Soap opera anniversaries as media event

There's a killer among them
The week of revelations
One killer week
Paratextual anticipation and speculation (Garner 2015, Gray 2010)
Mystery narratives extend beyond fictional form (soap itself) to paratextual speculation, not only about storylines, but about production, actors, audiences. Will this please the fans? Will X return? Will the episode(s) be a 'fitting' tribute?
Plural audiences for anniversaries (see Hills 2013, 2015).
Media event beyond the episode(s) themselves – reveals, clues as moments of 'mini-event' and inducement to watch.
Reveals outside of the text: SnapChat, NTAs…

Anniversaries as 'Pseudo-events' – constructs for marketing and promotion rather than naturally occurring (Boorstin 1963).
'Media events' as moments of connection between dispersed people, privileging the home as a centre of encounter (Dayan and Katz 1992).
'[P]opular media events break with the everyday but in a much more routine way; they do not monopolize ... media coverage in total, but in a certain segment…'(Hepp and Couldry 2010: 8)
Anniversaries as a site that connects the present, past and future – and draw upon television's obsession with nostalgia and remembering/reiterating its own importance (Holdsworth 2011)

Matt Hills' (2013) four anniversary types:

Naïve – mainstream media event with little to no sense of targeting fans; not time-bound to specific dates
Hybrid – 'something for the fans' combined with 'consensus TV'
Niche – fan-oriented
Hyped – part of an extended branding and marketing campaign

Media Anniversaries change over time according to a range of industry/audience factors
'Anniversary brand extension permits an even greater degree of transferability than might be usual: under the guise of cultural commemoration, a TV series can find its character/narrative/design elements carried over into documentaries, histories, docudramas, conventions, Proms, special screenings and Q&As, coins, stamps, assorted merchandise of all stripes and price points and even royal receptions. Multiplicity is further heightened by this proliferation of products, tie-ins, associated texts and "intertextual commodities" (Marshall 2004: 23), with different markets and demographics being targeted by variant items… And, of course, longevity is another key rationale: the media anniversary is premised on highlighting cultural endurance. In terms of brand management, then, anniversary celebrations are hugely valuable. They cut through the noise of an "attention economy" (Webster 2014: 49), garnering audience awareness and potentially even exerting a social pressure whereby viewers feel they should "join in". Adam Arvidsson has perceptively argued that the "purpose of brand management is to guide the investment of affect on the part of consumers ... it is a matter of creating an affective intensity, an experience of unity between the brand and the subject" (2006: 93). And a TV birthday party also enables this fusion by seeking to link audience memories, emotions and personal self-narratives to narratives' (Hills 2015: 3-4)
2015 teaser
30 years, one street (c5)
Social media as sites of paratextual play between producers, actors and audiences – e.g. sharing memes, jokes and humourous lists (Deller 2014)
Affective sensibilities of play – appealing to audiences' nostalgia and recognition as well as humour.
'Social networks don't switch off in the face of contemporary media events: rather, they are energized by, and in turn work to narratively (re)activate, the paratextual prefigurations and after-images of a brand anniversary. (Hills 2015: 21)
'Television topics that trend highly are generally those considered as 'watercooler' TV such as reality television programmes, contests and talent shows, or 'event' drama, such as cult television or series finales… While soap operas are discussed on Twitter regularly, the frequency of episodes means they do not generate enough traffic to 'trend' regularly – unless there is the climax of a major storyline, they are not considered 'event' TV.' (Deller 2011: 225-6)


'[Soap] plays upon the spectator's expectations of the melodramatic form, continually stimulating… the desire for a just conclusion to the story, and, on the other hand, it constantly presents the desire as unrealisable, by showing that conclusions only lead to further tensions and suffering.' (Modleski 1984: 372)

'We always said that this story had to come from the heart, and with this, it's the start of a whole big new story for the Beales. We kept on going on about [2003 novel] We Need to Talk About Kevin - we need to talk about Bobby! So actually this is the beginning of an even bigger story for the Beales. We've got to keep going!' (Dominic Treadwell-Collins in Kilkelly 2015)

