Goodbye Neighbours?

At the beginning of February, Channel 5 announced that they will no longer be broadcasting Neighbours after the summer. And unless a new UK broadcaster can be found, the show will be axed everywhere.

In its 37 years, it’s had more lives than a cat. In Australia, Seven Network aired the show for 4 months before pulling the plug. Network 10 quickly bought the rights to produce the show where it has been ever since. Albeit it has now been sidelined to their digital channel.

Whilst in the UK, the BBC aired the show for 21 years, before Channel 5 took over the rights in 2008.

With no new UK broadcaster on the horizon, will Australia’s most successful media export become no more?

We go back a long way

Those that know me, will know that I have been a big fan of the show, ever since I was a kid.

I started watching Neighbours quite early on into its introduction to the UK screens. I believe I got my first taste of the show while off sick from school and have been hooked since then.

In the heydays, I used to get all the magazines for the interviews. I ran out of wall space in my bedroom as they were covered by posters of Neighbours stars. I wrote to the cast regularly with the hope they would reply, and I still have them all, including my signed cast photo that Anne Haddy (Helen Daniels) sorted out for me.

I even did part of my GCSE art project on the Neighbours. I failed that topic so that says something!

When Neighbours was celebrating its 25th anniversary, I confessed that I still watched the show.

Most recently, I have also written about my disappointment in relation to racism (among other things) that has been reported on the set. And while the show promised that an internal investigation would be complete, there is still this dark cloud hanging over the show.

And while there hasn’t been anything publicly mentioned about the investigation (yet), it is possible that we are starting to see action from it on the screens.

That’s if the rumour mills are to be true about the abrupt departure of a recent cast member.

I still feel that a full public response is required, although, with the show in the current situation, I don’t think that’ll happen.

Campaign to save

As soon as it was announced the show was to be axed, the viewers were going through the stages of grief. We had shock. There was disbelief. Anger. And the rest.

A petition had been set up to try and save the show. It currently has over 60,000 signatures.

There was also a campaign to get the Neighbours theme tune to number one in the charts, which made international news.

While it successfully got to #1 in the iTunes Chart, it didn’t appear in the Official UK Top 100 (damn you streaming). But it did get to #11 in the download chart, which is a feat in itself.

Who is to blame?

With so many cogs in the wheel that is Neighbours, is there one that’s fallen, or was it caused by several?

The show itself

Throughout the years, the show has done some questionable things that while it can be iconic, it was also plain batshit crazy. Bouncer and Rosie’s wedding is iconic, but you also wondered what the fucking the writer had been tripping on when they wrote this.

Neighbours is a daytime soap, so had restrictions on what it could tackle. You were never going to get hard-hitting storylines, and when they tried it was a pre-watershed moment, so watered down. Such as not being able to say sex, or talk about periods.

Recently, when Kate Ramsay was killed due to Aussie television, they couldn’t show blood on the show, so we had a dead character…with no blood! I remember at the time when one specific viewer refused to admit that Kate was dead because there was no blood. When the show moved to their digital channel they could show blood due to their rating changing from PG to U.

People turned off because of this shit, while others lapped it up. Including me. But this is what people remember. At the moment, I believe the show is at the best it’s been in a long time.

Yes, there was daft storylines, but there was also some great ones too. And controversy has always been there ever since the beginning of the show.

Neighbours, viewing wise, was in a good place with daily viewings of 1.5 million. Soaps like Home & Away (400k) or Hollyoaks (600k) would love to see these figures. This may not sound as impressive as it did from its 21 million viewers from days gone past. But with a wider selection, all viewing figures are watered down now.

Channel 5

The bad people are always going to be the ones that make that final call. At the end of the day, they were the ones to give it the chop.

Channel 5 confirmed that the reason was cost. They were losing £5mill each year. They couldn’t get enough advertising revenue to make it viable to carry on showing.

At the end of the day, they need to make money from the show to keep on broadcasting it. And they weren’t.

However, why weren’t they able to get that revenue? Were the sales people struggling to sell the advertising space, so had to go cheap? Was this a channel issue rather than the shows? Or was it that, the cost of the daytime soap exceeded what could be recouped in daytime advertising?

After cancelling my Sky subscription, I no longer have ‘live’ tv. Everything I watch is via on-demand services. While watching Neighbours, whether that be the app or the internet, I was provided with limited or no adverts. You’re telling me that Channel 5 can’t get anyone to advertise via these services? Bitch please, you need to sort that shit out!

Freemantle

Could the production company be asking for too much?

Freemantle took over from Grundy in 2006, and in 2008 when it was time to talk about money again, the production company asked for £300mill, 3 times more than what the BBC currently paid, and which they called “unrealistic“.

Contract renewal time, could Freemantle be getting greedy, and trying the same trick again with Channel 5?

But in the same respect, Neighbours is currently going through a secretive revamp, and it’s going places where no soap has before. The fourth wall has gone. We’re seeing new angles in the homes we have known for years.

However, this won’t entice new viewers and networks saying it costs too much, so should we be looking at cutting costs?

Or what about sharing the cost between the broadcasters. While I understand the UK is a bigger market, I don’t think the proportion of the finance should come from an offshore broadcaster.

