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Introduction

Why do people watch Soap Operas? Soap operas are one of the most watched genres of British TV. Audience figures published by the broadcast audience research bureau show that in the week ending 2nd September 2007 over 8 million people in the UK tuned in to watch Eastenders on the Monday of that week. We have all grown up watching one soap or the other, whether it was Brookside, Eastenders, Coronation Street or Emmerdale. Some families plan their evenings and spare time around watching the soaps. There have been lots of theories created to explain why people watch soaps; one of these being a theory created by Bulmer and Katz called the uses and gratification theory. This theory states that people watch soaps to escape reality, people who want to find somewhere they can go to escape there problems in reality so they sit and watch soaps because they feel that they are part of the characters lives. ...read more.

Middle

can relate to what the characters are feeling and they cab see how someone else deals with certain situations which may help people make decisions about their own life or situations. Another theory I have found also states that people may watch soap operas to find out about current affairs on a nationwide scale and how they may effect or not effect people in certain areas or people of a certain age group audiences may also find it reassuring to see someone dealing with the same problem as them and they won't feel as alone and isolated. From watching soaps we can also tell what type of people watch what soaps and what the target audience of that soap is. I watched an episode of a few different soaps and looked at what advertisements were put on in between the different parts of the soap. ...read more.

Conclusion

have read it for themselves and would enjoy it more, it also shows that coronation street is aimed at a higher audience demographic as reading and literature is stereotypical of the higher class older person. Also in Hollyoaks all the characters are mainly young except for the parents, which always seem to want to look younger and act younger. The opening scene also made me think that Hollyoaks is aimed at a younger audience because the opening sequence was at a fast pace and the characters that were shown were all the young characters and there were none of the older characters. There were a lot more lively colours than in the coronation street titles and the music was a lot different to, more up beat and up-tempo where as coronation streets music is rather slow and classical. Websites I used: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/usegrat.html ...read more.

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