A = Steve Frost B = Kate Harwood C = Kate Beedles Which producer(s) used to work with high budgets is the producer of the soap with the longest history is satisfied with being and trying to be an invisible producer believes that the soap is being undervalued now admit that their soaps are not the top ones joined the team when the soap was in a difficult situation has the experience of working in two soaps criticizes tabloids of destroying the aura of soap wasn’t discouraged by negative comment on story-writing skills 1. ______ 2. ______ 3. ______ 4. ______ 5. ______ 6. ______ 7. ______ 8. ______ 9. ______ 10. ______ A Steve Frost Producer, Coronation Street, 33 Steve Frost has, he says, a lot to do at Coronation Street. He admits the soap is not at the top of its game and he is engaged in a constant battle with a tabloid culture that exposes the artifice of what he does. "The audience is so jaded now, so cynical. People can see the strings and the puppeteers, and because they do, it’s harder for them to lose themselves in it. It’s hard to carry people away like you used to -- and it’s getting harder." Frost blames, among other things, the rise of celebrity. "The magazine interview culture that tells you every detail of actors’ lives does make it harder and harder to create characters with mystique and magic that people really believe in. Whet Raquel left, there was such magic to that, it was a really compelling moment. But now, it is impossible for people not to know, six months in advance that Jane Danson is taking maternity leave." Having been in the job six months, he has no urge to make a name for himself. Not for Frost the desire to coin some "axeman" moniker "I’d like to be as invisible as possible," he says. "I would hope viewers wouldn’t notice a new producer because it’s not about the producer. The producer should be unseen and of no interest. The writers should be unseen and of no interest. In a way, to be bothered about who’s producing it is to detract entirely from the fiction of it." Frost says his only brief is to keep the viewing figures up, to make it fresh. He has his work cut out for him. He concedes, with so many episodes, it is not appointment to view any more and that one of his tasks is to inspire more loyalty in viewers. "The days of 25 million viewers for anything is long gone. That mass viewing experience has passed. But even in the fragmented, depleted market, soaps remain the most-viewed things." Frost argues that the audience has a finite appetite for soap. "There was a peak of soap saturation some years back," he says. "Since then, we’ve seen Night and Day, Crossroads, Family Affairs and Brookside all go. I think that’s telling. In a competitive market, people will only watch so much." And there is no room for complacency. "Coronation Street has been there for 45 years and there’s a real danger in that. It can’t afford to remain what it’s always been. The show in 1960 wasn’t the same as the show that was being made in 1970 or 1980 or 1990. It has to keep up with modern life. People need to see something that’s recognisably Corrie but also something they’ve never seen before -- I feel, at the moment, it’s moving out of the 1990s five years too late. What is entirely new What is the 21st century character What does 21st century Corrie look like don’t think we’ve seen it yet. That’s my big challenge." B Kate Harwood Executive producer, EastEnders, 46 When Kate Harwood got the job as executive producer of EastEnders arms were folded, brows were furrowed and eyebrows raised, Pauline Fowler-style. Her pedigree was in plush, lush costume drama. She produced, among other things, David Copperfield, Daniel Deronda and Charles I1: The Power & the Passion for the BBC. She was hardly the most obvious choice to take charge of a soap with its higher volume and lower budgets, not to mention its vital place in BBC1 ’s schedule. At the time, EastEnders was in a hole. Under Kathleen Hutchison and before her, Louise Berridge, it had hit, if not rock bottom, then perilously close to it. The disastrous resurrection of Dirty Den exemplified everything that was wrong with EastEnders -- it was desperate, backward-looking, downright embarrassing. "What a difference 18 months makes," says Harwood, who walked off with this year’s Bafta for best soap. Making a virtue out of the departure of several high-profile cast members, Harwood has, with the help of veteran writer Tony Jordan and under the watchful eye of John Yorke, restored EastEnders’ credibility. It is not quite at the "everyone’s talking about it" stage, but she says it is getting there. "I would always say there’s lots more to reach for but the show is almost boundless in what it’s capable of. When it’s firing on all cylinders, there’s something for everyone," she says. It has been a steep learning curve for Harwood who says she has learnt to think faster ("Before this, I would spend 18 months buffing up four hours of drama") and think more. "It’s a bit like being in a Mike Figgis film. You’ve got one part of your brain on what’s transmitting tonight, one on what we’re currently working on the scripts of, one on what we’re shooting, one on what we’re storylining." Harwood is conscious of the political nature of the job too, but says she tries not to get bogged down in that side of things. "Nothing could have prepared me for running a show that’s so in the public eye. It’s a bit like managing Arsenal in that everyone has an opinion on what you’re doing. The amount of feedback you get on a daily basis is enormous." She says she’s aware of Coronation Street and Emmerdale as competition -- "I hope it’s respectful rivalry rather than cutthroat sneeriness" -- but "we have to be true to ourselves. If you start looking too hard at the other soaps, you stop being true to yourself." So has she acclimatized to the less rarefied atmosphere of soap as compared to costume drama "In the end, drama is drama. It’s just made with different budgets and different time constraints. In some ways, the basic questions remain absolutely the same. And in a way, Bleak House showed that -- it’s the same stories and concerns, however we tell them." C Kath Beedles Producer, Emmerdale, 30 Having worked as Emmerdale’s story editor before she took over the producer’s chair vacated by Steve Frost, Kath Beedles knows the Cinderella situation in which the soap finds itself. Despite creeping up on EastEnders in the ratings and anchoring ITV’s primetime schedule six nights a week, she says the Farm-less saga of demented Yorkshire folk still does not get the recognition it deserves. "We’re quite lucky in a way because it makes you work harder. If you get told everything you do is fantastic even when it’s not -- which does happen; I worked on Corrie so I know the atmosphere there and I presume it’s the same at EastEnders -- you can get complacent very easily. When you’re the underdog, you strive." Beedles has been striving since she was 12 and was inspired to write after watching Monty Python. When she was a teenager, she sent scripts she had written to the makers of Birds of a Feather and despite being told by her English teacher she could not write, she persevered with her ambition. At 21, she did an MA in screenwriting. When she was 23, she got a storylining job on Coronation Street and then moved to Emmerdale. "Corrie is the hardest place to work. It was one of those jobs you wouldn’t choose on a personal level because it was horrendously difficult, but you learn so much." With more than 300 episodes a year, she has plenty of characters and stories to work on. She has just added another, in fact -- a new Dingle. Beedles says that chief among her soap’s strengths is the consistency of its characters. "It all boils down to consistency. Zak is still the Zak he was 12 years ago. The stable moral things that drove him when he arrived still drive him today. And stories come from those consistent characters, stories that really reward the audience." Beedles says one of the most important things she has learnt is that "even if it’s wrong, it’s OK". "Sometimes an episode isn’t going to turn out how you wanted," she says. "You have to live with that and learn from it, and not beat yourself up over it. The wheels don’t come off when mistakes happen. Having the balls to admit you’ve made a mistake and make a change -- and while it’s not ideal, we have made major changes at very late stages -- is really important. You can do that and nobody dies, nobody loses respect for you." Isn’t that another way of saying that with such high volume, standards slip "Not at all. Standards haven’t fallen. The more pressure you’re under, the better work you do.\