Surely for someone who has the cash in hand to purchase the rights this would be an instant winner to start these shows off from the very beginning on a satellite channel together and get a few hundred thousand viewers for many of the shows? So many soaps, with thousands upon thousands of episodes that could just be let to run, introduce some US Soaps and soapy type dramas and you could quickly fill a schedule?
Surely the soap rights holders would be willing to get some dollars for such a product. You could go something like this.
Could have Corrie. Brookside. Hollyoaks. Doctors. Eastenders and Emmerdale Farm on from the start during the day and programmes like The Bill, Casualty, Dallas, Sunset Beach etc on at night.
Some episodes may also be missing from the archives so to show everything from the beginning may not be possible. Plus I can't imagine any network willing to allow their programmes to be shown on a channel that they had no part in. UK Gold had The Bill and Casualty because it was owned by Thames and The BBC.
CO
cobbles
As far as I'm aware of the big soaps only Crossroads is actually missing loads of episodes. The rest are missing a handful at most. Coronation Street for example exists and has been digitised in full.
Whilst I appreciate that's Sky Soap was tried many years ago - that was more than two decades ago and a lot of things have changed. The existing repeats of Corrie and EE show a demand is there for old soaps. The biggest issue with Sky Soap was it's lack of really big shows such as CS, EE, Brookside etc. The list of soap operas it actually showed is pretty horrendous.
A lot has changed since the mid-90s as vintage soap is probably more desirable now with traditional soaps having lost viewers.
I don't see any reason why the main channels would be against having these shown on a digital channel, after all the episodes are just sitting in the archives, surely getting a one off repeat fee for them is better than nothing?
I see your point and yes times have changed. As regards the digital channels, Yes BBC and ITV probably wouldn't mind having another channel full soaps but only if they knew they were getting paid. To quote the song title
Some episodes may also be missing from the archives so to show everything from the beginning may not be possible. Plus I can't imagine any network willing to allow their programmes to be shown on a channel that they had no part in. UK Gold had The Bill and Casualty because it was owned by Thames and The BBC.
Of course some soaps that were made don't exist at all now, never mind on a per episode basis. United! is a case in point made by the BBC in the 1960s. They made somewhere around 150 episodes over I think it was two years, and today none of them exist. Likewise their other attempt at a soap opera, The Newcomers, ran for 4 years also in the late 1960s, and out of 430 odd episodes made, only five survive for whatever reason.
The BBC did have a bash at quite a few of this sort of stuff in the 1960s off the back of the success of Coronation Street, but I think it took until the 1970s to land on something relatively successful, ultimately culminating in 1985 and EastEnders.
There is probably nothing to stop any channel buying up old episodes of EastEnders, Corrie, Emmerdale and archived soap like Brookside, Crossroads and whatever else if they wanted to. Its whether somebody considers there is an audience for it, much like the reason for any decision the commercial market makes, and whether the asking price for the episodes is right.
Another thing about Sky Soap, it was only a part-time / timeshared channel that was only on for 2 hours a day, and shared one of the old analog Astra satellite transponders, shared with a number of other part-time channels. At the time, I was of the opinion that a channel that is only on-air for 2 hours a day shouldn't realistically be called a channel.
Some episodes may also be missing from the archives so to show everything from the beginning may not be possible. Plus I can't imagine any network willing to allow their programmes to be shown on a channel that they had no part in. UK Gold had The Bill and Casualty because it was owned by Thames and The BBC.
Of course some soaps that were made don't exist at all now, never mind on a per episode basis. United! is a case in point made by the BBC in the 1960s. They made somewhere around 150 episodes over I think it was two years, and today none of them exist. Likewise their other attempt at a soap opera, The Newcomers, ran for 4 years also in the late 1960s, and out of 430 odd episodes made, only five survive for whatever reason.
The BBC did have a bash at quite a few of this sort of stuff in the 1960s off the back of the success of Coronation Street, but I think it took until the 1970s to land on something relatively successful, ultimately culminating in 1985 and EastEnders.
There is probably nothing to stop any channel buying up old episodes of EastEnders, Corrie, Emmerdale and archived soap like Brookside, Crossroads and whatever else if they wanted to. Its whether somebody considers there is an audience for it, much like the reason for any decision the commercial market makes, and whether the asking price for the episodes is right.
Plus the BBC got badly burned with Eldorado in 1992/93 which in turn led the BBC to turn Casualty and Holby City into what I called "soap-lite"
The last few years have actually been pretty good for people who want to watch classic soap, after Granada Plus ended there was no Classic Corrie for years, and UKTV Gold being split into two saw the end of EastEnders and Neighbours repeats.
Now we have EastEnders, Corrie, Emmerdale, Casualty and Holby City all being repeated. It would be nice if we could have more like Brookside and a proper repeat run of The Bill, but it’s a lot better than it was.
For some reason in this country archive material of any type (outside of anything that's either really popular or never went off the air in the first place - Dad's Army for example) just doesn't rate once its been off for a while and come back. Various networks have tried it with segments and specials and whatever else, and they've all come back to more recent material.
Challenge used to air all kinds of things from the 1970s onwards, and it used to be quite rare where anything from the 21st century was on air at all, but since then its gone back the other way. Nick Junior used to air old episodes of Rainbow and other material, but that's all gone now in favour of more modern material, and of course CITV did the old School Weekend, which while it gave them their best weekend ratings wise for months, they knew it wouldn't have lasted.
And yet you can go to the States and see things like Nick at Nite and Gameshow Network, which are quite happy to air stuff dating back to the 1950s sometimes, and they make a success of it, enough anyway to do it. Okay we did have Nick at Nite over here as a strand for a while, but it was just the same programming with different bumpers and dropping a repeat of The MIddle and also Neighbours in as well.