
Why Coronation Street shows the future of TV is doomed
In what looks like an act of remarkable stinginess, bosses at ITV have reportedly cancelled the traditional freebie summer party for the cast and crew of Coronation Street. The show is still one of the network’s top-rated programmes, and the beleaguered staff are said to be ‘furious’, according to the report in the Sun. I don’t blame them. This is trivia, yes, but I think it’s a telling moment along the pathway of television’s slow demise. The medium is contracting. Just a few months ago, ITV announced that it was reducing the number of episodes of both Coronation Street and Emmerdale to a mere five half-hour slots each per week.
