Coronation Street stalwart Helen Worth made the shock announcement on Wednesday that she is leaving the ITV soap after fifty years on the cobbles.
The actress, 73, who will film her final scenes as Gail Platt in the coming weeks, revealed in a statement that the time felt right to step away as she celebrates five decades in the role.
While Helen has steered the decision to leave, her exit will save the soap £250,000 a year, just as bosses push for drastic cost-cutting measures.
Helen is thought to earn £2.5k an episode, and reportedly signed a new contact earlier this year with a guaranteed £250,000 salary.
Coronation Street stalwart Helen Worth made the shock announcement on Wednesday that she is leaving the ITV soap after fifty years on the cobbles
While Helen has steered the decision to leave, her exit will save the soap £250,000 a year, just as bosses push for drastic cost-cutting measures
The pay structure is the same across ITV soaps Emmerdale and Coronation Street, with actors earning a fee per episode.
But that means salaries can vary wildly, with veteran stars like Helen at the top of the sliding scale of fees, taking home around £2,000 per episode, while younger cast members are thought to be on £400.
The cast reportedly get a guaranteed number of episodes a year, which again ranges with a minimum of 30 for supporting cast members while the likes of Helen will have around 100, plus repeat fees.
Salaries can therefore range from £12,000 to well over £200,000 depending on popularity.
The highest paid actors on Corrie are thought to be Jack P Shepherd who plays the role of Gail’s son David Platt and cobbles legend William Roache who plays Ken Barlow, who like Helen are on £250,000 a year contracts.
Finances are a sore topic for Bill because while he earns a reported £250,000 a year, he has racked up a half-a-million debt to the taxman.
Andy Whyment shed some light on the lack of riches in the soap world in a recent Instagram post.
The actor, who has spent 20 years on the ITV soap playing Kirk Sutherland, shared a snap of himself with his new £40,000 Kia car, prompting curious fans to post: ‘I’d of thought with all your money you’d of had a decent car!’
Andy, who has boosted his ITV pay packed with two recent appearances on I’m A Celebrity, quickly replied: ‘Kia’s are a decent car, and I don’t earn as much as you probably think I do.’
ITV soap stars earn a fee per episode. But that means salaries can vary wildly, with veteran stars like Helen taking home £2,000 per episode, while younger cast members are thought to be on £400
The highest paid actors on Corrie are thought to include Jack P Shepherd who plays the role of Gail’s son David Platt
Cobbles legend William Roache who plays Ken Barlow, is like Helen on a £250,000 a year contract
Andy Whyment, who boosted his bank balance with two recent appearances on I’m A Celebrity, shed some light on the lack of riches in the soap world in a recent Instagram post
Recent reports have claimed that show bosses are cutting down on the amount of cast members featured per episode, therefore saving money on the individual episode fees.
The ITV soap has been forced to adopt a ‘minimal’ approach to ensemble scenes – such as those in the Rovers Return Inn – due to cost-cutting measures, which also include limiting the number of extras used and increasing back to back episode filming which means longer hours per day for the stars.
An insider told the Sunday Mirror newspaper in April: ‘The bosses have decided we will take a far more minimal approach to storylines going forward, and are cutting the number of actors who appear in them. As large numbers of the cast are paid by scene, that means paying fewer actors to be on set’.
‘The changes haven’t gone down well with the cast. Many of them are panicking about what these cuts mean for their futures.’
‘The Corrie cast is absolutely massive – it has well over 50 cast members in total – and some of them haven’t filmed for weeks, so they are starting to get really worried about the axe falling on them before long.’
Reports of cost cutting have been rumbling on for months. Last summer it was claimed that a host of soap stars from Coronation Street, Emmerdale and EastEnders are reportedly facing the axe.
Insiders speaking to The Sun pointed to plummeting ratings, and claimed that those stars on the higher salaries of around £200,000-a-year could be at threat.
‘There is about to be a bloodbath across Corrie, Emmerdale and EastEnders — and it won’t be pretty,’ the source predicted in August 2023.
‘All the big three have all been told they need to cut their wage bills by up to 25 per cent. Now there is panic in the green rooms about who could be facing the chop.
Reports of cost cutting have been rumbling on for months. Last summer it was claimed that a host of soap stars from Coronation Street and Emmerdale are reportedly facing the axe
‘Some of the veterans are terrified they could be next — especially the older generation who are all earning well over £200,000. Working in soaps has never been more perilous than it is now.’
There is widespread panic across all soaps about the dwindling ratings and change in viewing habits.
In August Ofcom‘s Media Nations report revealed that viewers are switching off traditional television at record rates, with even loyal over-65s ditching the format for an ‘all-you-can-eat broadcasting buffet’ on streaming rivals like Netflix and Disney+.
With more competition than ever from streamers, the proportion of Brits watching a programme on broadcast TV each week dropped from 83 per cent in 2021 to 79 per cent in 2022 – the sharpest decline since records began.
Fewer people than ever before are tuning into the main channels, with news bulletins and soap operas failing to attract the audiences they once did.
The Ofcom Media Nations 2023 said the average time spent watching broadcast television per person per day fell from two hours 59 minutes in 2021 to two hours 38 minutes the following year.
The number of shows with over four million TV viewers has more than halved over the past eight years since 2022, which reflects fewer people tuning in to watch early and late evening TV news bulletins as well as a steady decline in viewing figures for the three most popular soaps, Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale, Ofcom said.
Overall soap audiences are down 42 per cent since 2014. The Christmas Day episode of Corrie was viewed by 2.6million – down almost three quarters from 10 years ago.
‘Today’s viewers and listeners have an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet of broadcasting and online content to choose from and there’s more competition for our attention than ever,’ said Yih-Choung Teh, from Ofcom.
‘Our traditional broadcasters are seeing steep declines in viewing to their scheduled, live programmes, including among typically loyal older audiences, and soaps and news don’t have the mass-audience pulling power they once had.
In response to the report insiders spilled that ITV chiefs are discussing a major shake-up of its soaps which could see them screened first, or exclusively, through online streaming.
Anxious bosses are desperately looking at how they can attract a new audience, as even their older viewers are watching less terrestrial TV in favour of streaming giants such as Netflix.
Its popularity led ITV to launch its online ITVX last year, with bosses calling it a ‘huge success’. Now they are considering it as a home for soaps.
Insiders pointed to plummeting ratings, and claimed that those stars on the h igher salaries of around £200,000-a-year could be at threat (Helen Worth pictured in Corrie in 1974)
Helen’s character Gail has been at the centre of some of the most iconic storylines on the soap in her fifty years, including the Richard Hillman storyline in 2003
An ITV insider said: ‘Soaps don’t make as much advertising money as they used to.
‘There are some chiefs looking enviously at all the consumer-themed documentaries Channel 5 makes and thinking that there could be better commercial opportunities in that kind of programming and using the slots allocated to the soaps for those.
‘Corrie and Emmerdale are losing viewers at a drop of around ten per cent on last year.
‘Budgets have already been cut on both shows and it is hard to see how they can sustain so many episodes.’
In November, in a speech to celebrate the success of ITVX, the channel’s boss Kevin Lygo told of his pride at how popular it had become by putting on dramas such as Nolly – the story of Crossroads star Noele Gordon – before screening it on ITV1 this Christmas.
Last year Channel 5 axed Neighbours and earlier this year Channel 4 put its soap Hollyoaks online.
