Shortland Street

Mainly because they bought six months of episodes in its current 3 a week slot. It is unlikely though that the promos will run in peak time.

The plan at the moment is not to buy any more when these have played, but to run regional stuff in the 2.30 slot three days a week, as the Granada companies now do, and the Network will provide programmes for the other two days.

This makes no sense, where did you obtain this info? If they only have 6 months why would they waste time and money promoting it in the 4th month of that 6 month contract and why go to the trouble of making an introduction programme for the show if you are not planning on sticking with it.

Only my 2nd post I know, so maybe not a time to be embarassing myself... but I actually went to a Shortland Street exhibition in a museum in Dunedin in NZ a couple of years back and they made a big point about it being popular in the UK.

They were talking out of their buttocks.

ColonelRed - can I just ask where you have got this information from? As I understand it Carlton bought 150 eps which is enough to last until the end of 2003. They also plan promotions around easter which they want to do to try and improve vieweing figures for the show.

And its a bit silly to screen the show in London/Westcountry for the first time for just 6 months and also make HTV skip 2 years of storys if they have no intention of screening SS as a long term thing. Surely it would have been better to carry on with the HTV eps as they had the rights to around 50 eps after where they left off anyway. And HTv viewers would have been pissed off in January when they missed so many eps and now if they axe it they will be pissed off again as they would be losing the show althogether.

Can you provide some evidence that the show is ending?

They could at least show it five days a wekk on ITV2?

The reason that they will promote it, is that was and still is quite a sizeable investment for Carlton to buy the programme for all their regions.

They still have around 3 months of episodes under licence and scheduled. The ratings have been awful, and they need to improve. Their options are to drop it at this stage and replace it with other programmes, and thus write off the cost of acquiring the show, which would only happen as a last resort, or make a last ditch attempt to reverse the ratings trend.

Given the downturn in viewers in the afternoon, they (Carlton) need to do something to try and stop the migration to other channels - hence a promotion campaign, that will run mainly in other daytime programme strands like 'This Morning' or 'Des and Mel'.

They were planning on sticking with the programme, it was originally planned as a fairly long term acquistion. The introduction programme was for the Carlton regions who were not as familiar with the programme as for example viewers in the Central region, where it previously had been relatively successful.

Again where did you get this info? Surely it is doing better than the regional programmes on thursday/friday as these are dire, esp in the Central region. Do you have viewing figures to share with us? The programme performed well at 5.10pm/5.35pm/1pm/1.10pm it only started to slide when they moved it to 2.30pm and cut down the number of episodes, they need to move it and increase the screenings. Surely they cannot drp it on Central after 10 years.

ColonelRed you seem to know a lot about this situation - do you work for Carlton or something?

Do you think if Carlton do axe it as a networked programme with the Carlton regions then Central and HTV will continue to show it as they have been committed to the show in the past.

The two main ITV companies are more interested in getting a simultaneous or macro schedule, with as many common programmes as possible, in order to keep their sales houses happy.

I would have thought it unlikely that Carlton would split the regions at 2.30 were they to drop SS in London and the WestCountry region, when there is an abundance of local shows that could arguably be shown in all four franchises.

As I said earlier though, this is unlikely to happen before the end of the Summer.

If thats the case then why did Carlton bother showing it in Carlton London and Westcountry?

I think viewing figures will be low for those too and also Wales cos they skipped over 2 years. And I also think the reason viewing figures may have dropped in the Carlton-Central region is a combination of the crap slot and that 80% of the cast were axed and the new characters arnt as good. The fact the show is going through a weak period doesnt help matters.

I see the Colonel is incapable of answering the simple question of WHERE IS HE GETTING THE INFO FROM???