Coronation Street

Coronation Street is Britain's longest-running television soap opera, and the UK's consistently highest-rated show. It was created by Tony Warren and first broadcast on the ITV network on Friday December 9, 1960. The working title of the show was Florizel Street, but Agnes, a tea lady at Granada Television, Manchester, (where Coronation Street is produced) remarked that "Florizel" sounded too much like a disinfectant. Jubilee Street was another option considered.

Corrie's rivalry with the BBC

When the BBC launched EastEnders, it soon developed into the principal rival of Coronation Street. By the 1990s it was attracting millions more viewers than Corrie. Criticism mounted against Corrie, with it being accused of complacency, blandness and being out of touch with contemporary Britain. By the early 21st century, however, the roles had been reversed, with a revamped Coronation Street praised for its strong characters, brilliant comic set-pieces, and universally praised quality of writing. In contrast EastEnders has been criticised for its downbeat, negative storylines, for the appearance of characters that the public disliked (the self-obsessed Ferrera family), storylines that viewers found distasteful (for example, the secret affair between one character and his adopted sister) and increasingly unbelievable stories (notably the re-appearance of supposedly long-dead Dirty Den, his sleeping with his son's girlfriend to get her pregnant, so that she could pretend her boyfriend was the father, then his murder again — this time for real — by a combination of his wife, mistress and someone he stole money from, etc.). While Coronation Street was being critically acclaimed and was winning awards, as well as bringing in some strong new young characters while continuing to give strong storylines to older characters, media reports at the end of 2004 and the start of 2005 suggested that the BBC was planning at best to cut back the number of EastEnders episodes. One tabloid report suggested that EastEnders came within 48 hours of being dropped altogether. The BBC had to announce that it was not going to scrap EastEnders and that the show would remain at the centre of its schedules.

Related Topics:
1990s - 21st century - Dirty Den - 2004 - 2005

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Ironically, the main rival of Corrie is now its fellow ITV soap opera Emmerdale, a show around from the 1970s that has evolved into a widely viewed, widely praised show that, like Coronation Street, features a strong sense of community, a strong emphasis on humour, and slow-developing storylines, as opposed to the rapid turnover of characters, and rapid speed of storylines, in EastEnders. When EastEnders and Emmerdale went head-to-head, the bigger-budget EastEnders was humiliatingly beaten easily by Emmerdale, something that would have been unthinkable even a decade earlier, when EastEnders dominated national viewing and Emmerdale was a poor third place, often with less than half the viewers of EastEnders and Coronation Street.

Related Topics:
ITV - Emmerdale

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The beginning of the 21st century is now being talked about as marking the 'golden age' of ITV soap operas. Soap operas remain however the one of only two areas of broadcast scheduling where ITV dominates the BBC, with the 'Beeb' attracting more viewers in the critical Saturday-night scheduling, sports coverage, politics coverage, coverage of the arts, and coverage of national events (state funerals, FA cup finals, election night coverage, etc.). Only in the areas of soap operas and in ITV News does ITV outperform the BBC.

Related Topics:
Sport - Politics - Arts - State funeral - FA cup final - ITV News

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