Present Soap Ratings

Eastenders was the most watched soap on Tuesday 18^th September when Billy Mitchell’s great granddaughter faced being put up to adoption and he himself lost his job. The viewing figures were 7.32 million at 7.30pm on BBC 1. BBC repeat screening gained 593 thousand at 10.30pm.

Meanwhile Emmerdale attracted 6.5 million at 7pm on ITV and 134 thousand on ITV+1 when pregnant Genie became concerned over motherhood.

Hollyoaks appealed to 968 thousand at 6.30pm on channel 4 as Jacqui lashed out at Cindy. Whilst E4’s first look brought in 486 thousand at 7pm. Hollyoaks Later, which airs at 10pm on E4, gained 425 thousand viewers and 142 thousand viewers on E4+1.

Soaps contain real life situations such as job loss, bankruptcy, sexuality, relationships etc. Because of these every day circumstances, the target audience can easily relate to the problems, big or small, involved within the characters’ lives, this being the primary reason why the soap opera genre is so popular.

Looking at recent figures teenage pregnancies and family feuds seem to be prevalent themes within soaps that also appeal to the audience and increase the viewing numbers. This rise is due to the current levels of these issues within the past few years. Therefore if we want to target an audience emotionally enough to generate a loyal fanbase for individual characters, storylines and the soap itself, these are relevant issues to present.

           

Our Chosen Channel

The chosen distributor for our soap opera is Channel 4. With an ethos to present innovative, diverse and creative programmes, Channel 4 have the perfect outlook to appeal to our target audience. By scheduling our soap at a peak viewing slot of 7pm or 8pm, we are able to address a mass audience’s conventional schedule.

9pm signifies the start of the airing of comedy programmes on Channel 4, which usually attracts younger viewers  – alike our target audience – and so with the hope that these viewers will tune into the channel in time to see some of our soap, more viewers will be gained and figures will rise. On the other hand, with the hope of expanding our audience to one of mass - like customarily popular soaps such as Eastenders and Coronation Street – showing our soap at 7pm or 8pm means it won’t be too late for older viewers or too early for those who work late and have evening commitments.

With Channel 4’s aim to discover new and young talent, our soap opera, with young actors building the foundation for unravelling dramas, adheres to both the wants and needs of the channel and audience.

Audience Profile

Once we conducted our research we were able to develop a firm understanding of our target audience, prior to the basic idea that served as a guide in the creation of our questionnaire. Using the conclusions we drew from our research, we were able to complete an audience profile and determine our finalised target audience.

Demographics:

·         Age: 15-25

·         Sex: Both

·         Our chosen TV channel and scheduling to broadcast our soap opera will be influenced by the age demographic of our target audience. BBC1 and Channel 4 proved to be the most prevalent of channels and we can deduce that this is due to the contrasting aspects of the national reverence of the BBC and the youthful visions of Channel 4. Viewers may well know the BBC for their peak time slots filled with programmes that attract mass audiences, such as Eastenders. On the other hand, while Channel 4 do not have predominantly valued peak times, their ethos of being an innovative, creative and diverse channel means a younger audience is drawn to their promise of a variety of cultures, locations and circumstances that represent their lives today.

Social and psychological factors:

·         Our target audiences’ preferred time of viewing is the late evening slot around 7/8/9pm. This is due to the lack of free time in their schedule, e.g.  because of school, university and/or work.

·         This schedule also would affect the amount of times a week they are able to watch Soap Operas; we discovered that our target audience would only view or want to watch a Soap three times a week.

·         Through our research, we discovered the audience’s preferences towards the nature of the soap and successful audience pleasures. With none of our participants selecting ‘Neighbours’ as their favoured soap, we realised that audiences find comfort and pleasure in storylines, settings, scenes and characters that they can relate to. Therefore, as ‘Neighbours’ is set in Australia, audiences may be deterred by the change of surroundings, accent and lack of familiar lifestyle. In conclusion, it would be more beneficial for our soap to be set in the UK as to not dissuade viewers with unrelateable material.

·         Furthermore, we discovered that a popular choice of soap is ‘Coronation Street’, and we could hypothesise that this is due to the humour and comedy element that is lacking in the other soaps.

·         However, it also appears that audiences find pleasure in the most dramatic and dark of storylines with murder and crime being a popular choice for our questionnaire participants. It seems that with realistic characters and misé-en-scene the audience can partake in suspended disbelief as they build relationships with characters, which then makes for more of an impact when dramatic scenes are suddenly thrust upon the audience.

Analysis of Audience Questionnaire

We conducted a questionnaire to both target our most accessible and profitable audience but also to find out how we can take into consideration the wants and needs of as many demographic and psychographic groups as possible, increasing our chances of a lucrative revenue.

Firstly, it is obvious that Eastenders is favoured amongst our potential audience as we found both men and women of ages 15-25 preferred the soap itself but also it’s city location was found to be more popular than the countryside.

The preference of storylines did not appear so clear cut. Many women were drawn to the idea of love and affairs but the choices of our overall selected participants was split over all options of murder, crime, family affairs, love, affairs and revenge. We soon realised it would be possible and incredibly beneficial to link these subcategories into one storyline. It seems audiences can find excitement in any story that can unfold into crisis and adversity and so by giving them a storyline with several strands of drama, we can address all of their ideologies of an engaging soap opera storyline.

