Soaps at Christmas

Do you think the British soaps should take a short hiatus over Christmas? Many people complain of it filling up the Christmas Day schedules and it would also allow for the cliffhangers you see at Christmas time on foreign soaps such as Neighbours and Home & Away.

Also should they stop for major events like Euro 2004 or the World Cup, like Home & Away does in Australia for the Olympics, which would again give viewers a proper mid-season cliffhanger?

It's just going week-in week-out, there aren't any *proper* cliffhangers on British soaps, whereas if you were kept on the edge of your seat for two weeks, it'd have more impact.

I wonder if "cliffhangers" are that important these days seeing that every possible soap storyline has been done to death now.
I think soap viewers are just content getting their daily fill.

I don't think cliffhangers would be such a bad idea. It would keep us the viewers in suspence and would give bthe actors a decent amount of time off.

I think it would be a good idea to stop the soaps therefore over late December and early January.

It would be a good idea for the soaps to take a break during the Christmas period, not only would it give the production team and actors a well earned break the viewers would also get a break too.

It wont happen though, certainly not on ITV - they rely on soaps to pull ratings in over the festive season, just like every other week of the year.

It would be good to have Soaps taking a break, but not over Christmas, as Christmas seems to be one of the best times for Soaps IMO, it's become more like a tradition in recent years to have good episodes of Corrie, Emmerdale and Eastenders on Christmas Day.

I think soaps should take a break over the Summer period, say from the end of June until the beginning of September, so that allows Sports events to be shown in full and that people won't miss out, as the ratings tend to decline during the Summer months because of people taking advantage of the better Weather.

Radical concept I know, but they should take a break and replace soaps with programming related to the religious reason people celebrate at that time of year....

yes, lets wipe look north, forumla one, fame acadamy and top gear from the schedules for wall to wall songs of praise.

or did you mean "get rid of all the programmes i don't watch and replace it with religious programmes"?

I think nwtv's suggestion of a summer break is possibly a good idea - if that's the time when these shows pull in the lowest ratings.

I'm sure the British networks would be very relucatant to cancel soaps over Christmas because of course, it's all about ratings, and 'big' storylines around the festive period will put 'bums on seats', so to speak.

We have to remember that Australia and the UK are totally different markets, and as Christmas is in the height of the Australian summer, the target audiences for H&A and Neighbours will probably not be cooped up in their loungerooms. Hence the shows take a 'summer break' during this non-ratings period.

Yes - something like that... It's about time Christianity was put at the heart of Christmas instead of commercialism and sales.....

are you being a little selfish katherine? quite a few million like to watch soaps. you have to remember, the tv schedules are designed to cater for everyone, not just you.

Where's the selfishness in allowing soap fans to get their fix unimpeded all the rest of the year?

I think it would be a good idea to have cliffhangers!