[Keith]

In general, 'reoccurring dramas' have been the subject of cuts in the past year or two. Holby City and Doctors getting axed. With Casualty, whilst not axed the number of episodes have been reduced to save money. Also Hollyoaks has moved off linear TV, and it looks like episode lengths may have been shortened.

In some respects it's slightly surprising that Corrie has 3 hours per week (including adverts) shown on TV, and Emmerdale has 2-1/2 hours per week. By contrast Eastenders has only 2 hours per week (and no adverts).

I imagine one problem these soaps have is that they can't easily be redistributed to other channels / streaming services, or at least it doesn't seem to happen these days. There probably is still some scope for repeating episodes on ITV's own channels, though arguably this has become somewhat redundant due to being able to catch up via ITVX (and it's predecessors).

I imagine for ITV the predicament is that Corrie still rates strongly. Cutting the number of episodes probably won't help them, as the advertising revenue would presumably be lower during whatever replaced it. Also, if cutting the number of episodes they'd have to pay for something to fill that slot, though arguably documentaries and consumer programmes (e.g. Martin Lewis Show) are comparatively cheap. I didn't realise that some/many of the cast were only paid of scenes that they appeared in rather than getting a fixed salary, though I can see why these cuts would be an easy saving for ITV.

Longer term though I wonder if Corrie would benefit from being reduced to two hours a week.