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Neighbours audiences dip in the UK

Since moving from the BBC, audience figures for a beloved soap have been heading south.

Since moving from the BBC to Channel Five in the UK, numbers for Neighbours have dropped from 4.8m to 2.3m a day.

On BBC it aired twice daily and on Five the show airs at 1:45 and 5:30pm daily.

“The show just doesn’t have the same appeal,” a show source told The Sun newspaper.

“People who watched Neighbours five days a week can now watch Hollyoaks – a British soap – every night instead.

“Five gets fewer viewers anyway because it’s a smaller channel.

“The same thing happened to Home and Away when that moved to Five from ITV years ago.”

But a Five spokesman told the newspaper that Neighbours traditionally experienced a drop in viewer numbers during the northern summer months.

“Audiences are on the up again and we are very happy with the ongoing performance of the show.”

In Australia the show has also had a weaker 12 months but appears to be gaining ground again.

Source: The Australian

9 Responses

  1. I don’t really have the time to watch ‘Neighbours’ regularly, but I try to catch it at least twice a week.

    POSITIVES: Storylines seem to be improving, the new characters are likeable, they’ve kept and brought back some old ones, and I think there HAS been an injection of humour.

    Much less cringe-worthy acting too.

  2. As a former long time fan of the show, i don’t agree that the show is better that it has been in a while. I stopped watching regulary when Janae left. On the occasions that I do see it, there is always some woman berating a man, often I don’t see that they deserve it. So that’s a real turn off for me. I found the past twelve months of the show really turgid and depressing. The only plus at the moment is Nicola, a misunderstod vixen in the tradition of Izzy, so that gives me hope. The fact that the really annoying Carmella is leaving is another ray of hope that it may get better. But they seriously need to inject some humour, plus balance out the male/female thing. Neighbours was the one soap that could appeal to both, but now it is more a women’s show.

  3. As a long-time and loyal viewer of the show, I believe Neighbours is the best it has been since around 2002-2003. It went through a really horrible period for a while, particularly in 2006, when the storylines were ridiculous and there were some very unappealing characters. But since Susan Bower took over as Executive Producer at the start of the year it just keeps getting better and better. The writing has been brilliant and there’s a great mix of characters. I know several people who stopped watching the show years ago but have starting watching it again and are loving it. It has a difficult timeslot in Australia, competing with Today Tonight and A Current Affair. Hopefully some more old fans catch on to how much it’s improved lately and help boost the ratings.

  4. The whole of Channel Ten suffers and quite a few times Neighbours has been the highest rating show of the night. Only shows like House, NCIS etc. seem to rate higher. And Neighbours seems to consistently win in the 18-49 demo against the current affairs shows, sometimes it comes 2nd but it’s been doing OK.

  5. yeh. Austraila doesn’t hate it. It only gets good ratings cause so many 50+ of the audience. Imo home and away and neighbours are exactly the same thing, affairs with teachers, sex, bombings etc. What are ratings for home and away like in uk

  6. “Australia hates it”? Hardly! The audience varies quite significantly from night to night, ranging from around 700k to 850k and it was even nudging 900k a couple of weeks ago. Hardly the figures of a “hated” show.

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