Coronation Street

Wikipedia has average yearly ratings up to 2012. It started with 1m, peaked at 3.7m in 2010, and was at 2.6m in 2012.

Furthermore, the last picture in their article laments the passing of the old street, but has a picture of the new one (with extra windows above the Rovers).

I suspect a US daytime budget isn't too much different to a UK primetime soap.

I suspect some accountants would be interested on how they spent the budget, in that case.

Don't US daytime soaps make ATV's Crossroads of the 1970s look rather like 'blockbuster cinematic masterpieces'? (despite the wobbly sets)

Sorry, does anyone know why there was an extra episode last night?

That's twice you've asked that now. Is there a pre-emption due? That would explain it.

That would be because it didn't get an answer and quickly got buried in the thread.

A bit like Mariah Carey's video for Heartbreaker then which is one of the most expensive music videos of all time ($2.5 million in 1999 dollars), but there's literally nothing in it to make you think what the hell cost so much. Not that it's a bad video, far from it, but watch this and tell me where you think the money was spent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMCGvtlL4fw

Then remember this music video came out at the same time and cost $400,000 less!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEb2CecR11I

And when it comes to lack of location work- it seems to be the case on US studio sitcoms too, look at pretty much any US studio audience sitcom and there's usually very little location work in them, compared to UK sitcoms where we usually have a reasonable amount. Maybe it's a US thing in general to keep things more studio based.

In fact watching through Happy Days a couple of years back, there's lots of location work in the first 2 seasons (which was made without an audience), but once you get to Season 3 onwards (when they started making it in front of an audience), there's very little, and seemed to mostly be restricted to season premieres (such as Fonzie's famous Shark Jump moment), and bizarrely seems to go back to using faked "canned laughter" during the location work.

Another observation of US studio sitcoms is their use of videotape- it seems during the 70s and 80s most of them were shot on videotape (with a few exceptions, like Cheers and Happy Days), but then during the 90s it seemed to die out (and it seemed by then to mostly be restricted to the youth/teen sitcoms that were shown over here on Trouble), and were basically gone by the start of the 00s, compared to over here where having studio sitcoms as "video look" still seems to be pretty much standard.

I think it was for Emmerdales benefit - they had what appeared to just be a run of the mill episode but actually featured the unexpected and unpromoted death of a character, so perhaps ITV thought putting Corrie on the night would bring it a bit more attention without resulting to spoilering it themselves.

Soaps have had a lot of these unexpected plot twists recently, and I like it. You don't have to go back that far when it felt like every detail was out there weeks in advance to the point where you almost felt like you didn't have to watch because you already knew what was happening in every episode weeks beforehand. All these suprises helps me to feel more interested in them. In fact ITV revealing Kylie was being killed off on Corrie almost felt like a blip in this, as opposed to going back about 7 or 8 years when it was the norm.

Thanks I did wonder because there wasn't any major storyline this week or any other episodes displaced.

No Sharif scenes since a brief appearance Wednesday, meaning three consecutive episodes without seeing him at all. I wonder if he was meant to be in those episodes and has since been edited out or if he was simply never meant to appear. They did say they were going to 'minimise [his] screen time'.