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Rumours on Neighbours’ future

On the eve of celebrating its 6000th episode, the rumours on the future of Neighbours are flying thick and fast.

On the eve of celebrating its 6000th episode, the rumours on the future of Neighbours are flying thick and fast.

This week the show slipped to as low as 534,000 viewers on Thursday.

There has been some speculation TEN could shift Sports Tonight to early evenings, but TEN publicity has dismissed the idea as part of regular rumour-mongering that periodically rolls around.

Another whisper is that the soap could switch to TEN’s new digital channel next year.

But under current regulations, TEN would win no drama points for doing so. Drama must run on primary channels first in order to qualify.

“There’s certainly a lot of speculation in the landscape, and, somewhere amongst all this, will be the truth, and the truth will be known when we’re ready to announce something,” Programming Chief David Mott tells the Sunday Telegraph.

Neighbours does need some work, and we’re hoping we can get there on that. I can say that Neighbours will be part of the TEN family going forward, and there’s a deal we’re talking to Fremantle about at the moment.”

Cast and network will celebrate both the 25th anniversary and 6000 episodes with a party later this month – a record for an Aussie drama.

Source: Sunday Telegraph

56 Responses

  1. Besides the fact that I want Neighbours back at 7pm, can someone please explain why the 6:30pm slot on Sunday can be filled with PG rated programming (Merlin, for one), but 6:30pm Mon to Fri is G only?????

  2. I used to like neighbours until a few years ago, probably around the time Madge died. The whole older/younger dichotomy seemed to work well, with the intergenerational issues and misunderstandings that went along with that.

    Neighbours also used to feature a reasonable amount comedy, something that doesn’t seem to happen these days. Those nosy oldies like Harold and Mrs. Mangel used to be quite funny. Also, some episodes were funny, some were dramatic, some were sad. They weren’t all the same monotonous drawn out melodrama.

    Storylines these days seem to be very melodramatic – more human stories about characters with depth would be a good idea. And what about some non-white characters, or even gay characters? The plot doesn’t have to focus on those aspects of the character, but they should just be part of everyday life on Ramsay Street.

  3. A hip edgy soap? Did anyone else just choke on their coffee? Remember Breakers and Echo Point and Out Of The Blue? The entire reason that Neighbours can’t be edgy is because of its timeslot, so anything that replaces it at 6.30pm will suffer the same restrictions. And if the new show has a different time slot, surely they would be better off testing Neighbours in a later time rather than risk a new dud?
    Neighbours has plenty of promise and years of history, what it really needs is new show runners with a better sense of what constitutes drama – and appreciation of the show’s history – and a “bomb in the building” to be rid of a few of the rubbish characters.

  4. 6pm over at Ten needs a lot of work.With a few exceptions over the years since 1992 like Blind Date and Studs, Echo Point, Taken Out and a whole heap of now discontinued American sitcoms.They relied way too much on The Simpsons and by that I don’t mean the likes of Ashlee.

  5. Firstly, we do not need 3 commercial news services all on at 6PM.

    Secondly it will come as no surprise to anyone that the shark Endemol (formerly Southern Star) is circling around the Neighbours carcass (Fremantle) with a new, hip, edgy soap – whatever that means.

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