaps.

The deja vu thread maybe?

But I have a feeling I looked at that thread before.

Interesting stats, thank you. EE and Emmerdale are only stable or up if you look at shares of TV viewing. On absolute viewers, all three soaps are continuing to decline. It seems unlikely that (temporary stunts or anniversary events aside) there is anything which is likely to change that. I stick to my prediction that in 20 years' time these soaps (if they are all still around) will be averaging 2 to 3 million.

Good figures for the quizzes on beeb2.

'BBC Two's University Challenge quizzed 2.96m (13.2%) at 8pm, followed by Only Connect with 2.45m (10.9%) at 8.30pm.'

From DS.

It seemed unthinkable as recently as four or five years ago that primetime soaps could die out in this country, but it doesn't seem quite as big a longshot now if only because there's no sign at all of the declines slowing.

The two most popular responses to the above would be "they still rate better than anything else on a typical evening" and "other genres are declining, this is no different" but a) I'm not sure everything else is falling to the same extent, and b) it could be that in the long term the former stops being true and then we will have reached a real turning point.

If fairly average factual on ITV like Robson Green's Northumberland Tales can do 4.5m when EastEnders isn't on, that strongly suggests BBC One could be doing 5m minimum in that Monday 8pm slot with relative ease. With last night's EastEnders doing 6.9m, the gap between these once mighty unmissable soap operas and what regular run of the mill programming would get isn't all that great and crucially it's continuing to close all the time.

The argument for keeping the soaps that you overlook of course is the sheer volume of content they produce.

If BBC1 were to ditch EastEnders they'd lose more than 104 hours of original drama every year and they'd never be able to plug that hole on the same budget (short of introducing another soap). ITV would lose even more hours than that if they got rid of Coronation Street and/or Emmerdale. This doesn't even touch on how reliant both channels are on the soaps at this point with no signs of reversing that trend. The sign that the soaps are on rocky ground will be when/if the BBC or ITV start scaling back the number of episodes they're doing every week.

There's also the issue of profitability. Even with low numbers I'd imagine the soaps are both turning a profit for ITV just because of how many hours they get to spread their costs out over.

ITV seem to be scheduling shows for Friday nights that you wouldn't think would fit the night. This is what is replacing Bear Grylls in a couple of weeks:

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/ep1we...iff-rhys-jones

I don't think Friday is actually a bad idea for this one as it'd likely skew old wherever it went, but it seems more like a midweek show. I had expected Piers Morgan's Life Stories to turn up there, but that one is either not starting until mid-May or changing night.

I've said before Stars In Their Eyes with a version more similar to Leslie Crowthers would suit Friday 9pm - inheriting the OAP audience from Coronation Street.

As even some soap fans acknowledge, a reduction in the number of episodes per week might be a win-win - higher quality & perhaps ratings for the soaps themselves, and greater variety & wider (not necessarily greater) audiences for the main channels.

Certainly the BBC and ITV would not be able to afford to replace soap episodes with the same quantity of drama each week, but replacing one or two episodes a week with extra one or two half-hours of quizzes, factual, chat, or comedy repeats would liven up rather dull schedules and bring in non-soap audiences.

Neither (especially ITV) should be relying so excessively on showing the same things to the same (shrinking) subset of the audience night after night. These changes are clearly unlikely for a while, but must be a strong possibility in coming years if soap audiences continue to fall.

Soaps are designed to be habit forming. They guide you through the week with your regular dose of household drama at fixed points. From there you jump through trailers, to other shows that you may like. With more ways to watch what you want, when you want to, viewers are picking and choosing a schedule of their own making. The appointment to view programming has shifted to the big LE and the latest explosive storyline in the soaps.

Basically the Brookside syndrome is now engulfing the whole soap genre. To bring the viewers in they try to be more sensational than previously, and the low points are becoming all too regular. With people not watching their tv designed by schedulers, other programmes are now being affected. We have found ourselves in a growing Netflix style environment. People want everything now (see the comments about the drawn out Lucy murder on Eastenders), and will happily box set watch a series. This is possibly the future. I think the soaps will fall lower, and programming will have to change to reflect this. I can even see a time when there is just simply BBC One, and ITV again as you only need the one channel to show the event TV. Drip feeding episodes of TV shows will probably no longer be acceptable.

Of course all this relies on people having a good broadband connection.

They getting lower and lower, No one cares for them apart from the soaps forum and the few fans on social media:

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=32

They'd sooner be tried in an earlier timeslot before being cancelled altogether, I suspect. Sure, there'd be changes to the look and feel of the shows as well as budget cuts, but Hollyoaks gets by on 2 million viewers or less, albeit with a fair number of young hard to reach viewers. Nestled between Tipping Point and The Chase, who's to say a 1 hr block of Emmerdale and Corrie couldn't do 3 million in the 4pm hour, with housewives rushing home from the school run to watch, with repeats on ITV2 (or 3) in their traditional timeslots pushing that figure closer to 4m.

Of course, the recent declines we've seen may still be a phase and they may start growing again in the autumn and render this entirely theoretical discussion the talk of mad men, who knows. All I'm saying is I've gone from not being able to imagine a primetime schedule on BBC One or ITV without soap operas in my lifetime to thinking it's not completely impossible.

The ITV Football Twitter account has confirmed an 11th April start for Ninja Warrior UK.

https://twitter.com/itvfootball/stat...24557015773184

I think EastEnders coming off a huge storyline and not managing to hold on to many viewers is poor. All that potential to get a few more viewers just lost. It was rating poorly for 3 years and this was the chance to get a few back.

Coronation Street has dipped as the storylines have dipped and yet it is still ahead of EastEnders! Both need to have a long look at themselves.

Guess they don't have much football to tweet about these days.