Soap Overload

My husband loves Emmerdale and Coronation St. I could put up with them if they were on twice a week for 1/2 hour (like they used to be) but they are taking over our evenings and it's tearing us apart. I am trying to avoid sitting in the same room when they are on. Tonight (Friday) I cooked the meal while Emmerdale was on to avoid it, sat through boring Coronation St, went into the kitchen to clear up and looked on the guide only to find it was on again 1/2 an hour later!!!!! 1 1/2 hours of it on a Friday night !!!! Why can't they swap and put games shows on in the evening for everyone to enjoy and join in and put the boring soaps on in the afternoon and can be recorded if necessary !!!! I love games shows and would really look forward to a good nights entertainment. Who wants to watch Sally on Coronation elected for her local council ????? Does anyone agree ????

I enjoy watching the soaps, but I agree there are too many episodes of each. I think 4 eps of each would be fine, leave EE as it is, remove the second Corrie eps on Monday and Friday. Remove the second Emmerdale ep on the Thursday, and remove their Tuesday episode, and put an episode of each on Sundays again, then it frees Tuesday up to experiment with something new, or frees it up for football, films etc.

Yes that would be so much better !!

The thing is, they have loads of space in primetime to "try new things" - Tuesdays from 7.30, Wednesdays from 8.00, Thursdays from 8.30. Most of the game-shows they have tried out have flopped.
They have relied on soaps so much, that they are never going to find a show that rates anywhere near the same to take their places.

I think you need Digital Spy. We might not like soaps here but we would understand the commercial realities as to why they're on so much.

I bet if they put 'The Chase' on prime time people would watch it or if they bought back Golden Balls (which I often watch on Challenge). They are interactive and it would make people communicate with their partners.

Can't see them rating as high as the soaps though. The soaps also attract advertisers.

There is generally only one or two channels showing a soap during the early evening. Try the dozens of other channels available (and hide the remote!)

I am happy trying to find another channel. If I hid the remote all hell would let loose !!

Gameshows have been pretty much abandoned by all the mainstream broadcasters from weeknights in primetime and are strictly the domain of daytime or weekends now. And when they do appear the rule is they have to be an hour long and heavily padded.

I'm not saying or expecting them to find a load of new shows that will all rate the same as the soaps, and I understand why they have so many episodes due to the money they will get back from advertisers, but long term having so many episodes could be hurting them.
I am very close to giving up on Corrie, although that is more to do with the poor quality of it at the minute, but its so easy to get behind and once you get so far behind, its easy to give up for good, so they could end up losing more viewers.

TV Forum isn't really the best place to discuss your relationship issues...

Anyway, Emmerdale rates at about 6 million, Corrie 7 million and Eastenders 6.5 million. There's no way any gameshow would beat that. ITV especially would be shooting themselves in the foot by moving soaps into an afternoon slot. It's ridiculous how people expect channels to ruin their viewing shares just to please them.