The Balance Between Realism and Drama in Soaps

Soaps are ongoing programmes that have to find a balance between realism and drama in order to grip an audience with a good storyline but also be believeable enough for the audience to relate to.
Different soaps go about finding this balance in different ways depending upon the target audience, take for instance Coronation Street which has been a successful ongoing soap since 1960 and therefore has attracted a loyal audience since then making the target audience an older demographic where they expect to watch Coronation Street and find a close sense of community as it would have been back in the 60's so this is what Coronation Street have done. The main sets within Coronation Street are the likes of The Rovers Return, Roys Café, The Corner Shop and inside the characters houses, these are real life, unexaggerated settings which creates the sense of realism, this provides them with the foundation to create dramatic storylines and push the reality of the issue in order to create entertainment.
Another way of balancing realism with drama is by creating a realtime effect which is used in Hollyoaks since it is broadcast every week day, this use of realtime helps the audience to believe they are seeing the characters in their day to day lives, and by using realtime they also get to create dramatic storylines that are based on real issues that are happening in the real world around that time such as the credit crunch, take for instance Calvin resorting to crime because he feels the money pressures of not having enough to keep Carmel happy. This storyline can be related to by the audience as they may feel the stress of the recession and realise they have been looking at other forms of making money, but this storyline shows how turning to crime doesn't help so it teaches the audience at the same time as entertaining them by exaggerating the storyline with the threats of murder, buying flashy cars etc.