Discuss whether British Soap Operas Are Likely To Sustain Their Popularity For The Foreseeable Future?

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Discuss whether British Soap Operas Are Likely To Sustain Their Popularity For The Foreseeable Future?

The issue of whether soaps can sustain their popularity is very debateable as the overall viewing figures for soaps have fallen, for example figures for Eastenders in 1995 where sixteen million (according to BARB) whereas in 2005 the average viewing figures were about eight to nine million. There are different factors that could be associated with this decline such as more competition for the audience, more channels and soaps, scheduling issues and the changing dramatic styles of soaps themselves. Another factor that must be considered is the publicity surrounding soaps in the wider media as influencing the level of sustainable popularity that they may have.

Technological advances have resulted in the rise of digital television where the viewers have a much wider choice of channels and programmes to choose from, this has brought about an influx of American shows with which British soaps have to compete with. Furthermore the showing of these programmes on terrestrial channels such as Channel 5 has led to British soaps having to compete with these imports on the standard five channels which wasn’t the case in 1995 as there was no Channel 5 hence a reason why figures may have slumped. If one extra channel may have had quite an impact on viewing habits then digital television with a grave increase in channels and programmes would only mean that the popularity of soaps could suffer further and they might not sustain their popularity. Also the low cost high connection speeds of broadband has allowed many people to access to numerous amounts of programmes that they might not have been able to have seen before as broadband was either not introduced or many people couldn’t afford it.

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The rise of digital television has led to much more airtime to fill and this would result in more American imports with which the British soaps have to further compete with. This would make it difficult for the soaps to sustain their popularity however a factor that that would hinder soaps’ efforts in trying to attract viewers could be due to the increasing amount of UK soaps on terrestrial soaps for example Doctors, Family Affairs. These new programmes would receive publicity in the forms of interviews, reviews and because they are new and this publicity might attract viewers to ...

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