Channel 10

Let’s be honest, Neighbours isn’t popular in its homeland, and it hasn’t been for years, so Channel 10 have been treating the show with the same regard as its Australian viewers.

Originally on their main channel, it was then moved to their digital channel, Peach 10. As much as this was negative for the showing in Australia, it was also a blessing, as the guidance rating could be changed which meant that the storylines could be grittier.

With the show not being popular, the soap has to think financially too, so at the beginning of 2022, Neighbours lost its Friday slot in Australia.

One thing that has become apparent recently, is that in Australia Neighbours appears to be a launching pad for those wanting to get into the industry. I’m not just talking about the actors, I’m talking about the crew too.

Channel 10 have stated that they would like to continue showing Neighbours. However, is this a financial reason? Rumours are without Neighbours the network would no longer meet their home-based show quota, so to replace Neighbours would end up costing the network a lot more!

If that is the case, then surely the network can spare some more money to assist with the production costs.

The viewers

For years I have interacted with many people or groups in relation to Neighbours, and the majority of the time it’s been a brilliant experience. In the same respect, it hasn’t always been good.

One thing as a viewer that people complain about is adverts, and Neighbours fans are the same. So some will do anything to skip watching them, including watching them via different avenues.

Channel 5 did a great job, of getting the episodes to air at the same time as Australia. But for some, they continued to watch via other avenues. With lockdown, they took a hiatus from the show, while Australia continued to show episodes. In the end, the UK fell behind by 5 weeks.

Neighbours already had a plan in place in case they ran out of episodes, but Channel 5 wasn’t interested. That plan was never required because Neighbours was one of the first shows to go back into production. It was also known to support many shows by giving guidance on how to continue during the lockdown.

What did viewers do to get their regular fix? They went online to get the latest episodes. So Channel 5 would lose views (and ad revenue) while UK viewers were keeping to Aus pace.

It wasn’t until the end of 2021 that Channel 5 had caught up with Peach 10 before the UK took over. But by then, the damage was already done.

New Network?

There has also been a lot of campaigning to the other UK broadcasters to save the show, but how realistic will this be?

Channel 5

Obviously, keeping it on at Channel 5 would be the easiest. However, even with threats of boycotting the channel, I don’t think that will make much difference.

Personally, I wont be boycotting the channel, I just wont end up watching it. To be honest, Neighbours was the only show that I watched on 5. The majority of what is on the channel is reality shows that I’m not interested in or are done better somewhere else.

The cancellation of Neighbours will provide Channel 5 investment to make their own dramas, which is what they would like to do. However, the chances are that I wont know about the new dramas as I wont be visiting the channel and seeing the promos.

BBC

Could Neighbours return to it’s original UK home, the BBC? It would be quite cathartic to a few Neighbour’s fans, who feel that Channel 5 ruined the show.

Although, this is very unlikely because the corporation is willing to make sacrifices to their own much-loved shows (Holby City), to create their own new dramas and soaps.

Channel 4

There is a possibility that Neighbours could move to Channel 4, to work alongside Hollyoaks.

Could having both soaps side-by-side assist each other in the ratings?

Well we will never know, as Channel 4 have confirmed they have no interest in taking over the show.

ITV

The final terrestrial option would be ITV, and honestly on paper out of all the networks, this would be the best fit for the show.

It could easily be slotted into the daytime schedule, with a repeat aired on ITV2. They could even do a sneak preview on the sister channel.

In fact, I honestly feel that moving to ITV could increase the viewing figures because lets be honest I think a lot of people forget that Channel 5 exists.

While ITV has kept quiet about the whole situation, this could be seen as hopeful, but in all honesty, I don’t feel like it would happen.

So this is it?

Yes. Well not unless there are big changes, or a miracle, to make it worthwhile.

I do think ITV could save the show, but it doesn’t look appealing while Channel 5 are walking away due to financial reasons.

RTE are interested in making sure the show continues, as is Channel 10. So can 3 networks come together to share the cost, and reduce the share of the production cost that the UK broadcaster would pay?

Freemantle also need to look at other avenues for funding. Since taking over the show, it feels like they have tried to push the funding more for profit than the show itself.

As part of the last deal, it included some additional funding from Film Australia, which I think is great, especially taking into account how it nourishes new talent within the industry. I’d hope that this support could continue in the future.

My honest opinion is that the show will end in August, and I am gutted that Neighbours won’t see its 40th anniversary. After the Alan Fletcher (Karl Kennedy) interview on This Morning, it’s become clear the cast acknowledge the show will stop production in June.

As I’ve been writing this post, Freemantle confirmed that Neighbours will be axed in the summer, as they haven’t been able to locate the additional funding required to proceed with the show.

There is still hope that there is potential for the show to be picked up in the future. But the bigger the hiatus from the screens, the less likely it is.

I’m just gutted that I never got to visit the Neighbours set, which has been on my bucket list since I was a kid (Damn you Uncle Gert). If the production company did something similar to what Corrie did when they move, then I may need to set up a GoFundMe so I can go visit it. It’s either that, or OnlyFans, and I can’t see that option working.

I just hope, that the ending is not some corny crap and Neighbours gets the send-off that it truly deserves.