Concept of Time in Soaps

The concept of time in soaps is crucial as producers have to keep up with issues circulating in society in order to engage with the audience.

There are various other reasons to why time is an important concept to soaps:

• By keeping up with society, you are attracting various generations in which a particular storyline may appeal to that niche market.
  For example; bullying in schools. A recent storyline in Eastenders was prostitution which was linked to the children in need charity.  
• Time is used to expand an open narrative episode which is continued from a cliffhanger which is shown from the previous episode.
• Time reflects exactly to real life; we miss a weekend, so do they, their lives have not changed between each of these episodes.
• Heightened tenses are created because of seasonal time; for example, at Christmas there is a huge story which has been lead up to a big climax which means more viewers.
• Characters are constantly progressing; characters such as Ben Mitchell in Eastenders, as an audience we have seen them since they were born.
• A sense of realism is created when characters pasts are introduced. For example, Eddie in Eastenders past is slowly revealed as him and Michael eventually come together as father and son.
• Characters who have been there for ages can become predictable to viewers (Ian Beale), therefore as time progresses, so does the soap as new characters are introduced such as Fatboy who is current, fresh and most of all relates younger audiences.
• With time, both open and closed narratives are shown. Everything that happens  is continuous and is the future (open narrative). The only closed narrative is death. An example of this is David Wicks when he comes back to the soap after a number of years when his mother is dying. Therefore, even former characters return with a new storyline or even stick with the same one but with a darker secret.

Here we can see in order for the soap to progress with its storyline, characters etc, time is one of the main aspects which are used to help them do this.