The love affair between the UK and our Australian Neighbours kickstarted all the way back in October 1986. Whilst the programme had been steadily airing away for nineteen months on both the Seven Network and Channel 10 down under, nobody could quite foresee the popularity Neighbours would have when it hit BBC One on the other side of the world.
The Aussie Connection
We Brits have always had a significant relationship with Aussies, underpinned by our shared heritage, common values, trade and investment links and shared monarchy.
The Government of Australia launched a Ten Pound Poms migration scheme in 1945, so called because of the cost of £10 (the equivalent of £345 in today’s climate) in processing fees allowing British nationals to move away. As the cost of the journey home was at least £120 (over £4,000 today), far beyond what most could afford, many British people set up home in Australia and remain in the country today.
TV Landscape: 1986
The television climate in 1986 was vastly different to what we’ve become accustomed to today. The majority of the BBC’s daytime schedule was rolling pages of Ceefax teletext and children’s programmes, lunchtime news and the occasional sports coverage.
On the Friday before Neighbours launched, the slot was filled with BBC regional news, an episode of the stop-motion animated series Bertha and the International Snooker Quarter-finals.
From the following Monday 27th October, BBC One’s schedule was to be shook up by a new output, described by Breakfast Time’s Pamela Armstrong that morning as “simply more of everything” — and it was just that. There was more children’s programming, including birthday card messages with Philip Schofield and Janet Ellis, a Gardener’s World special, a refreshed One O’Clock News and some new programmes: Open Air, a vehicle for a young Eamonn Holmes, and the first edition of Neighbours at 1:25pm which explored Danny’s nightmares and that now infamous buck’s party.
Before long Neighbours was pulling in up to 18 million viewers a day to BBC One, though not until channel controller Michael Grade moved the regular repeat viewing from 10am the following day to 5:35pm the same day, after Children’s BBC.
Neighbours on the move
The first of these new repeat viewings aired on Monday 4th January 1988, billed as “An opportunity to see the dramas of Ramsay Street in a new time-slot each weekday.” Viewers tuning in after Blue Peter that day would get to see Clive confess to his brother Graham why he left medicine, trouble for Scott and Charlene and a flashback for Shane to his car crash that killed Jean Richards.
Lord Grade’s reasoning for Neighbours big move into a teatime slot was all down to a comment made by his teenage daughter Alison, who said she and her friends had been in trouble at school for watching the show during their lunch break. Grade rushed into the office the next day and insisted the Neighbours repeat be moved to cater for the teenage audience that nobody at the BBC had considered the show appealed to.
Stay tuned to our site over the next few weeks as we delve into more of Neighbours’ love affair with UK audiences, exploring competition from a certain rival Aussie soap, the success of cast members’ pop careers in our country and when Ramsay Street met royalty.
[…] my last feature I spoke about how Neighbours made its way onto UK screens, the TV landscape prior to its launch in our country and how the BBC schedule re-jigging shaped it […]