It has been confirmed this week that the old Corrie set will be demolished in coming months. This was always the plan and comes as no surprise. The temporary tours were scheduled to continue until October - I suspect that they might be extended for a while longer but ultimately the set will go to make way for a new development.
I'll be sad to see it go but then, that's what happened to the original outdoor set which was used between 1968 and 1982. I actually own a brick from that one!
Although the tour has done well - and taken a lot of money - there's no doubt that ticket sales would have petered out. After all, the show gets (in the UK) around 8 million viewers and I think I read that they've sold a million tickets already. The cost of upkeep would start outweighing the income so it would have to come down eventually. The other issue is that the whole Granada site has been sold to a developer and the income from any kind of tour is also going to be smaller than the income from building flats on it.
It's sad but when Granada (or ITV as they are now known) moved to Salford the bulldozers were sure to come round the corner of Rosamund Street before too long.