'Soaps have long been concerned with family units and interfamilial interactions. However, beginning with the death of Lucy and its impact on the square, the period of the storyline has focussed these themes in an unusually cohesive way, bringing them to a climax during live week, as the Lucy storyline was interspersed with narratives involving conflicts within other families on the street. Live week even included a wedding, a birth and a death to further emphasise the importance of families. If viewers had missed the unusually cohesive themes of the Lucy storyline, live week left no doubt as almost every aspect of the soap became embroiled in inter-generational conflict. The reveal of Bobby as the killer offers both a continuation of this theme, as well as a climax to it.' (Bell and Deller 2016)


'The likes of Ang (1985) and Spence (2005) note the 'ironic' pleasures in watching soap opera and using it as a source of humour. Of course, some of this is bound up with notions of taste and the idea that soap opera is a less venerated form than other media, however, we would argue that this is not the only salient factor. Bonding over humour and shared social experience is a key part of the appeal of soap, as it is with many other media and cultural forms. The humorous appeal of soap is something producers are keenly aware of, particularly in the way they use social media…By engaging in the same forms of humorous talk as the fans, and by sharing fan-created media, soaps like EastEnders are able to both build their own hype (Gray 2010: 6) and give the impression that the producers understand what fans want. ' (Bell and Deller 2016)
Modes of play included:
Role-playing accounts (e.g. as Ian Beale, Mick Carter)
Memes
Intertextual jokes and references
Teasers and speculation
'Canonisation' by producers of fan ideas (Deller 2014, Veale 2013) and live mishaps.




'EastEnders created a further sense of being part of the viewing community in its approach to "live week", encouraging audience participation in the event through live viewing and simultaneous engagement on social media. The show's Twitter, Instagram, Vine and Facebook accounts were all updated as the episodes were broadcast, providing commentary on events as they happened. The notion of a 'live week' emphasised the importance of watching the show as broadcast, rather than via catch-up services at a later time. This draws upon the notion that liveness indicates a sense of commonality, bringing viewers together around one central moment.' (Bell and Deller 2016)
'"Liveness" naturalises the idea that, through the media, we achieve a shared attention to the realities that matter for us as a society. This is the idea of the media as social
frame, the myth of the mediated centre. It is because of this underlying idea (suggesting society as a common space focused around a 'shared' ritual centre) that watching something 'live' makes the difference it does: otherwise why should we care that others are watching the same image as us, and (more or less) when we are?' (Couldry, 2004: 97-99)

Maximum liveness: 'we are watching at the same time as the event, at the same time as everyone else, and, what is more, with an event taking place in different locations connected by television, as is typically the case with major media events' (Bourdon 2000: 534-535).
'This special week will give a nod to the past and welcome the future. With storylines culminating and big momentous events happening, the EastEnders 30th anniversary will take its place in television history.' (BBC statement in Kilkelly 2014)
'The main aim was to celebrate the past, present and the future of the show in a way that would be satisfying for our viewers. With the show screening two weeks apart in Australia and the UK, it was also very important to craft two story peaks that would hit either territory on the same day. We didn't want anyone to miss out. In celebrating the past, we knew we needed a dash of nostalgia and returning faces. Regarding the present, we wanted to bring some of our current storylines to a climax. And looking ahead, we wanted to launch some new plotlines that would keep viewers hooked into the future.' (Jason Herbison in Kilkelly 2015c)
'The final episode is my favourite one of the week. It's got the explanation that the audience has been so keen to find out, about why the Gloved Hand Killer has been committing these murders, so it's the aftermath of the biggest reveal of the year. "It's got some terrific performances and it's also full of heart and warmth. It features our longest-serving, most-loved characters in the Hutchinsons and the Osbornes, as well as a fantastic reappearance from James Redmond's much-loved character Finn. It's got precisely the right level of big heart-stopping drama, warmth, nostalgia and everything that loyal viewers want to see.' (Bryan Kirkwood in Kilkelly 2015b)
Happy 20th
'[A]nalysis of soap operas has been limited in recent years precisely because it is assumed that all the work that needs to be done has been completed and we now have an agreed approach towards their analysis. The fact that alternative approaches have not been developed, and changes in soap operas in the last couple of decades have not been taken into account, demonstrates how easy it is to ignore soaps, precisely because they are always there, part of the furniture of television, ordinary and invisible' (Mills 2010: 8).

