Has Television quality declined?

ISTR Granada did show WoF for a while, but it wasn't before summer 2001 that they took this, when WoF took the 5.30 slot the hour long regional news stopped permanently.

It was networked for all of 2000, but no granada station, in 2001 it was networked to all ITV regions broadcast episodes at 5.30pm from 2 January to 22 June 2001


Also For FULL Details about ITV 5pm line up from 2000 - 2004.
http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/networked-itv-1990s-31327/page-114

Family Fortunes too - though both were obviously cheap daytime versions of the primetime equivalents. It wasn't until Deal or No Deal arrived that prizes which could match primetime shows came into daytime TV - but as we see with Pointless and The Chase ultimately it's the game rather than the prize that matters.

In a way ITV made the same mistake with Paul O'Grady as they did with Home and Away, just trying to replace like with like and never really delivering.

It was quite bad with the gameshows in the early 2000s. I remember Family Fortunes with Andy Collins being absolutely dreadful, then Catchphrase with Mark Curry when they did away with the prize money which had been built up throughout the show and replaced it with just a points system.

Didn't the 2002 reboot of PYCR go out at 5pm as well? As that was really the only big gameshow that gave out a biggish amount of prize money...

Play your cards never went out at 5pm, Never had it so good did go out in that slot, Price is right also went out at 5pm with big prizes, but it felt crap.

Bar the obvious points/reduction in prices for the likes of Family Fortunes and Catchphrase in 2002 when you look back it, Andy Collins and particularly Mark Curry were decent enough presenters. I think it was more the intial shock of big gameshows been reduced to 70 episode type series losing Les Dennis, and still a Roy Walker hangover. I actually have enjoyed the recent Catchphrase 2002 repeats on challenge. To be fair I had no problem with Nick Weir either.

Love to see WOF getting a rerun. I'd like to think one of the old presenters could do it again. Bradley Walsh return? John Leslie thankfully has found his feet, doing some radio shows for the Scottish Bauer AM network. Ironically of all the 'daytime lite' versions of gameshows - Wheel of Fortune still worked pre-Paul Hendy when that final set looked liked it had shrunk and was awful. I'm not entirely sure if there was a real audience for the Leslie/Hendy daytime WOF?

On the subject of 2002 - People Versus - Kaye Adams version - too quickly disposed of!

ITV dropped Home and Away as Seven Network wanted a lifetime contract, which Channel 5 now have. ITV understandably wanted a show which would maintain the level of quality the show had had for the past 12 years it had been on the air.

If you look at how mediocre the show has become in the last five years, ITV may well have had a point. Home and Away is now effectively The Braxton Show with the other characters doing cameo roles. Added to that, the scriptwriting is shockingly bad - largely because the non-Braxton characters are barely used. Plot-driven soaps don't work unless the storyline creates a decent aftermath; such as Emmerdale's plane crash and how the community took on the impossible task of rebuilding itself both physically and emotionally. Even in Home and Away a decade ago, we had the death of Noah at the hands of Psycho Sarah and the ripples that created in the community such as Hayley attempting to move on with her life as a widow.

If you look at how badly the show under performs in the UK now, and how quick ITV were to ditch Crossroads for a similarly lacklustre performance, I wouldn't be surprised if the show was hidden away on ITV2 by now.

Certainly if Home and Away had stayed on ITV we would have never had the return of Crossroads, or Night and Day.

Had, however, ITV stood by Series 2 of Crossroads - or at least Yvon Grace had gone for evolution over revolution as opposed to the awful reboot at she ended up commissioning - I believe that it would still be on air now, maybe even with a prime time showing on ITV2. Also, if Crossroads had stayed on air the makeup of ITV Plc's studio site structure would undoubtedly be very different as Lenton Lane would have remained as a production base.

Crossroads sadly suffered from an almost identical curse to Eldorado; despite the amazing pedigree of the adult cast with trusted names like Jane Gurnett and Sherrie Hewson the young cast bought in was a bit hit and miss. Some of the teens were excellent and well cast, but some of them simply couldn't act. It also got canned as a result of a change of guard at the top. And both shows were simply not given time.

Eldorado was actually quite a good show when Yentob axed it, and the final 3-4 months of Series 2 of Crossroads were as good as anything Corrie or Emmerdale were putting out at the time, especially with the excellent - and left criminally unresolved during the reboot - storyline of Phil being framed for his father's murder. Crossroads' main internal problem was not being sure of the target audience. They should have gone for the Home and Away audience, but moving it to 5:30 meant getting the teen market was impossible as they were already committed to and watching Neighbours.

It was, eventually, a really good show which I understand was also selling well internationally at the time. A lesson in how not to build a new drama or soap brand.

The main thing which sank Crossroads MK2 was the time slot. The Home & Away slot was just not right for it, as a result we saw a much loved, homely brand being attached to a youth driven serial. Even the sentence "Let's replace Home & Away with Crossroads" looks ridiculous.

All of the publicity surrounding the revival was nostalgia driven, and yet they were quick to get rid of the nostalgic characters (possibly part of the plan, but it was all rather careless treatment of an iconic - if much derided brand).

Of course, nowadays the 5pm timeslot would have been perfect, as the younger audience has been all but abandoned by the main channels.

Didn't Home and Away replace Crossroads in the first place? They lost H&A so they brought Crossroads back.

No Emmerdale Replaced Crossroads in its slot at 18.30pm. Home and away was brought because the BBC was getting HUGH ratings with its own OZ soap Neighbours. ITV also tried other Oz soaps including Families...

Thanks to H&W blockbusters losts its slot and ended up being axed.

The original plan in 1988 was to drop the Crossroads name altogether and call the show King's Oak, at the time of axing we were in the interim branding period of Crossroads, King's Oak. It would be interesting to see what would have happened had the 1988 axing never happened. I certainly don't believe by 2001 it would have been anything like the revived version.

Pretty sure Emmerdale (Farm) started being networked at that point. Before then it was scheduled regionally and I think may have even been in the afternoon in several regions at that stage.

Emmerdale was network from 1988 at Wed and Thursday 18.30, but Central and Anglia moved it to 19pm form 1989. From January 1990 all other regions followed the Central and Anglia schedule in the familiar Tuesday and Thursday 19:00 slot.

In 1993 STV moved emmerdale to 17.10, ( one has to wonder if that was a tit for tate, since Yorkshire was the only company not to bring back High road...) STV kept Emmerdale at 17.10 until Spring 1998.