Amanda Barrie says lashed budgets and dwindling viewing figures will mean there’s a big question mark over the future of a show that has gone on for 60 years
Soap legend Amanda Barrie has admitted she fears for the future of Coronation Street amid slashed budgets and dwindling viewing figures.
The actress, who starred as Alma Halliwell spanning a 20-year period on the cobbles, reckons young people are more interested in reality telly or surfing the web.
Amanda, 90, said: “I fear that in the not-too-distant future even our world-famous soaps, including Coronation Street, already devastated by nose-diving ratings as young people migrate away from TV towards the allure of the internet, will no longer be offering actors substantially attractive salaries, or at the very least some degree of financial security.
“Already all the soaps are drastically cutting both the size of their casts and the size of the pay packets of those remaining. The age of the reality show was in its infancy when I left Coronation Street in 2001.
“The soaps were still flourishing, and in the early days I think there was a certain naivety about this precocious new television genus.”
Earlier this year Corrie recorded a record low audience of 2.5 million because it was up against the BBC’s hit programme The Traitors.
That’s less than ten per cent of the 27million who watched Hilda Ogden’s farewell in its 1987 heyday. It has also been reported it’s facing budget cuts and that ITV will reduce the number of weekly episodes from six to five starting next January.
Amanda has appeared in celebrity reality shows too, including Big Brother, The Real Marigold Hotel and Hell’s Kitchen. And in her new book I’m Still Here, she admitted that actor pals have followed suit because of the big money on offer.
She said: “When I was trying to learn my trade, I was training to be a dancer, going to singing lessons, or watching West End actors at work.
“It had never occurred to me that really what I should have been doing was trying to learn how to swallow live animals and disgusting globules of gunk, how to jump out of a helicopter or stay underwater just about long enough to drown.
“But the profession has changed. Drama schools should add classes on how to eat live frogs and not throw up, and how to learn to sleep with rodents and insects crawling all over you.
“Because, actually, if you make any sort of success of your career, and attain even a smidgen of celebrity, therein will lie your greatest hope of ever earning any real money – not performing Shakespeare.
“Some pretty big-name thespians have succumbed over the years, like Nigel Havers, Stephanie Powers, Larry Lamb, George Hamilton, Britt Ekland, Linda Robson and John Barrymore, all of whom have been in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
“And as I write, Stephen Fry and Celia Imrie have just gone into a celebrity version of Traitors.”
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