Af of 5 weeks ago the internet scheme was still going on. I heard them post something in last week's about one of the supposed Russian women being deported. Maybe more on tonight's shows.

The BBC is to drop Neighbours, it announced today.

The Australian soap has been a BBC One fixture for the past 21 years.

The Corporation said it had to let the show go because of an "unrealistic price demand".

Neighbours distributor Fremantle had asked for £300 million over eight years.

The BBC formally withdrew from bidding for the show this afternoon and will stop screening the programme from March or April next year when its current contract expires.

ITV1 and Five are now expected to bid for the show.

BBC One controller Peter Fincham called it a "sad day" for the channel, but a statement released claimed the Corporation had no other option.

"We do not believe that we could have justified to BBC viewers a price tag of what would have amounted to some £300 million across the term of the contract. Paying that sum would also have compromised our ability to invest in new original programmes," the statement said.

"We made a fair offer and are sad that we have not been able to reach terms with Fremantle."

The article must have come from early Friday as Five picked it up a couple of hours after the BBC dropped it. To be fair, the BBC have essentially paid a price for the show over the past few years that doesn't reflect the number of viewers it brings to BBC daytime. The problem comes from the BBC's public service remit and the difficulty in justifying paying for such a populist show. EastEnders at least has pretensions of being socially relevant whereas Neighbours is honest to God soap opera.

Five will treat it well. When they poached H&A from ITV 6 or 7 years ago, they gave it a publicity campaign never before seen in the UK for an individual show. The extra money will also go towards a higher quality product as far as production values are concerned with the High Definition change.

Anyway EastEnders...I think the May/Dawn story is going to twist a little. The show's having a bit of a publicity blitz at the moment (though they've humorously changed the tagline from "everybody's talking about it" to "there's more to EastEnders") and a print ad in one of the tabloids showed May offering Dawn cash.

Also a friend of mine told me that Rob has actually hit May this past week -- I assumed it was a lie on her part.

The ones I'm getting tonight are also heavy on Dot. A brilliantly written trip where Dot's faith was confronted landed her with an abandoned baby. Then Gary's mother Hazel showed up.

Then Jim Branning went to some kind of prostitution club with Russian girl hookers looking for the mother who later turned up at their house.

So again they seem to be stacking up more new characters.

There was also a lot of fun with Mo trying to prove Dot had a baby. Some of this material was hilarious.

It was actually a welcome relief from all that May-Dawn-Rob stuff. That is getting tiresome even though Rob is very good looking.

I wish I could watch Corrie instead of EE...

Edited May 21, 200718 yr by Sylph

'Neighbours' moves in at Five

BBC launched show in U.K. 21 years ago

By STEVE CLARKE

LONDON -- Battling terrestrial web Five has won the U.K. rights to seasoned Antipodean soap "Neighbours" in a three-horse race that has seen the price tag for the program soar.

A miffed BBC, which launched the show in Blighty 21 years ago, took the unusual step of saying the price demanded by distributor Fremantle would have involved an outlay of £300 million ($591 million) over 10 years.

ITV, the U.K.'s biggest private terrestrial web, will be furious that it failed to outbid Five, whose owner RTL also owns Fremantle.

It is hard to overstate Five's coup in seizing "Neighbours" following protracted and sometimes sour negotiations between Fremantle and the BBC.

Winning the rights is a personal victory for Five CEO Jane Lighting, who needs to turn around the fortunes of the station.

She said: "'Neighbours' is a fantastic asset for us to add to Five's family of channels, particularly as it is a household brand which delivers strong audiences daily."

In fact, the sudsta has been a ratings banker for the BBC since the pubcaster launched it as part of its BBC1 daytime schedule 21 years ago.

BBC 1 controller Peter Fincham said it was a "sad day" for the channel.

"Neighbours" will disappear from BBC1 next spring when the present contract expires.

The BBC said in a statement released Friday: "We have this afternoon formally withdrawn from the bidding for 'Neighbours.'"

"The BBC has had a long and fruitful relationship with 'Neighbours,' which has transmitted on BBC1 for 21 years, and this has come to an end because of an unrealistic price demand.

"We do not believe that we could have justified to BBC viewers a price tag of what would have amounted to some £300 million across the term of the contract. Paying that sum would also have compromised our ability to invest in new original programs. We made a fair offer and are sad that we have not been able to reach terms with Fremantle."

During the negotiations BBC buyers privately accused Fremantle of being "unrealistic and greedy."

ITV insiders will argue that Five secured "Neighbours" because it was in RTL's interest to ensure the show ended up on Five, which needs to raise its game.

I wish I could watch Corrie instead of EE...

