Eastenders- General information

Viewership:
In 2003, market research was carried out by the BBC. They found that Eastenders is most watched by 16-24 year olds, closely followed by 25-34 year olds. An average Eastenders episode attracts a total audience share between 45% and 50%. The 10pm repeat show on BBC Three attracts an average of 500,000 viewers, whilst the Sunday omnibus attracts a further 3million.
Eastenders has achieved some of the highest audiences in British television history since it began on mainstream BBC One.
The launch show attracted 17 million viewers in the 1980s. This was perhaps helped by the amount of press attention it received, something which continues today.
For the Christmas episode, in 1986, just under two years since it had been on air, Eastenders attracted 30.15 million viewers. This figure would be its largest audience ever, as well as the largest amount of viewers for a soap episode. In comparison, the smallest amount for an Eastenders episode was around 6.2 million in 2004, somewhat lower than its rivals Coronation Street and Emmerdale.

Scheduling:
For the past 20 years, Eastenders has remained at the centre of BBC One's prime time schedule. There are currently four episodes per week , five including the omnibus.
Originally Eastenders was shown twice weekly, this then increased to thrice after Coronation Street added an extra episode - in response to competition from Eastenders. Eastenders then added it's forth episode on August 10th 2001. This caused controversy as it clashed with Coronation Street, which at the time, moved to 8pm.

Social Realism and Representation:
Eastenders was created during Thatcher Britain, at a time of high unemployment, and where crime rates rocketed. Eastenders tried to represent this in the social realist tradition.
In the eighties, Eastenders featured gritty story lines involving drugs and murder, somewhat reflecting a time in Britain where societies and communities had broken down. Such story lines included homosexuality, drug dealing, rape, shoplifting, sexism, divorce and muggings.
As the show entered the nineties, it moved with society, whilst the issues that existed in the eighties still existed, there was much less attention to them. However, Eastenders still features hard hitting issues such as murder, adoption, domestic violence and alcoholism.