I'm another one who never visits the main site now.

And if what Daniel says above is true, and the new "here's 10 things twitter screeched about nothing" articles are going down a storm, I guess that's permanent.

Sadly you're probably right. However I'm guessing those articles are popular on a site where the overall user traffic has dropped and the user demographic changed significantly.

It seems DS is no longer targeting it's wider audience or demographic.

Sick of seeing the endless articles about structured reality nobodies, the current mood on twitter (I don't use it for a reason) or 900 reasons why I should watch this/that etc.

Today's news offering is a piece on how many coffers itv are lining Ant & Dec's pockets with - Do we really need to know that? I find those kind of articles extremley patronising, irrelevant and unnecessary.

I only use the Soaps, Big Brother or TV forums these days as the main site is awful, difficult to navigate and as user-friendly as a blank jigsaw. Soap news and updates are actually very slow and the sudden surge of 'Buzzfeed' articles prove this. The same EastEnders spoiler has been displayed on the home page for the past four days now. If from now on all we are going to get is EYNTK, ... Reasons etc, Top 10 this/that etc articles then it's really not even worth the bother paying the site a visit. Judging by other comments DS is slowly but surely alienating it's audience, which is such a terrible shame as it was once a great site which clearly appealed to people of all ages and tastes.

Same here. I can't navigate to find articles now. It's all jumbled up

Has the overall traffic dropped?

It's interesting. I just really resent the implication that we're all dumb as nuts. I can choose what I want to read, and right now, it's no longer Digital Spy.

You can no longer comment on there which is frustrating as there was some intresting people. But DS went through that whole Beta test stage for some reason, and even after the complaints never put it back.

Great post - 100% right

It's truly awful now. Hard to navigate and I don't think they have the day by day episode info that they used to have anymore. I enjoyed the comments section which has also gone. I really hate it when something is fine it gets changed (for the worse I might add)

Hi Daniel, thank you for posting. I have to agree that your exclusives are great; as a Sam Strike fan I've especially appreciated the interviews you've done with him, both when he left and his thoughts on them casting a new Johnny. It's great that you're building these contacts up and getting this type of content.

If you do truly listen to people's POV on the site layout then please just let me give you one piece of advice: filter systems! Let people who are only looking for, for example, upcoming episode synopsises be able to get them in date order by the click of a button. Same for interviews, spoiler articles, photo galleries etc. You can then use the main soap page to push your list content and the stuff that brings you in the hits, while also keeping the more 'conservative' type fans happy.

I hope you take this on board as it really would make the world of difference!

As someone who use to visit the DS website everyday for years, I'm now only visiting about once a week at a maximum. Now I only visit the forums regularly.

I don't mind the odd 'buzzfeed' article every now and then but now they are doing it for any old reason. I saw one a few weeks ago on a list of Leanne's fellas from Corrie, it just listed the blokes that most people know about, it was pointless.

I miss the cast interviews, ratings etc and most of all the comments.

And what's with the constant scrolling to find articles?? I know when I did ICT at school, we were taught to get as much on the page as possible so you don't have to scroll much and that was only 10 years ago.

DS was popular anyway according to its 'About us' page, so it wasn't necessary for them to go down the clickbait route already spoiling other sites.

While the new style might be popular with the targeted demographic, I do wonder whether overall readership has decreased with the alienating of other demos. I simply can't believe the site appeals to as wide a demographic as before.

If the EYNTK/list articles were an addition to everything we had before it might be okay, but most news stories are now written in an informal way with the author often giving their own opinion on stuff (which in most cases comes across as try-hard and is where the cringe element creeps in) , and the 'catchy' headlines are everywhere. Some articles are reminiscent of the old DS like the one about Fionnula Flanagan joining the EE spin-off (unless it's been edited since I last looked) but they're the exception rather than the rule.

I appreciate that the day-by-day episode information remains largely unchanged and is now a bit easier to find.

And what about ratings? You've posted a few ratings articles this year about Neighbours etc, so you clearly still have access.

Yes me neither. The articles are not that great and with removing the discussions they removed the last reason for me to read them. I understand they want to avoid problems with copyrights, bad language, etc. as a part of the main site, they were always very strict about it. But maybe they could add discussions as a part of the forum in a special section linking to them from the article.

I used to appreciate DS precisely because it wasn't like every other clickbait Buzzfeed/Mail Online news website. God knows why they've gone down this route. The main page is awful, and on tablet or iPad it's virtually unusable.

