James Martin

The problem is a 6:30 Home & Away is then shafted by being up against Hollyoaks. I certainly can't see them put Neighbours up against Oaks! I just can't watch 5* as the picture is terrible. So I'd probably just record the lunchtime showing and watch it back when I had half an hour to myself. But SD doesn't bother many people; see the crazy figures for Love Island, particularly on streaming.

I wouldn't be completely surprised if the evening showing gets dropped entirely if this goes through (and it's rare these things get refused) with Neighbours taking the 6pm slot. H&A hasn't rated that well at teatime for a long time now and they've already experimented with going lunchtime-only during the start of the Pandemic. With Eggheads and Watercolour Challenge also joining the schedule I can't see where it can all fit in.

Didn't want to start a new thread but for Irish viewers, however because RTE Two is being used for the Euros, Home & Away is lunchtime-only on RTE One on match days. RTE used to be a day behind Channel 5 - is that still the case since the death of Prince Phillip knocked the blocks out of sync?

You say that, but 5* looked absolutely fine on my old CRT set. But since I've moved to HD LED, 5* looks atrocious.

One option is to go to four episode weeks for a month (we've got two bank holidays in May which would help) but I fear we're going to be out of sync for the rest of the year now. I'd personally just schedule a double episode next week. In the early days C5 would be quite meticulous about keeping the blocks in sync; back when they had Europa League football rights they would run Home & Away in mid-afternoon, later on they'd demote the evening showing to Five Life. They then went through a period of dropping it on bank holidays when we started to get dangerously close to Australia. I think we made it a week behind at one point in the late 2000's.

That's a shame as the blocks are now going to be out-of-sync, unless they schedule a double ep somewhere?

Are they moving it to 5* or is it going completely?

So as it stands we're only 3 weeks behind, however with Australia getting six episodes a week that gap is expected to increase.

Are Seven really going at the pace of six a week? They're surely going to run out at some point?

Still lunchtime only though, whereas Neighbours gets an evening showing. I know Neighbours is more important to them but still.

The other thing they could do is put Home and Away out at 7pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Now that Emmerdale isn't in that slot it might rate fairly well.

Also - I note Neighbours is still getting its evening showing, why them and not Home and Away? Would make more sense to run one show Monday & Wednesday and another Tuesday & Thursday.

Don't get the move to lunchtime only - the first time ever in the UK I think, save for the odd one-off - bank holidays, football etc. I suppose catchup means people will seek it out that way.

Just confirmed - Monday and Friday for both H&A and Neighbours from Monday. No word from Seven yet.

Going down to 4 episodes a week would give us 208 episodes a year, and there's 230 in a season. I'm not sure there's an easy way to do it though unless Seven go back to a proper 5 night a week schedule. Ireland came off air on Monday night with the same episode, ending on Raffy having a seizure on Facebook Live - they appear to be a day behind the UK. I'm surprised they didn't pause for the World Cup as it was lunchtime only during that period. It's all a bit odd as we could easily complete the season by early January, but I'm guessing it's not restarting until fairly late In Australia - late Jan/early Feb.

Interesting that Neighbours is moving up to 6pm. I wonder if we will see Home & Away take the 5:30pm slot in the new year? The figures these days are exceptionally low when you consider that in the early '90s it was one of ITV's biggest shows, drawing in a peak of 14m in 1994! Nowadays, it's around half a million! I wonder if it's a fragmented audience across the various showings, or a more millennial audience watching via On Demand that's caused that? An exceptionally long break again mind you. I wonder if there would be any merit in dropping down to 4 days a week and then taking the show off on bank holidays, which would build up enough slack for us to continue over Seven's break? So we would be more-or-less synchronous at the start of the year but as Australia piled on the double and triple bills, we'd edge slowly behind until we had enough stock to cover late November to early January the following year?

So it looks like the Aussies are doing triple bills on Thursdays. That's a massive commitment to keep up with. And I thought three double bills a week of Corrie was overkill. I notice Neighbours is following the Brits and going year-round.

Just a sidenote but looking at the BARB figures, Neighbours is doing better at lunchtime than it is at teatime! How come I wonder?

Quite a few ITV regions had it at 6pm. Central did until March 1999 when the whole network went to 5pm. What's been happening in Australia then - any reason for the odd scheduling? Sport?

It's not such a big deal these days in the era of On Demand. I remember ITV once stuck Home & Away on at 11:10am and 3:40pm on a bank holiday. When the reboot of Crossroads took those slots over, they'd only have a lunchtime showing on bank holidays. I'm surprised they don't do that now TBH - it's not like there aren't other ways to see the programme if you miss it. I must admit I do miss the classic episodes on 5* that used to be aired during the summer break though, although some of them were badly thought out, the From Day One series we had during Summer 2012 was absolutely superb and it was great to see some stuff from the ITV era again. Two episodes on television and a third on-demand (one of the few times I've been grateful for having Virgin in the days before I owned a Smart TV) I think the fact we don't have a summer break now probably has more to do with the synchronisation of Neighbours with Australia - that can't come off-air for our Summer now, so instead I would imagine they'll take both shows off when Neighbours takes its Summer break in Oz. I don't think moving Home & Away to 5pm permanently is a bad idea, you know. It would avoid it being up against The Simpsons. Either that, or I'd move Neighbours to 5pm and Home & Away to 5:30pm - but I would go back to having the premiere at teatime, not lunchtime. It would guarantee a bigger audience for the evening showing that way - is there even much of an audience at lunchtime now compared to the 90s? I don't get the First Look thing either, especially now everyone can get Channel 5 in HD, but up against Hollyoaks it performs pretty well.

No summer break this year?

The change may be a result of the change of ownership if C5. Same day broadcasts are a difficult one but if Seven could run Monday to Thursday with the hour episode on Thursdays then that would, in theory, work. The time difference still means the show would premiere in Australia. Neighbours is a different beast - that's been pretty much made for the UK market first and foremost for a while.

That's the length of the "From Day One" summer break. I'm down with it if 5* stick some classic episodes on but otherwise what's the point?

1988 - 1994 The Early Years 1994 - 1997 The Golden Years 1997 - 2000 The Nash Years 2000 - 2005 The Sutherland Era 2005 - 2007 The High Drama Era 2008 The Birthday Era 2009 - Present The New World Order

A week behind but having a catchup with YouTube and an HDMI cable and yeah I remember Dale like it was yesterday. 1222 was the lunchtime only episode in the UK. I remember setting the video for it first thing before going to school after the huge cliffhanger of the previous episode hitting me out of nowhere. Absolutely numbed the hell out of the 9 year old me on its first showing. It was repeated during the 2012 Summer Break on 5*. Haven't seen any of the surrounding episodes or the build up since the ITV airing, Epic acting and writing. Just to add to this, I can now confirm for anoraks after 20 years that ITV ran their own recap on 1223. The 7Two version just has the ambulance leaving, but ITV had about three/four minutes recapping the lunchtime only episode followed by the very first instance of shortened end credits. Which following Pippa's big breakdown jarred a bit violently. Melissa George blatantly overdubbed in 1224.