'British soaps are no longer discussed, or even very much watched, in television and media studies. Soaps have become the staple of textbooks and, if they have a role in contemporary debates, it is as the standard binary against which other, more significant or engaging, programmes are measured. A similar lack of interest can be found in the broader television culture online and in the British press... This shift away from soap opera pre- dates but is aligned to debates about quality and aesthetics.' (Geraghty 2010: 82-84)

Dr Ruth A Deller
([email protected] @ruthdeller)
Soap opera anniversaries as media events
'A small piece of TV history was made last night. EastEnders viewers finally found out who killed Lucy Beale, and the episode broke all Twitter records for a soap, with over a million messages posted in a single evening. 32,0638 tweets were sent in the minute after (spoilers!) Bobby Beale was revealed to be Lucy's killer.' (Gill 2015)
EastEnders live week: 20 million reach; most episodes over 10-11 million (Kilkelly 2015a). Increase in viewers short-lived.
Neighbours anniversary episodes do not see any significant ratings changes in Aus or UK.
Hollyoaks anniversary week: ratings increase marginally, especially for E4 first look (Kilkelly2015b) - no significant long-term increase in viewers.
Two weekends, four nights
Halloween 2015
Bell, S and Deller, RA (2016) Who killed Lucy Beale?: Fan anticipation, speculation and reaction to EastEnders' 30th anniversary storyline. In Williams, R. (ed) Endings in Fandom, University of Iowa Press.
Boorstin, DJ (1963) The Image: A guide to pseudo-events in America. New York: Vintage.
Bourdon, J. (2000) Live television is still alive: on television as an unfulfilled promise. Media, Culture and Society 22 (5), pp. 531-556.
Couldry, N (2004) Liveness, "Reality", and the Mediated Habitus from Television to the Mobile Phone. The Communication Review 7: 353-361.
Dayan, D. and Katz, E. (1992) Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deller, R.A. (2011) Twittering on: Audience research and participation using Twitter. Participations 8 (1), available at: http://www.participations.org/Volume%208/Issue%201/deller.htm
Deller, R.A. (2014) The Art of Neighbours gaming: Facebook, fan crafted games and humour. Intensities: 7 (1): 97-106.
Garner, Ross (2015) It Is Happening Again?: Twin Peaks, Staged Anniversaries, and Authorial Meanings. paper presented at SCMS Montreal, 25 March.
Geraghty, C. (2010) Exhausted and Exhausting: Television Studies and British Soap Opera. Critical Studies in Television 5: 82-96.
Gray, J. (2010) Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and other Media Paratexts. London: New York University Press.
Hepp, A. and Couldry, N. (2010) Introduction: Media Events in Globalized Media Culture. In Nick Couldry, Andreas Hepp and Friedrich Krotz (eds) Media Events in a Global Age. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 1–20.
Hills, M (2013) New Dimensions of Doctor Who. London: IB Tauris.
Hills, M (2015) Doctor Who: The Unfolding Event. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot.
Holdsworth, A (2011) Television, Memory and Nostalgia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mills, B. (2010) Invisible Television: The Programmes No-One Talks about Even Though Lots of People Watch Them. Critical Studies in Television 5.1: 1-16.
Modleski, T (1984) The Search for Tomorrow in Today's Soap Operas. In: Marris, P and Thornham, S (eds) (1997) Media Studies: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 371-380.

EastErinsborough
Anniversaries, events and hype
Trailers, paratexts and promotional media
Whodunnits and audience speculation
Nostalgia
Liveness
Social media and play
Inter-soap references
Ratings and results
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