In a recent article in the Guardian (Soap operas: has the bubble burst? http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/oct/01/soap-operas-has-the-bubble-burst) Stuart Jeffries writes that the current UK soap operas are ‘no longer fit for purpose’ and that the ‘whole genre seems spent’. While it is clearly true that all is not well in the world of soap, I don’t agree that the end of soap is nigh.
Why? Because people will always crave stories. Telling stories and listening to stories is a fundamental human activity which makes us who we are. And soap stories do a particular thing that other TV dramas don’t: they tell stories about characters we recognise in places we recognise – people like us – who face tough choices and often do the wrong thing. By doing this, they let us experience what it would be like to do what we hope we wouldn’t do in our own lives.
This isn’t escapism. Escapism is watching Mad Men, The Wire or even Made in Chelsea. After all, not many of us are Madison Avenue advertising executives, Baltimore drug dealers or Chelsea airheads. Watching those lives unfold on screen takes us out of ourselves, lets us experience lives we will never live (though for the record, I’d rather be a Baltimore drug dealer than be made in Chelsea).
So, soaps are serving a different audience than other dramas. And for all the fragmenting of TV audiences, they’re still surprisingly popular. Coronation Street regularly gets around 8 million people tuning in (it was a little misleading for the Guardian article to state that Corrie’s numbers had dropped from 14 million in 2010 to half that now as that figure was for the live 50th anniversary episode and so wasn’t indicative of the usual ratings). Granted, EastEnders isn’t doing as well as it was a few years ago but hopefully the new executive producer, Dominic Treadwell Collins (who was the show’s Story Producer between 2007 and 2010) will be able to turn its fortunes around.
But turning around any soap production is going to mean making changes. There are some tough choices to be made.
In the article, Christine Geraghty of Glasgow University says that it is the ‘relentless intensity of plotting that makes soaps often seem daft’ and I would agree with her. It’s always been true that some soap stories have to be ‘big’ to (hopefully) grab a large audience but I think the problem now lies with the sheer amount of stories needed by the genre. Put simply; the more episodes a week you produce, the more stories you need, the less time you have to work on them.
Perhaps the solution might be to think the unthinkable and have fewer episodes each week. Doesn’t anyone else yearn for having just two half-hour weekly episodes of their favourite soap to watch? And if there were fewer episodes, it would mean the producers and the story teams would have more time to spend on developing the stories and the characters and where they were heading. Is overseeing four or five episodes a week, all year round, too much for any one executive producer to handle, no matter how skilled and experienced they are? Perhaps this is why we’ve seen so many high-profile departures in recent years. Would downsizing the productions lead to a position where more authorship could be taken by the person in overall control of a show – just like it is in the best TV dramas?
And while we’re thinking radically, what about considering the schedules? Do the major soaps necessarily need to be prime-time shows? If that’s just too radical, try this: do all episodes of the major soaps need to be prime-time?
The growth of digital technology means the way we watch television is changing; both how we watch it (e.g. via the internet) and when we watch it (e.g. using an on-demand service like the BBC iPlayer). In the Guardian piece, Phil Redmond talks about how families are less likely to sit together and watch the same show, but that ‘you might get the parents watching the flat screen, the kids on their tablets, and the teenagers watching on their phones.’ In that case, do we need a nightly fix of soap between 7pm and 9pm? What if some or all the episodes were transmitted in a daytime slot? Or exclusively online?
BBC One’s Doctors wasn’t mentioned in Stuart Jeffries’ article (I’d count it as a medical soap) but it’s a show that’s been doing well since it began in 2000. I watch regularly in the 1.45pm slot, but if I miss it then, I’ll watch it on the iPlayer later in the day or maybe later in the week. This is how we watch TV now.
And if a soap could be flexible in the schedule, could it be flexible in its format? Do all episodes have to fill the half-hour slot? Don’t get me wrong, I think 30-minutes is a great space to tell around three typical soap stories in, but what if I wanted to tell one story over 20-minutes? Or 15-minutes? If the big soaps weren’t anchored so rigidly in prime-time, they could be free to play with the storytelling and the format of individual episodes.
