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BBC1 drip-feeds medicine all year round
The BBC1 medical drama, Holby City, is to become a year-round fixture in the channel's schedule, while its sister show, Casualty, will go out 40 times in the next year.
The decision to "soapify" the dramas is part of a strategy by BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey to win back millions of viewers who have deserted the channel's drama because of repeated flops.
She said the two medical dramas were intended to play a role similar to EastEnders, bringing viewers to BBC1 early in the evening who would then stay with the channel and sample more challenging output.
"People were not even giving new BBC1 drama a chance, they were not even coming to the channel," said Ms Heggessey.
"With Casualty and Holby City you can bring a drama-watching audience to the channel before 9pm and hope they will then stay for post-watershed shows, she added.
The BBC1 boss has ordered a 26-part run of weekday drama Holby City for the autumn and winter.
And she has extended the run of Saturday night hospital drama Casualty from 30 episodes last year to at least 40 in the coming 12 months.
But BBC insiders say this run will "almost certainly" be extended by a further 26 weeks, making Holby City into a year-round drama like soaps such as EastEnders and Coronation Street. "It will go on and on," one BBC source said.
Her decision to commission year-round runs of the medical soaps follows criticism by ITV bosses that the BBC is not trying hard enough.
At the Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival last weekend, the ITV director of channels, David Liddiment, criticised BBC1 for running "year-round" Holby City and Casualty instead of more "ambitious" programming.
At a separate event in Edinburgh, the BBC's head of scheduling, Adam MacDonald, declared he would not be "bullied" into decisions by ITV.
He said the decision to put the first Friday night EastEnders at 8pm, even though ITV had already scheduled Coronation Street in that slot, was in the "long-term interest of viewers".
"If we'd given way on this it would have encouraged ITV to bully our shows around the schedule by moving their programmes," he added.
"That's not healthy for viewers. So we took a view that we should stick to our guns."
Mr MacDonald claimed ITV had moved Coronation Street from its normal 7.30pm Friday night slot to 8pm, "as a little welcoming pressie", after they got wind of where the BBC was planning to run the fourth EastEnders.
He was sceptical of ITV's justification for scheduling Coronation Street in that slot to make way for an hour-long Emmerdale special.
"I don't know the definition of a special, but that looked like two programmes stuck together to me," Mr Macdonald said.
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