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.
Whilst I admit things have got better the past few years the reality is starting from the 80s is madness for a show that began in the 60s.
I cant see a channel like this taking off. The classic repeats of the longest running soaps are already being shown plus Casualty and Holby City as well. E4 might show Hollyoaks and at a push Brookside but I really cant see there being much else anyone would want to show. A new channel would also have to acquire the rights to show them which might prove expensive.
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.
The oldest show Nick at Nite shows nowadays is Full House, which began in the late 80s, and the only pre-21st century show Gameshow Network regularly shows is Match Game from the 70s (though they do show What’s My Line and I’ve Got a Secret for two weeks overnight around Christmas time).
They do still have other networks like MeTV and Antenna TV that still old content from as early as the 50s, and Buzzr has picked up the old gameshow slack from Gameshow Network, so the States definitely has more appeal for the really old stuff than we do.
The three big soaps are all getting FTA repeats with varying degrees of success. There is no market for anything further.
Neighbours fans on certain message boards often call out for repeats still. Fremantle released the 1985 season and first half of 1986 on DVD but the releases stopped because according to Fremantle “there was no interest”
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.
Isn't it the case that as programmes gets older and newer programmes are made, they become less relevant to a channel's target audience.
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.
Isn't it the case that as programmes gets older and newer programmes are made, they become less relevant to a channel's target audience.
Maybe so. But the older programmes don't move to other services once one channel's lost interest in them.
I think its more of a nostalgic thing, "ooh I remember watching <whatever>", then you tune in and realise you've had your rose-tinted spectacles on and in actuality this was crap.
Exactly. Keep seeing people moaning E4 aren't rerunning Hollyoaks in full from the very beginning but in reality it is much better, certainly for a show like Hollyoaks, to show the memorable episodes rather than every single one. Would be good if they added some of their late night episodes to the schedule though.
Frankly as well people don't have time to keep up with all the new episodes now, never mind a repeat run aswell. Also unlike other repeats soaps are continuous rather than a few series which are repeated on a loop until the end of time. Bullseye may be on Challenge all the time but ultimately they only really made two episodes - one where they won the speedboat and one where they didn't.
One of the US soaps does air on the Sony Channel currently.
That’s Days of our Loves. CCXTV also has The Bold and the Beautiful.
Speaking of US soaps, there used to be a channel over there called Soapnet that aired reruns of all the big American soaps, as well as some older soaps and dramas, and it lasted for over a decade, but it never really got great ratings, and it eventually closed down to make way for the Disney Junior channel.