Will EU force soaps to cut number of episodes?

With the European Union voting to revoke the UK's opt-out of the 48 hour working week directive, could this affect our TV screens?

Soap actors are also complaining about their 12 hour days, 6 days a week - but this new law would restrict them to just 48 hours a week.

Could it be possible that the intervention of the European Union will force broadcasts to cut the number of episodes a week of their soaps down to comply with the new law?

We can but hope...

I imagine the soap makers would just expand the casts to give individual characters less overall airtime. A bit like casts have expanded when extra episodes have been added over the years.

But what about the crew? Surely they would need to expand their numbers as well?

I will cross my fingers and wish it could be so.....

The proposal is to extend the current reference period to 12 months from 17 weeks. In ITV many production staff are on annualised hours contracts. The increase in reference period may actually help the management to work people even harder over peaks of production. When I worked in ITV the HSE were starting to take alot of interest in the scheduling of staff by YTV and BskyB. Could be some interesting times ahead. Hopefully some of the workers might be able to get their lives back in the future.

If it is, it'll also affect a certain Hull-based regional news presenter who's well known for his long working hours.