2000 Episode Discussion

[dan]

As much as I'd like to think the 2000 episodes were getting too many viewers and in were in danger of eclipsing the current episodes, I'm afraid the reverse is true. If you go the the uk tv ratings site www.barb.co.uk and look at the multichannel top10s and then scroll down to 5* you will see that the old episodes didn't make a single appearance in the channel's top10, and then when the new episodes resumed (I presume 5* either preview or repeat them?) they all appeared within the top 10.

I think they probably got permission from 7 to show a block of 50 episodes (showing only 48 because the bank holiday took away two slots at the start of the first week) and then decided, possibly based on poor ratings, not to move to the next block of 50.

[Dan F]

I don't think there was any dispute about them getting poor ratings (though it's a completely ridiculous and inaccurate system anyway), it was more the fact that they used that as a reason to ditch them when they hadn't made any effort whatsoever to let people know they were being aired. There's a number of people both on here and Twitter who have said they wouldn't have even known about them if it wasn't for BTTB mentioning it - and others who didn't realise until we ran the story of them being dropped, who were understandably even more disappointed.

They don't need permission from Seven in any case, they own the UK transmission rights for all episodes from 2841 onwards and could show them whenever they like - they just choose not to.

[beau_t]

^Agreed and as someone else mentioned, for some silly reason they were shown in TV listings only as "Home and Away", not even "Home and Away The Early Years". So obviously anyone reading the listings is just going to assume it's one of many repeats of the regular current episodes.

I will admit I got my hopes up that these episodes would continue, I was thoroughly enjoying them, in some ways even more than the 1992 episodes on 7Two. There were a lot of charcters such as the Sutherlands and Brodie who I didn't like first time round but I was enjoying giving them a "second chance" this time. I am really disappointed that Five said they would continue for the forseeable future, only to cancel them a couple of weeks later. They must have known what their plans were at that point, surely.