Chapter 4 Sexual Content in Soap Operas - Leicester Research ...

Why Soap Operas?
Sex and Sexuality: A Content Analysis of Soap Operas
The importance of British and Australian soap operas, as a popular television
genre and a form of entertainment, to the British audience, as well as to the
television broadcasting industry, has been well documented (e.g. Buckingham, 1986,
1993; Gillespie, 1995; Hobson, 1982, 2003). The rationale for focusing specifically
on soap operas stems directly from their ubiquity and ability to draw large numbers
of viewers, particularly young viewers, their topicality, realism and wider appeal,
and finally the criticisms and public concerns they have encountered over the last
decade with regard to their treatment of sex and sexuality.
Soap opera‘s consistent and unique ability to attract and reach substantial
audiences, and a complete cross-section of age, gender, ethnicity and social class, is
widely acknowledged and has made it an invaluable genre to the broadcasting
industry in the UK (Hobson, 2003). Every week in Britain well over 35 million
viewers tune in to watch the six mainstream soap operas analysed in this study, with
the lion‘s share going to the UK‘s three most popular soap operas, Coronation
Street, EastEnders, and Emmerdale— at times the former two are watched, as will
be shown in Chapter Three, by as many as 11 million viewers per episode, according
to the UK‘s Broadcasters‘ Audience Research Board (BARB, 2007).
As a result of their high audience ratings and popularity, soap operas have
become ‗the spine of the television schedule‘, ‗at the heart of television‘ and ‗a way
to deliver high audience to a channel‘ (Hobson, 2003: pp. 40-41). David Liddiment,
the Director of Programmes at the ITV Network, attributed the vital importance of
Coronation Street for his ITV Network, as he puts it, to the fact that ‗..[.i]t brings in
a large regular audience…and provides a foundation stone for the rest of the
evening‘s viewing. It is valuable in its own right and commercially, in terms of the
audience it attracts to the channel, but it is also valuable in terms of what you can
schedule off it. What you can promote around it in terms of the rest of the schedule.‘
(cited in Hobson, 2003: p. 42)
Furthermore, the importance of, and interest in, soap operas has led to
substantial expansion in the volume of the already ubiquitous soap operas across the
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