Initial Ideas...
Our first plan of action was to sit down and discuss our main premise for our soap opera.
We looked at the categories of Audience, Themes, Location, Characters and the Name!
Audience: We discussed a lot of current soaps and found that a lot are aimed at older audiences with only one being aimed at the younger later teens and 20’s being Hollyoaks. As we are both fans of this we decided that to create a soap with a similar target audience would be beneficial as we know what a younger person would like to see and also that we felt there was a whole market for another youth soap. | Themes:
As we are aiming our soap at young adults we thought it best to use storylines that relate to them and issues that affect their lives. This meant that the themes of our soap were very teen orintated and school based.We felt that a soap that covered topical issues like university applications and exam stress would have been useful for us as it is a hard time for young people.
|
Location:
We thought about our local area and we had the options of
Stevenage an industrial city with large estates and tower blocks. Also lots of meeting areas such as shops, cafes and the leisure park full of entertainment. However it is far away from School and getting cast to location could be difficult and expensive.
Hitchin a smaller town with shops and meeting areas including a large park and hill which is a hotspot for youths. Like Stevenage it is far away and the train station is not near to the town centre so getting to location would be difficult and time consuming.
Letchworth an even smaller town but with a large gardens for meeting, a cinema, restaurants, cafes and a conveniently placed train station right in the town centre. It is also 10 minutes away from school on the train.
Baldock a small town with a few shops and local businesses and a large supermarket. There are a few parks but no nightlife for younger people or main meeting places.
Ashwell a village with a very rural background. A small local primary school and large park area, fresh water springs and 3 pubs. It is close but there is no public transport so getting to location is difficult.
After deliberating over all these locations we decided on using Letchworth as it is nearby, it is aesthetically pleasing and has lots of meeting places we could use.
The Name:
For us one of the most important things was the name! We wanted something catchy that was easy to say or could be abbreviated. It needed to sound cool, fresh, new and exciting but not target a specific group of teenage too much. We took the theme of a place name and tried out some ideas including ‘LGC’ the initials of Letchworth Garden City where our soap is set and using initials to keep it short and sweet. ‘Hertlife’ based on the county of Hertfordshire where our soap is set, it also creates images of love and relationships from “Hert” but still keeps the spelling known to the county. ‘Garden City’ based on Letchworth being the worlds first Garden City and the oxymoron is comical. ‘Letchworth’ to keep it nice and simple so that people know where it is set. We decided on using ‘Garden City’ as the name for our soap as it relates to our soap being set in a middle class community as it introduces rural and also urban ideas. It also could be abbreviated to ‘GC’ by the viewer for example “Did you watch GC last night?!” We thought it was modern and did not represent any stereotypes of people or targeted specific groups and beliefs, it is very neutral. | Characters:
Due to the young target audience we decided to create a soap using teenagers 17 and over as our main characters as they are in their last year of Sixth form or college and preparing to go to university or into work.We felt this would be successful due to our research showing that a lot of young people do not watch soaps and therefore we could hopefully cover that whole in the market. We will however include a few adults that would be their parents, the local shop keepers and young adults that have left school after sixth form but entered the world of work instead of going to university. Therefore, we could represent lots of different age groups and present lots of different storylines that may be helpful to the viewer. We also thought to include some teachers. Some would be main figures in storylines and others would just be as extras for example the Head Teacher will have some predominant storylines. By creating these type of characters we could film a realistic trailer for our soap using people of the right age and therefore make it successful and enjoyable. |
We then went on to look at the finer details of our soap including the duration, the television station it would be broadcast on and the time it would be aired.
Duration:
When conducting our research we found that most people didn’t have the time to watch soaps so we decided to make our soap not too long in a hope that we could attract views and we decided to follow the trend of most other soaps and go for 30 minute long episodes.
Channel:
We looked at channels that air existing soaps and those that don’t and then came to a decision on channel we would chose.
