Local news and current affairs programmes now verge on being an annoying nuisance for ITV that are only produced in order to comply with their public service obligations.
I'm not sure that's fair of the last couple of years, with Peston on Sunday, Ranvir's Real Stories, On Assignment and The Agenda launching.
To be fair I find most of Riaz's posts in this thread from a view point as if he's just stepped back about 15 years ago or by looking at ITV in a bubble excluding everything that has gone on around it in broadcasting since the 80s/90s.
Possible though to take risks ITV needs to get money and coronation street makes them money so ITV can the spend at least some of it on taking risks and or other types of programming nature news etc.
To be fair I find most of Riaz's posts in this thread from a view point as if he's just stepped back about 15 years ago or by looking at ITV in a bubble excluding everything that has gone on around it in broadcasting since the 80s/90s.
I could write reams about various TV channels that I watch (several of which didn't exist 15 years ago) but I doubt that many people on this forum would be interested. On another forum I was once accused of having bad tastes verging on a personality disorder for saying that I regularly watched Press TV.
My main interest in TV is production rather than passive viewing.
To be fair I find most of Riaz's posts in this thread from a view point as if he's just stepped back about 15 years ago or by looking at ITV in a bubble excluding everything that has gone on around it in broadcasting since the 80s/90s.
I could write reams about various TV channels that I watch (several of which didn't exist 15 years ago) but I doubt that many people on this forum would be interested.
Yes, don't bother we already have Tumble Tower as this forums cure for insomnia.
I think Sunday at 7.30pm will most likely be where the extra episode will go. The only good thing is we will see some episodes set at weekends. I prefer it when Corrie has 1 episode per night. The Monday and Friday doubles were introduced as a temporary thing (just on a Monday first then the Sunday ep was moved to Friday). I have never liked them.
Another thing that bugs me about Corrie in recent times is why reveal everything in advance. Why arent there any surprises anymore. The reveal that a certain character is to be killed off really did take the biscuit IMO (i wont say who incase some of you have managed to avoid the spoiler being posted all over the net and the trailer being broadcast). But what is the point in revealing that. I liked the bit where they said we have a surprise for you. Well it aint a surprise anymore is it cos you just told us!
Emmerdale manage to keep quite a few things a surprise which is another reason they are IMO way ahead of Corrie at the moment.
Completely agree - the other soaps seem to have learned the benefit of letting stories play out on screen but can't think of the last time Corrie let that happen. Even with the live show everybody knew Callum was going.
In this case the actor was known to be leaving anyway and a storyline for their exit was supposedly in place, so they really could have kept the death a secret.
Its so stupid, this could have been a jaw dropping shock for viewers but no they choose to reveal it instead. With Callum as you say it was half expected. This character has so many links to other characters it would have been a massive shock to see them killed off with no warning.
Its a shame this once great soap has been so poor recently. Even the week of Carla's exit i thought was below standard, the last 10 mins of the Wednesday episode was good, the rest of the week was a load of rubbish by and large, IMO.
How easy is it to keep the departure of an actor secret for the weeks/months required?
Might as well save yourself the bother, announce it yourself and (hopefully) entice more viewers in for that week. Your casual viewer might make a bit more effort if it's pre-announced; otherwise, they might find themselves
less
likely to tune in once they hear about it, because they've already missed it and will feel even less like they can keep up.
No doubt there will be some surprises revealed when it comes to the whys and wherefores.
What annoys me most these days in soaps is the non-cliffhanger cliffhanger. They're much better when the
audience
learns/sees something new to them, rather just seeing a character find out what you've known for weeks already.
Coronation Street have never been ones to do major surprises well in my opinion. As said above, they could have announced such a date was her last day and teased how she might leave.