Welcome to the third in a series of 10 posts, written for a university assignment last year (I write this disclaimer in Nov 19), which required blogging about current issues in television. As a result, the material is rather dated/irrelevant now, and the tone a little more formal than I prefer, but I thought I'd publish it on here anyway as I put a lot of work into it. I hope you enjoy/find it insightful!...
01/01/19
Although I always keep a keen eye on TV ratings throughout the year, my interest is particularly piqued over the Christmas period. Christmas Day, especially, seems to be the most important day in the calendar for broadcasters. As families across the country settle down in front of their television sets after a day full of food and festivity, they can expect the traditional Christmas Day line-up: the Queen’s speech, a couple of family films, a glitzy entertainment show, and an extended, special episode of a soap.
The first televised royal Christmas message (BBC, 1957).
In my experience, the soap to watch at Christmas is, and has always been, EastEnders. Growing up, I lived outside of the UK, so did not watch any soaps as a child apart from the odd syndicated episode here and there. Yet, I still vividly remember tuning into EastEnders when spending Christmas with family in the UK. It did not matter if no-one in the household had been keeping up with the programme throughout the year; it was just a strange tradition. It seems that this is not only a Christmas tradition for my family, but for many across the country. Closer magazine comments on this, saying that 'EastEnders' Christmas Day episodes are as much a part of our festive celebrations as the iced Baileys and tubs of Cadbury's Roses', and it seems, rather bizarrely, that this tradition is also upheld by the royal family.
Although Coronation Street and Emmerdale also offer festive instalments of their shows, it seems they have never been a stalwart part of Christmas Day in the national conscience. This is an odd phenomenon, considering they have both been running longer than EastEnders. Perhaps it is because the public tend to stick to BBC programming during Christmas. It seems the BBC is associated with tradition and people tend to trust it to produce the highest-quality programming on Christmas Day. This is likely due to the ‘Auntie Beeb’ relationship that the British public have with the BBC, and possibly because the first royal Christmas message was broadcast on the BBC (albeit in radio form).
It is also worth noting that EastEnders reached the highest ever Christmas audience in the UK in 1986, with their Christmas Day double-bill which was watched by a total of 30.15 million people (consolidated ratings). So, you could conclude that this was the event which marked EastEnders down as a Christmas classic for years to come.
A clip from the EastEnders 1986 Christmas episodes (BBC, 1986).
However, it is not so important to understand why EastEnders gets a large audience on Christmas Day, rather, I feel it is more interesting to analyse what this means for the soap genre, and if this still stands today. For one, it seems Christmas Day episodes create a ‘reset’ button for EastEnders; it allows the year’s biggest storylines to reach a dramatic climax, and wipes the slate clean ready for a new year of stories. It also gives the BBC a great opportunity to draw in new viewers and hopefully entice them to watch beyond the Christmas episode. It is really quite bizarre to consider that, for most of 2018, Coronation Street and Emmerdale have consistently beaten EastEnders in ratings (just take a gander over at BARB's weekly top programmes and this is evident), and yet, according to the BBC's entertainment correspondent, Lizo Mzimba, EastEnders beat both rivals in the Christmas Day overnights. It seems the British public are creatures of habit during the festive period.
Yet, when it comes to TV ratings, it is important to not get ahead of ourselves. Often, news outlets publish sensationalist articles about flailing ratings that a show receives in order to shock readers and presumably get more people to read their articles. However, these outlets often only report on overnight ratings, rather than waiting until ratings have been consolidated, i.e. they do not include ratings for repeats, omnibuses and on-demand services.
At the moment, the only Christmas ratings we have so far are overnights, so it is important to bear that in mind. So far, we know that EastEnders achieved 5.0 million viewers, Coronation Street got 4.6 million (+1 viewers included) and Emmerdale was watched by 4.0 million (+1 viewers included). It is probably safe to assume that EastEnders will remain on top when the ratings are consolidated as, although they no longer produce an omnibus, it is often one of the highest requested programmes on BBC iPlayer. It is also interesting to note that Coronation Street was the only ITV and non-BBC programme which rated within the top 10 most watched shows on Christmas Day, with BBC One offering up treats such as Strictly Come Dancing, Call the Midwife and Michael McIntyre’s Big Christmas Show.
