While other things were raging on this week it was announced by Freemantle Productions that the iconic Australian soap, Neighbours had not found a buyer after its partner UK's Channel Five pulled out.
Neighbours it has to be said had lost a chunk of its Australian viewing in recent years and was very much dependent on foreign sales and money to keep it in production.
The show started in the late 1980's and was originally shown on the BBC at Midday but such was its popularity that the previously sacrosanct early evening hand over period from children's program to that for adults was shunted back to allow it to start at 5:35 on BBC1 before the 6PM evening news and this altered the times of children's shows such as Blue Peter.
The evening news was the program that marked the end of children's tv and the start of the family viewing up to 9pm in the days before dedicated children's channels.
That series launched the careers of a good number of Australian stars such as Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan shown here at the famous Wedding scene which had massive viewing figures at the time and whose song Suddenly by Angry Andersson became a big hit in 1989.
The reason that it was repeat shown in the early evening was due to older schoolchildren staying to watch the shown during lunch recess and the need in an age where there was no iPlayer to enable people to have a second chance to see that days episode which was kept on by Channel Five and to which the slot created for it at the BBC got reused for cheap to make quiz shows.
Today rather like the show itself that quiz show format looks tired.
It is sad for the shows fans the series will be coming to and end as production stops although the UK is a bit behind as it was a game changer in the tv world in lots of ways.
R.I.P. Neighbours.
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