The 3 year age gap between Neighbours and H&A.

[CAEF]

Neighbours begun in March 1985 and H&A in Jan 1988 so 3 years separate the 2 shows. I think in TV terms that is quite a lot. It has more history and had a long head start before H&A came along. Maybe it is just me but I do find the 3 year gap quite big.

[Holey]

Jul 19, 2017 20:45:53 GMT CAEF said:

Neighbours begun in March 1985 and H&A in Jan 1988 so 3 years separate the 2 shows. I think in TV terms that is quite a lot. It has more history and had a long head start before H&A came along. Maybe it is just me but I do find the 3 year gap quite big.

It probably seems bigger to us in the UK?  It seems the gap is bigger than it actually is.  Perhaps because when Home and Away started in the UK Neighbours was absolutely massive!  Hence itv copying the BBC and buying Home And Away and putitng it in the teatime slot.  Copy Cats.  m0918

[roverman]

Home and Away was never quite the success that ITV wanted it to be, although I'm not sure they understood Aussie Soap, they just bought it and hoped it would emulate the stellar success Neighbours had,

The truth is it never matched Crossroads figures wise and nothing ever has. They are lucky if the Chase breaks 4 million these days.

[Holey]

Jul 20, 2017 8:11:00 GMT roverman said:

Home and Away was never quite the success that ITV wanted it to be, although I'm not sure they understood Aussie Soap, they just bought it and hoped it would emulate the stellar success Neighbours had,

The truth is it never matched Crossroads figures wise and nothing ever has. They are lucky if the Chase breaks 4 million these days.

I agree, they would have been better keeping Crossroads and see how it panned out. 

[CAEF]

Jul 20, 2017 8:11:00 GMT roverman said:

Home and Away was never quite the success that ITV wanted it to be, although I'm not sure they understood Aussie Soap, they just bought it and hoped it would emulate the stellar success Neighbours had,

The truth is it never matched Crossroads figures wise and nothing ever has. They are lucky if the Chase breaks 4 million these days.

They hoped that Home And Away would be a threat to Coronation Street but somehow it never panned out. It got on average a combined figure of 13-14 million whereas Neighbours got 16-20 million combined. In honesty Emmerdale was ITV's second soap when Crossroads ended because it got 12 million in one go whereas H&A got about 6 million for the afternoon showing and 6 million for the evening showing, they combined it to 12-14 million.

That is why Neighbours in the UK is much more iconic and successful than H&A.

[CAEF]

Although if you added the 3 years it took to create H&A it was in early stages of development before Neighbours hit the air in March 1985. Alan Bateman first thought of H&A in late 1984. It appears in a list of Channel 7 projects of future shows in August 1985, over 2 years before it hit the air.

Channel 7 have a list of their photo archives and H&A appears in the Aug/Sep 1985 collection. Batmena did say he spent 3 years creating the show.

colsearch.nfsa.gov.au/nfsa/search/display/display.w3p;adv=;group=;groupequals=;holdingType=;page=0;parentid=;query=%22Home%20And%20Away%22%20Decade%3A%221980-1989%22;querytype=;rec=2;resCount=10

So you could say it is the same age as Neighbours in that respect.

[Holey]

I am actually quite enjoying Home and Away right now. The Morgan family intrigue me. I like the fact we still have the likes of Alf and Irene and it would be nice if we saw more of Cornelia Francis on a semi regular basis.

[CAEF]

H&A has deffo improved a lot and gone back to its roots more I think in 2017.