Additionally, after the majority of the audience seemed interested by the idea of our characters being from an ‘unconventional family’, we realised we could encompass many different characters and walks of life to interest audiences that are different from the characters presented and give integration and social interaction to those who can relate to and feel comfortable with characters. Soap operas are based on reality and real situations, however dramatic, and so we want to have an aspect of suspended disbelief where audiences can draw on their own emotions and feel emotions of the characters – giving them a vast array of characters with different living circumstances, mannerisms and personalities we hopefully can attract a mass audience.

On the matter of viewing slots for our soap opera, evening seems a clear decision as not a single participant preferred afternoon times to early evening or late evening. Despite this meaning we would be competing for peak times on our broadcasting channel as well as competing for our target audience against other soaps that are shown at similar times, an evening slot would still draw greater audience figures and a wider range of audience than a daytime slot due to more people being able to watch TV at later times; after work/school and daytime commitments.

Furthermore, it seems an audience would be attracted most by a soap that is broadcasted three times a week. It is so easy to lose track of storylines in a soap if you do not watch it regularly enough, therefore if a soap is scheduled five times a week and it is impossible for you to watch it that often, you may become complacent or lose interest completely. When presenting a new soap to the public, we aim to give them enough to familiarize themselves with but also allow them just enough episodes to fit into a general schedule, this way audience figures do not suffer due to complex storylines not being kept up with and a loyal fan base can be generated and maintained.

Questionnaire Results Graphs

Questionnaire Totals

	Men Aged 15-20	Men Aged 20-25	Women Aged 15-20	Women Aged 20-25
3) What soap opera do you prefer?
Eastenders	1	2	4	1
Coronation Street	1	2	2	1
Emmerdale	1	0	0	0
Hollyoaks	2	2	1	1
Neighbours	0	0	0	0
4) What type of storylines interest you?
Love	0	1	4	1
Affairs	1	1	4	3
Murder	3	3	3	3
Crime	3	3	3	1
Family Feuds	0	3	2	1
Revenge	4	2	3	0
5) What time are you most likely to watch  soap operas?
Afternoon- i.e. 1pm/2pm	0	0	0	0
Early Evening- i.e. 5pm/6pm	1	1	2	2
Later Evening- i.e. 7pm/8pm/9pm	4	4	5	1
6) How many days a week would you watch  a  soap opera?
Five	2	0	0	1
Four	1	1	1	1
Three	2	4	6	1
7) What TV channel do you prefer?
BBC1	2	2	1	1
BBC3	2	1	3	0
ITV	2	1	1	1
Channel 4	1	2	3	1
Channel 5	0	0	1	0
8) What type of characters interest you?
The Criminal	2	3	1	0
The Unconventional Families	3	2	6	2
The Unstable	4	3	3	1
The Loose Woman	1	3	1	2
The Loverat	0	1	4	3
9) Do you prefer programmes set in the  city or the country?
The City	4	5	6	3
The Country	1	0	1	0

Selection of Our Results

Soap Ratings

Eastenders ratings:

·         Eastenders proved to be very popular, Appreciation indexes (Is an indicator of the public’s appreciation out of 100 for a television or radio programme) revealed this. By achieving 55-60 out of 100 at the launch, and rising to 85-95 out of 100 later on.

·         When the show first launched in 1985 it attracted approximately 17 million viewers

·         Combining the omnibus and the original the Christmas day episode in 1986 where Den Watts handed over the divorce papers to then wife Angie, the episode attracted 30 million viewers. This has been the highest rated episode of a soap in British television history.

·         Eastenders regularly attracts 7 to 12 million viewers per episode.

·         In 2001 Eastenders and Coronation Street clashed for the first time; however Eastenders won the battle gaining 8.4million viewers whilst Coronation Street gained just 7.3 million viewers.

·         The live 25^th anniversary episode which was shown on 19^th of February 2010, which revealed Stacy Branning as Archie Mitchell’s killer, gained 16.41 million viewers

Coronation street ratings:

·         During the 1960’s-1980’s coronation streets averaged over 20 million viewers per episode. However during the 1990’s and early 2000’s the soap only had an average of 15-20 million viewers per episode. Currently ratings have dramatically dropped and Coronation Street now only has between 8 and 14 million viewers per episode.

·         On Christmas day 1987 an average of 28.5 million viewers tuned in to watch Hilda Ogden leave the street to start a new life as a house keeper for Dr Lowther.

·         For their 50^th anniversary tram crash anniversary Coronation Street attracted 14 million viewers.

Emmerdale Rating:

·         On average episode attracts 7-10 million per episode

·         Emmerdale attracted its highest ratings of 18 million on December 30 1993 when a plane crash in the village killed four villagers.

·         September 21^st 2006 saw Emmerdale beat Eastenders in ratings, gaining 8.57 million viewers for when Cain dingle kidnapped tom and Sadie king. Whilst Eastenders attracted only 4.77 million viewers.

Hollyoaks ratings:

·         Due to being aired to a niche audience Hollyoaks does not gain many viewing figures

·         At one point Hollyoaks dropped to under 1million viewers for a few episodes.