I've been using this site for 12 years and I only ever read the forums now. It's a total disaster.

Oh God, the scrolling! It's such a basic rookie web design mistake. You can scroll down the DS page forever and ever and ever. I swear, it's basically a bottom-less hole.

Even one scroll on a main page and you've usually lost me.

The soap section is horrific, can't find no episode guides, the articles are not in chronological order, I have to use soap scoop twitter to find them, shoddy.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/201...-julian-linley

Interesting read. Particularly where it mentions the decrease in website hits - which seems to coincide with when the new site was launched.

24 million monthly users in 2013 to 15 million monthly users by the end of 2015.

Says it all really.

Ah. Well we know who to blame, then.

Not sure "copying Buzzfeed but doing it very badly and making your site unnavigable" is a good business strategy, but then I don't have a "wealth of media experience."

Indeed, what a huge f*** up. If it ain't broke...

What a disastrous appointment.

It's clear from reading the article that the wider audience and demographic have indeed been ignored. Just cater for the younger readers and sod the rest of us if seems.

I wonder what the traffic figure is now. I wouldn't be at all surprised if DS has hemorrhaged a few more million.

Re: the first point on the same EastEnders spoiler being visible, the 'Spoilers' section on the left hand side of the soaps homepage displays the episode guides for the next 3 episodes due to air for each soap. This column will only update as and when a new episode has aired. The latest stuff goes live in the other 2 columns - we promote certain content on Must Read, and if you're looking for a live feed of the latest news, it all feeds in on the Latest News column on the right hand side.

I can only reiterate what I said before about how list features and EYNTKs aren't 'all we're going to get' moving forwards - that's not what anyone at DS is aiming for. We have more hands on deck with Soaps now so we've started incorporating some features too, usually 1 or 2 per day, which may appeal to a different audience. They won't be everyone's cup of tea and we're not forcing anyone to read those features if they don't like them.

On Tuesday alone we had 25 soap news stories live across the day when all of the new storylines for the following week came out of embargo - it's honestly not true to say that we've stopped covering spoilers and news. The issues with the design are being looked at (there have been some improvements already, including getting rid of the Most Shared column on the soaps homepage) to make sure the latest news is easier to find.


The day-by-day episode info is on the main soaps homepage on the left hand side - http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/ - The next 3 episodes for each soap are on this column going downwards. Once you're on the first one, you can use Previous/Next to scroll through, or alternatively we have the Soaps Spoilers page which has all of the latest ones on there - http://www.digitalspy.com/soaps/spoilers/. We're currently working on the design to make these easier to navigate.


Hi Elly - thanks for the kind comments on chatting to Sam Strike, he's always been really accommodating when it comes to DS. I've included some advice above on how best to see the upcoming spoilers but we're currently revamping the individual show pages to improve this further. Once this is done, the EastEnders page (for example) will have all the upcoming episode spoilers at the top and the Latest News beneath that.


The Neighbours ratings were supplied by Channel 5 as a one-off due to their special episode. There's unfortunately various factors involved in publishing the ratings in more detail/depth, including having a licence from BARB to do so. I miss covering them too but there's no update at the moment as to whether they'll return.

Well, I just popped on to the main site. And all I could see was heavy pushing of the tumblr-friendly m/m "shipping". It's all "ooooo, Robron and Starry!!!!!"

So I think it's safe to say this is not aimed at me.

I miss old DS, but I'll live.

Nice of Daniel to reply though - first response I've seen from anyone in 6 months.

I’m another one who stopped going on the main site months ago. I work hard at my job and don’t want to have to work hard at navigating an ‘entertainment’ website.

What I don’t get with EYNTK is why people ‘need’ to know what’s in the articles. People ‘need’ fluid to survive but they don’t ‘need’ to know what’s in some dumb article about how many poos Phil Mitchell does a week or whatever.

Another recent obsession is those 'This is what so and so looks like now' articles usually with clickbait titles along the lines of 'OMG! Remember so and so... they don't look like this anymore!' as if they expect people to stay looking the same forever more. The recent ones about Charlie Clements were daft as apart from being fuller in the face and having some facial hair he doesn't look that different and he hasn't been out of the limelight that long. If one site does a story on a specific celeb along those lines, the others have to follow suit with each article a loosely reworded version of the original.