★★★★★ 0/5

UK trims Home & Away, Neighbours.

Channel 5 pulls Aussie soaps back to 2 episodes a week -but it's better news back home.

8
Leave a comment

Britain’s Channel 5 has announced it will trim Neighbours and Home and Away from 5 to 2 episodes a week each due to the coronavirus.

“As a result of COVID-19, we have taken the decision to reduce the number of episodes for Neighbours and Home and Away from five to two per week for both soaps, so that our viewers can continue to enjoy them for as long as possible,” the broadcaster said.

“Both programmes will air on Monday and Fridays, effective from Monday 30th March.”

Home & Away is currently off air in Australia for news specials, whilst production has also halted.

But Neighbours resumed after a brief pause last week and hopes to continue to its scheduled production break at the end of next week.

A 10 spokesperson told TV Tonight, “Neighbours will continue to give viewers fresh entertainment while they are at home – five nights a week on 10 Peach.”

Source: Digital Spy.

8 Responses

  1. In New Zealand, TVNZ announced this week that it had taken Home and Away off its schedule from yesterday (March 26) until further notice. I hear that TVNZ is around two weeks behind the Australian broadcast, so it is in a vulnerable position. Repeats of Young Sheldon will take over H&A in the weekday 5.30pm timeslot.

    1. You answered your own question. The situation isn’t going to change anytime soon. Hence they will not be going back to production for quite some time. Hence there won’t be enough episodes to last. There are only a finite amount that can be shown

      2. Home and Away are well ahead in the number of episodes it has already filmed. I heard six months, which means there is no real reason not to have it on now. I’m no longer a regular viewer but taking off air when there are plenty of episodes to show bugs me, for my my fellow soapie viewers.

  3. There will be some very unhappy fans in the UK next week. I don’t see the point of it, especially when Channel 5 makes a big deal about being same day as AUS broadcasting. They should stop only if/when we stop. Networks are forgetting we need entertainment if we go into lockdown, not reduced content and more news.

    1. Seven can put anything on their secondary channel. They’ve six months of episodes for their primary channel and at the moment it feels like we’re looking at a three month break, so no point wasting episodes now (whilst news viewing is high) when they can be slotted into the schedule later when other new programming may be thin on the ground.

Leave a Reply