At first glance, these figures may seem rather measly, especially when you think back to EastEnders reaching over 30 million viewers in the mid-'80s. But, again, it is important not to take ratings out of context. Although 4 or 5 million viewers seems low, the highest rated programme of the day, Michael McIntyre’s Big Christmas Show, achieved 6.1 million viewers in the overnight ratings, which is only 1-2 million above what the soaps achieved.
Furthermore, audience shares are another important factor to be considered. We still do not know what the audience shares were for this year's Christmas TV, but considering that last year, 6.8 million viewers for Mrs Brown’s Boys equated to a 32.6% audience share, we can probably assume that the audience shares for the soaps this Christmas were around 20-25%, which isn't that bad considering that is just an estimate which is based off of unconsolidated ratings.
However, one sobering statistic to consider is that, since the turn of the millennium, EastEnders has always taken one of the top three spots in the Christmas Day ratings, according to BARB data which can be found on their website, or easily analysed via this helpful compilation. However, this has now not occurred since 2014, when the show achieved 7.55 million overnight viewers, placing it at number three in that year’s Christmas Day top ten. How does a programme which used to frequently take the number one spot in the Christmas Day overnight ratings suddenly fall to 6th position in the overnights? It is not like the show had large time-slot competition either; it went up against ITV’s Torvill and Dean, which only reached 2.9 million viewers, an embarrassingly low figure considering +1 viewers were included and the sheer amount of promotion that ITV gave the film. Well, it seems that even Christmas television is feeling the threat of online streaming alternatives, and with Netflix producing their own original Christmas-themed content, this is unsurprising.
One of many examples of ITV promoting Torvill and Dean in the lead up to Christmas (ITV, 2018).
But, not all hope for traditional broadcasting is lost. Below is a series of screenshots I took from Twitter merely minutes after EastEnders aired its Christmas special, showing the most-talked about topics in the UK at that moment. As you can see, EastEnders makes up for 1/4 of the trends (#EastEnders, 'Alfie Moon', 'Slater', 'Poor Jean', 'Stacy'), whereas Coronation Street only takes one spot, and Emmerdale none. This is rare for the show, so it certainly seems that Christmas Day soap specials, but in particular EastEnders, still get the nation talking.
Finally, one thing that I think is worth mentioning is that EastEnders used to air many of their Christmas episodes as double-bills with a gap between two episodes. This allowed for a cliffhanger halfway through the action and built up tension for the second half of the episode. However, the show has not done this in recent years; it seems now to favour an hour-long, uninterrupted instalment instead. Whilst this is perfectly fine in my opinion, I do think it means that the action in recent Christmas Day episodes has been dragged out so as to delay the episode’s climax until the final moment, and I do feel that this somewhat dampens the pace of an episode.
Yet, I can understand why the BBC chooses to go for this format now. In our world of constant technological stimulation and endless choices of TV channel and streaming options, it feels like retaining an audience for two separate episodes, especially on a busy day like Christmas, is unrealistic and would be lost on younger viewers who have grown up in a binge-watching era and are unaccustomed to having to employ patience when it comes to watching TV.
So, what does all this teach us about the current state of television and its future? Well, we can certainly conclude that broadcasters cannot even be sure of high viewing figures on Christmas Day, a day known for blockbuster ratings and a chance for channels to showcase their best programming. Yet again, the soaps are a window into the rest of the traditional television industry, and they are demonstrating the confusing landscape of television at the moment: programmes may be losing plenty of viewers, but they are still retaining a decent audience share.
It is sad that the public seem less inclined now to watch television as it is being broadcast, but at the end of the day, most programmes are still doing as well as they should; we just need to adjust our expectations and accept that television is not, and probably never will be, what it was only a few years ago; and Christmas is no exception.
And with that, I wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
-ASIS
Comments