The Aussie soap "Neighbours" is coming to an end after 37 years on the air--Channel 5 in the UK, the show's main support after Australian ratings dropped and Network Ten moved it to one to their digital subchannels, decided to drop the show and producer Fremantle was unable to sell it elsewhere in the UK, so production will soon come to an end:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/iconic-australian-soap-neighbours-to-end-after-37-years-1235102824/ In the U.S., Fremantle and its predecessor Grundy tried three times to make the show popular here and struck out each time--in a New York and LA test run in 1991 with "Dangerous Women," an Americanization of their "Prisoner [Cell Block H]," a very brief run on Oxygen when Oprah still owned a piece of the channel and nobody watched it, and a few years ago on Hulu. It follows a long line of unsuccessful attempts to air Aussie soaps after "Prisoner"'s initial success in 1980 (which ended with the departure of Franky Doyle, probably the first out lesbian character on television anywhere), with Norman Lear unable to sell "The Sullivans" in syndication in1980 (it ended up on the little-watched VISN, which is now the Hallmark Channel) and "Home and Away" bombing in prime time in the formative, New York apartment, Tom Bergeron/Jeff Probst/Phil Keoghan/Bob the Puppet years of FX when it was styled as fX. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/4d73e4e2-3f7c-4e62-a47d-9a0471561162n%40googlegroups.com.