Obviously EastEnders did something like this with E20, but that was clearly targeted at a young audience. More and more it is the family (and friends) audience who will be watching in this new alone-but-together way; that is, we might be watching alone but we share the experience together via social media, either while we’re watching (e.g. via Twitter) or later (e.g. via Facebook).
And that connectedness we have now through social media is perhaps the major reason why I believe the big soaps won’t burst and disappear. If the fans of Brookside had had Facebook and Twitter at their disposal when the show was about to be axed in 2003, you can bet that the inevitable online campaign would have kept it on air. Imagine what a kind of campaign would ensue if there were whispers of axing EastEnders, Coronation Street or Emmerdale?
So the soaps won’t die, the major ones at least, but they will have to change. And if that’s going to happen, it’s up to the producers and the channel bosses to face the tough choices and make some difficult decisions – just like the characters in the soaps they make.
Perhaps the solution might be to think the unthinkable and have fewer episodes each week. Doesn’t anyone else yearn for having just two half-hour weekly episodes of their favourite soap to watch? And if there were fewer episodes, it would mean the producers and the story teams would have more time to spend on developing the stories and the characters and where they were heading. Is overseeing four or five episodes a week, all year round, too much for any one executive producer to handle, no matter how skilled and experienced they are? Perhaps this is why we’ve seen so many high-profile departures in recent years. Would downsizing the productions lead to a position where more authorship could be taken by the person in overall control of a show – just like it is in the best TV dramas?
And while we’re thinking radically, what about considering the schedules? Do the major soaps necessarily need to be prime-time shows? If that’s just too radical, try this: do all episodes of the major soaps need to be prime-time?
The growth of digital technology means the way we watch television is changing; both how we watch it (e.g. via the internet) and when we watch it (e.g. using an on-demand service like the BBC iPlayer). In the Guardian piece, Phil Redmond talks about how families are less likely to sit together and watch the same show, but that ‘you might get the parents watching the flat screen, the kids on their tablets, and the teenagers watching on their phones.’ In that case, do we need a nightly fix of soap between 7pm and 9pm? What if some or all the episodes were transmitted in a daytime slot? Or exclusively online?
BBC One’s Doctors wasn’t mentioned in Stuart Jeffries’ article (I’d count it as a medical soap) but it’s a show that’s been doing well since it began in 2000. I watch regularly in the 1.45pm slot, but if I miss it then, I’ll watch it on the iPlayer later in the day or maybe later in the week. This is how we watch TV now.
And if a soap could be flexible in the schedule, could it be flexible in its format? Do all episodes have to fill the half-hour slot? Don’t get me wrong, I think 30-minutes is a great space to tell around three typical soap stories in, but what if I wanted to tell one story over 20-minutes? Or 15-minutes? If the big soaps weren’t anchored so rigidly in prime-time, they could be free to play with the storytelling and the format of individual episodes.
Obviously EastEnders did something like this with E20, but that was clearly targeted at a young audience. More and more it is the family (and friends) audience who will be watching in this new alone-but-together way; that is, we might be watching alone but we share the experience together via social media, either while we’re watching (e.g. via Twitter) or later (e.g. via Facebook).
And that connectedness we have now through social media is perhaps the major reason why I believe the big soaps won’t burst and disappear. If the fans of Brookside had had Facebook and Twitter at their disposal when the show was about to be axed in 2003, you can bet that the inevitable online campaign would have kept it on air. Imagine what a kind of campaign would ensue if there were whispers of axing EastEnders, Coronation Street or Emmerdale?
So the soaps won’t die, the major ones at least, but they will have to change. And if that’s going to happen, it’s up to the producers and the channel bosses to face the tough choices and make some difficult decisions – just like the characters in the soaps they make.
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