Opinion : Pressure on EastEnders to target youngsters?

ATV Media Reporter Shaun Linden looks at EastEnders, on PSB network BBC One, and how it appears to be aiming at an ever younger audience rather than the family age range originally intended.

 
The proposals announced by the BBC last week that Channel 4 should take a lead in providing programming for 12-16 year olds has prompted us to look at the link between Thompson, Kirkwood and EastEnders.
 
The director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson said last week that Channel 4 should seek to supply programmes for 12 – 16 year olds, but vowed that there will still be a link with that target audience through its soap EastEnders, which has a strong young following.
 
With the arrival of new EastEnders executive producer Bryan Kirkwood, it has left many fans wondering if this move to hire him was to make sure that the young character gets more prominence. The news by Thompson last week seems to tie in with the arrival of Kirkwood.
 
Kirkwood took helm of Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks and turned it back into a credible teatime soap. So with his back history at the teen soap, could the BBC looking for him to inject some of this into EastEnders?

To level it out through the recent online spin off E20 was derived from Diedrick Santer, and that cast have now integrated itself into the main soap.
 
The cynic in me is adding up all the dots. The axe of Grange Hill and the turn in CBBC target audience for 6 – 12 year olds left the 12 – 16 year olds in the wilderness. Last year we had the creation of E20 which hit online this year, and then last week the announcement as stated above. I just hope as a fan of EastEnders the show is not ruined because the BBC’s is turning its back on an area which when I was growing up, was pivotal to my social and educational life. As they say, nothing ever stays the same and maybe that is a sign I need to change with the time.

Lynn Swift of ATV Network, who deals with a lot of our soap stories, adds: “Feedback from viewers to our site does suggest an increasing view that EastEnders is focusing on teenagers and quality of script and storyline has withered in the past few years. Instead producers are opting for sensational and visual storylines. Teens appear to be bored by script driven soaps, bored with stories told through speech. There are complaints that scripts are written in written word, rather than spoken word. More worrying the fact actors don’t seem to correct this. There is a place for teen soap, but it seems the family audience of EastEnders don’t believe this is a show that should change to aim towards that market solely.”