Oh I'd take Corrie over EastEnders every time. Obviously it has its dull patches like any soap but the writing is so so strong that it's never been absolutely decimated and revamped like EE. I don't know how well it would translate but the humour and well observed characters make it head and shoulders above the rest. Not to mention the number of characters that have been in it since the 60s and 70s and still have front burner stories.

Sunday's episode in particular was one of the best soap episodes I've seen this year. Claire woke to find her house on fire and fell down the stairs getting knocked unconscious. She was eventually rescued but her baby is presumed dead (though it won't prove to be the case as we'll find out the fire was started deliberately to kidnap the baby). What is essentially a very OTT story is grounded in community and characterisation.

I particularly loved Gail running into the pub in nothing but a robe to try and find Claire's husband. No vanity, no pretension. And Eileen breaking down in the hospital later as she'd had dinner at Claire's earlier in the evening and put the baby to bed. "I sang him to sleep and I was terrible! The last thing he ever heard was this awful woman singing to him. It should have been Claire."

If you can get the episodes anywhere like UKNova or whatever or even YouTube, it's well worth the time.

Edited May 21, 200718 yr by JamesF

James, what do you know about the people who wrote Corrie and who are now writing it?

... how well it would translate...

I'm not sure what you meant by this.

Commencing in May 2007, ITV will relaunch its online website to include video on demand content. This will allow viewers to watch episodes of Coronation Street any day (free of charge) after their original transmission within a 30 day window.

ENDERS NEW LOW

By Nicola Methven, Tv Editor 19/05/2007

EASTENDERS crashed to its lowest-ever audience share in a head-to-head with Emmerdale.

ITV's one-hour Emmerdale special, which revealed who killed Tom King, drew an average audience of 8.6 million or 44per cent.

On BBC1, EastEnders had just four million viewers - a 19.6per cent share and the lowest for the soap since records began. The number of viewers was the second lowest in the show's history, beaten only by a 3.9 million audience in July last year, when EastEnders was also up against Emmerdale.

EastEnders went out from 7.30pm to 8pm on Thursday, while Emmerdale was broadcast between 7pm and 8pm.

Edited May 21, 200718 yr by Sylph

I wish I could get Corrie as well (I used to back in the mid-90s) but I always preferred Eastenders.

For that matter I wish I could get Neighbours & Home & Away too.

For that matter I wish I could get Neighbours & Home & Away too.

Me too.

Eastenders peaked at nearly 10 million viewer's the following evening. This was slightly higher than Corrie on Friday night.

Edited May 21, 200718 yr by dannigold

James, what do you know about the people who wrote Corrie and who are now writing it?

I'm not sure what you meant by this.

A lot of the character based stuff in Corrie comes from kind of...cultural absurdities and I think people might need some kind of knowledge of that. The self-reflexive kind of humour borne out of for example, "chav culture" in this country. It's not all like that and I guess I'm being a tad condescending. If someone watches a foreign show, they do after all usually have some knowledge of that country.

The writers of Corrie. I know that there was a certain staleness behind the scenes up until the mid 90s. Some great great scriptwriters but not so great producers and during that period EE was totally on top of its game in comparison. In 1997, they combatted this by drafting in a new producer Brian Park who went axe crazy and this drove a lot of the seasoned scripters away. It kind of continued in to the early 00s with producer Jane Macnaught who was attempting essentially to copy the darkness of EastEnders and it was dreadful. There was one story in particular with teenager Toyah Battersby being raped in a dingey alleyway that was just so far removed from what the show was about. By this point all those scriptwriters had left so there was no humour to anything. It was all fairly generic.

By around 2001, a former producer came back on board and managed to lure back a considerable number of the old scriptwriters who really turned the show around. I should note that it never had the kind of decline EE has battled but it was substandard. The quality has arguably pretty much stayed up since then with a former Emmerdale head honcho taking over the producer reigns. Jonathan Harvey is a particularly good scriptwriter. He's also done a fair bit of sitcom work. Daran Little also used to be tremendous. He was the Corrie archivist in the 90s who wormed a writing role but a couple of years ago he was either burned out/on an ego trip and jumped ship to do some terrible Hollyoaks spin-off that got canned after one season. I think it was on BBC America recently. Whether he'll crawl back remains to be seen.

For that matter I wish I could get Neighbours & Home & Away too.

I know torrents are readily available online for both should you ever have the time or inclination.

Winners at last night's BAFTA TV Awards included:

Single Drama - Housewife 49 (written by Victoria Wood)

Drama Series - The Street (lead writer Jimmy McGovern; episodes also written by Alan Field, Marc Pye, James Quirk and Arthur Ellison)

Drama Serial - See No Evil: The Moors Murders (written by Neil McKay)

Continuing Drama - Casualty (see IMDB for writing credits)

In addition, Richard Curtis was awarded the Academy Fellowship.