BBC1s most famous soap is Eastenders and has been running for a long time. We took Eastenders success into consideration when deliberating our station choice however there is not a large market for teen dramas on BBC1 as they target younger children from 2 til 4 ‘0’clock when they arrive home from school but then focus on more educational and serious dramas targeted at older audiences. A new teen soap on the BBC1 could be seen as a bit ‘uncool’ and as there are very tight restrictions on the BBC and they receive a lot of complaints about inappropriate behaviour therefore people would view the soap as childish. Therefore BBC1 wasn’t suitable.
As BBC2 doesn’t broadcast any soaps at the moment we thought we could cover the niche in that channel however there are no other young people’s programmes shown and therefore very few young people would hear about it and become interested as advertising could only be focused to BBC channels and other medias.
ITV is very successful with their two main soaps, Coronation Street and Emmerdale and has the perfect gateway for a new teen soap. They have high teen viewing figures from the hugely successful reality TV shows they broadcast such as ‘The X Factor’ and ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. However, we felt that due to showing 2 hugely thriving soaps that maybe they didn’t need another and would find it hard to compete and survive on the channel.
Five has never normally been known for soaps and has only recently adopted 2 Australian soaps, Neighbours and Home and Away. We felt that the channel did not attract us for our personal soap and as teenagers we wouldn’t be interested in a new soap on Five. |
Channel 4 is known as the channel that breaks the mould and is willing to shock its audiences for viewers. We were drawn to the channel because of its existing soap Hollyoaks which is the only teen soap and is hugely successful in that market. We thought that our soap would attract viewers and would give it more credibility that the other channels with young people, i.e. the ‘cool’ factor. However, we also felt that it would be in competition with Hollyoaks and people would only see it as copy and wouldn’t bother watching it.
BBC3 is a channel that only broadcasts past 6 ‘o’clock and focus’ on comedy dramas and also shows a lot of celebrity led documentaries with a target audience of teenagers and young adults. Its target audience was perfect however being an evening only channel and being known for comedy we decided it was not right for our soap.
E4 is tailored specifically at teenagers and young adults showing lots of teen dramas, American and British for example Glee and Skins. These have all be hugely successful on this channel and most new programmes they show attract large audiences just down the channel being trusted to show programmes that the viewers will enjoy. They also have very clever advertising that attract lots of viewers to new programmes. Although they show repeats of Hollyoaks and the ‘First Look’ episode straight after the Channel 4 showing, they do not have their own soap and we thought we could fill that niche. We decided that E4 would be the perfect choice for our soap. |
BBC1- broadcasts Eastenders, Doctors 
BBC2- none at present
ITV- broadcasts Coronation Street and Emmerdale
Five – broadcasts Neighbours and Home and Away
Channel 4 – broadcasts Hollyoaks
BBC3- none at present
E4- none at present although shows Hollyoaks Episodes
Times:
Next we discussed what time we would like to show our soap. We automatically ruled out day time, for example times when Doctors is shown on BBC1, due to wanting to attract a large audience of teens and young adults and they would be in school or work at that time. We then looked at times after 5’o’clock when most people will be in front of the TV.
5 ’o’ clock – We felt this maybe be a bit to early missing people that have not yet got home from work or people that aren’t ready to sit down yet
6 ‘o’ clock – This would be a good time however would be in competition with Hollyoaks and this is not what we want.
7 ‘o’ clock – We felt this may be a good time however Emmerdale and then Coronation Street are on at the same time and could cause conflict.
8 ’o’ clock – We thought this would be a good times as people would have finished their dinner and just about to sit down for the evening. It would also be after the episodes of Hollyoaks on E4 so target viewers would be on the right channel to watch.
9 ‘o’ clock – The advantage of airing our soap at 9 ‘o’ clock meant that it would be after the watershed and there would be more flexibility on the language we could use and what we could show. However, it could be a bit late to attract the most viewers.
10 ‘o’clock – We felt that this would be too late to air a frequent soap and we wouldn’t get consistent viewers.
After consideration we chose 8 ‘o’ clock as the time we would air our soap.
