Axe to fall on ITV’s Daytime saga?

ITV says it will drop Crossroads unless ratings improve in the next three months.

The station’s head of drama says time is running out for the resurrected soap. Crossroads has an average audience of 3.3 million which apparently isn’t good enough for ITV bosses. It was brought back by ITV last year after a 13-year absence.

ITV head of drama Nick Elliott told mediaguardian.co.uk: “We’ll look at it across the spring. It depends on how it does. If it gets a bit of spring in its ratings it could go on.”

A final decision on whether Crossroads is to be recommissioned will be taken by early summer. The series originally aired from 1964 to 1988 and proved to be one of daytime’s most successful programmes.

It was dropped by production company Central Television in April 1988 to enabled their studios to be ‘freed up’ for more lavish drama production such as Inspector Morse and Boon. The current Crossroads is produced by Carlton in Nottingham.