Has Television quality declined?

I think the soaps have suffered by being over-cooked. Most of them now put out five episodes a week and it just means storylines are being eaten through at an enormous pace. The writing in particular has really suffered - go and watch 90s episodes of Emmerdale post plane crash and the stuff that normally gets spread out over a week gets far more pace and punch into two or three episodes instead.

The other real problem is shows are often not given time. Both the revival of Crossroads and Night and Day should have been given a LOT longer to settle in. Night and Day in particular could have gone on to be something really special after it became a weekly drama (it never worked as a daytime soap) but the culture at ITV was a bit different and like people say, the early 00s really was a low point, especially for ITV.

I'm not sure about Night and Day, but Crossroads was definitely a missed opportunity. It could have been great but they didn't give it a chance. I remember at one point they were advertising it during CiTV (with CiTV voiceover and branding), which makes you wonder exactly which audience they were trying to target.

For a soap to bed in with the audience it needs at least 2 years, Crossroads version 2 (2001 - 2002) could have worked but after 1 year they wanted to make changes, they bulked up on the filming to give episodes for transmission up to August 2002, then it came off screen for 4 months until January 2003 when version 3 came along... well that was it, it was crap and the axe followed 2 months later.

Same thing with Eldorado, it was rushed onto screen 2 months earlier than planned; but in the weeks up to its axing, the viewing figures were up; there had been a cast clear out and a new producer in the door but Alan Yentob still axed it in March 1993. Had it been given until the end of 1993 to prove itself, I feel it would have still be on today.

I noticed that the first time I went back to a studio in 2009. During the 90s I had been to many productions at TVC and Teddington, but went to see Goldenballs at TVC in 2009 and noticed how few lights they now have up there, but then with the new modern cameras they can operate in lower light. If you watched some of the older episodes of Coronation Street on You Tube from the 70s and 80s you can see how "unnatural" the interior scenes looks compared to today.

As with comedy, you can tell where they are filmed now, Teddington ones have a certain look and feel to them compared to the ones recorded at TVC. Of course TC8 was always the favoured studio for comedy with TC4 the other but they are of course no more. Watching the one off Open All Hours last Christmas, it just didn't feel right being recorded in the new studios at Manchester.

History kind of shows though that long term soaps were not right for the 5pm slot - Neighbours and Home and Away may have worked in the 90s, but ITV have had much more success with gameshows and chatshows in the slot than they ever would have done with the soaps.

What about Crossroads? that went out at 5.15 in a number of areas which still PULLED in the viewers, STV was one of them and still half the episodes come in the top ten...

Well, as mentioned, certainly the soaps did very well in the 5pm hour for many years. The problem with Crossroads and Night And Day is that they were trying to launch new soaps in a slot where there were already soaps which people had committed to. It might have worked if Home and Away had finished on the Friday and the new soap started the next Monday, but it didn't, there was months and months for people to get out of the habit. Even with a year off, Home and Away was back on before Night and Day started.

ITV were so careless losing Home and Away, it was such a mistake. It left an absolute chasm.

What if ITV never lost Home and away?

I think that's hard to say - it's likely that Channel 5 would have ended up buying the rights, maybe shortly after or before buying the rights to Neighbours. I don't think it would have fit in with the rest of the daytime schedule as it is now.

Agree with your assessment but do think (with the benefit of hindsight) by 2000 or so television and the available audience at that time had changed in such a way that they were never really going to work in the slot.

Always felt Night and Day was what should have been a drama serial forced into a soap structure - it worked much better as a weekly hour-long show than it ever did as a tea time soap. Going way off topic but also think C4 should have tried Brookside in a weekly 9pm slot before axing it completely.

Didn't do them any favours dropping the show a year earlier than anticpated, granted they wanted to damage the show so by the time it got to Channel 5 the ratings would drop, effectively that happened, but it didn't do ITV any favours, their teatime schedule at that point was in a limbo, and changing the schedule wasn't doing them any favours, don't forget they only changed the teatime schedule the year before and it was probably the first time that Home and Away was properly networked at teatime, prior to March 1999, most regions had H&A at 5.10pm, some regions showed it at 6pm, and the odd region such as Border put it out at 6.30pm.

ITSR that prior to Crossroads and Night & Day appearing ITV was just showing any old rubbish in this slot, no show was comitted for long term. Didn't help that some regions had the news beginning at 5.30pm, Granada did this for a while and it was shockingly poor as they struggled to fill an hour mostly, it was good when they cut it back to 30 mins.

I think teatime only found to begin its feet again when The Paul O'Grady Show (Version 1.0) began about 9/10 years ago. Although The Chase is the show that peforms best in the 5pm slot, it's still good to see that they try different shows from time to time in that slot, where as the BBC (as much as I enjoy Pointless) and Channel 4 don't.

Wheel of fortunes was the first game show to fill the gap I think, there a thread about this. It was networked, broadcasting at 5,30pm for 52 weeks in 2001. Mind you Granada station didn't take this offering...