Are the current producers ruining Home and Away?

[Jacklost]

I don´t get what people see in Neighbours, it looks so boring

Looks so boring? I'm such a fan of your in-depth analysis.

I think (and I can only speak for myself here) that I enjoy Neighbours because of the interesting storylines, unique characters, inherent humour and warmth. They also pay respect to the history of the show, and there is a visible effort from the producers to appeal to the fans.

Kind of the opposite of Home and Away today.

Heh?

It´s opinions, you think Neighbours is much better but i just think it´s a lame show, i think Home and Away is the best than it has been for years. I don´t get why everyone is hating on the Braxtons when they saved the show, would you rather want the show to be cancelled back then? Home and Away in 2010 was a disaster so it was perfect when the Braxtons arrived and made the show good again

Did you actually watch Home and away before 2010? You keep talking about the 2010 season and how bad it was, but you have never mentioned how H&A was before that season.

2010 season had a dip, but 2009 and earlier had as much viewers as it has today. And even more in 2008 and earlier.

And the show had existed for 22 years before 2010.

I have watched the show from late 2001 to now, 2009 was great with the Hugo plotline but in 2010 it just went down when many of the cast started leaving and we got new ones pushed on us and not to mention the gruesome boring Penn Graham storyline and even Roo´s return wasn´t interesting...

this is a copy of something I wrote back in 2013. I am copying and pasting it, because this information is no longer available on Tvtonight.com:

"I have done a quick research of ratings in week 36 in three different years: 2009, 2010 and 2013. Source is the tvtonight.com.au site.

2009

Monday 1 241 000 (rank 5)

Tuesday 1 263 000 ( rank 7)

Wednesday 1 203 000 (rank 7)

Thursday 1 125 000 (rank 6)

2010

Monday 1 013 000 (rank 10)

Tuesday 1 106 000 (rank 10)

Wednesday 1 035 000 (rank 13)

Thursday 998 000 (rank 9)

2013

Monday 992 000 ( rank 7)

Tuesday 952 000 (rank 9)

Wednesday 943 000 (rank 6)

Thursday 901 000 (rank 7)"

And then I add the rating numbers for Wednesday 11th March, the last day with information on TVtonight.com:

I have done a quick research of ratings in week 36 in three different years: 2009, 2010 and 2013. Source is the tvtonight.com.au site.

HOME AND AWAY Network 7 .........878,000

I know that the viewers numbers aren't that high as it was some years ago, but H&A was ranked as number 8 on March 11th... in Australia. And that is about the same as in 2009 and in 2013...

So I don't understand that the Braxtons have saved the show...

I don´t care about ranks...

I don´t like something based off ranks, i started liking the show way more when the Braxtons came

[Homeandawayfan.]

The first 20 or so years of H&A was waaaay better than Neighbours. At the minute Neighbours has nicked the "better show" title off H&A. As I said, in 1988 H&A was much more fun and vibrant than Neighbours, grittier but not in a depressing way. Neighbours was lighter with topical things but was more spartan and dull, teens in Neighbours were less developed. H&A had this exotic look and this get up and go, rewatching 1988 H&A just reiterates that.

I am confident H&A can improve, but to me the Braxtons have not saved the show, it was nice initially to see a darker side to H&A when they first arrived but that was built on and took over.

[jodlebirger]

Heh?

It´s opinions, you think Neighbours is much better but i just think it´s a lame show, i think Home and Away is the best than it has been for years. I don´t get why everyone is hating on the Braxtons when they saved the show, would you rather want the show to be cancelled back then? Home and Away in 2010 was a disaster so it was perfect when the Braxtons arrived and made the show good again

I don´t care about ranks...

I don´t like something based off ranks, i started liking the show way more when the Braxtons came

It had a dip in 2010, but not enough to cancel the show it was still doing quite ok, and the show doesn't rate much better now. And you think that 2010 was bad (and so do I) but a show doesn't survive without ratings, or doesn't get cancelled with good ratings either.

Because you, I and the rest of the viewers and readers of this page can mean what we want about the show...But the ratings is all that are important to the channel bosses and producers, in the addition of the show's reputation. The show did change some direction in 2010, and then again in 2011 but it wasn't about ratings alone, it was more a reaction to the bad (and undeserved) press the show got down under in 2009.

[Jacklost]

Do you think the show could have survived if the Braxtons never came to the show?

[KIMIF1]

No, have watched the show for many years and for me they have made the show in the last three years

[Gerard]

The first 20 or so years of H&A was waaaay better than Neighbours. At the minute Neighbours has nicked the "better show" title off H&A. As I said, in 1988 H&A was much more fun and vibrant than Neighbours, grittier but not in a depressing way. Neighbours was lighter with topical things but was more spartan and dull, teens in Neighbours were less developed. H&A had this exotic look and this get up and go, rewatching 1988 H&A just reiterates that.

I am confident H&A can improve, but to me the Braxtons have not saved the show, it was nice initially to see a darker side to H&A when they first arrived but that was built on and took over.

I'd certainly say that H&A was much better than Neighbours for most of the 1990s, especially around the middle of that decade. From a production standards point of view, H&A has always been ahead. Overall, the mid-90s were especially good for H&A and really bad for Neighbours. While H&A had several disasters around that time, the bush fire, the flood and the earthquake, which were all amazingly well done, it felt genuinely dramatic and exciting, but still maintained the family atmosphere. I must admit to going off H&A a little in 2000 when there were major cast changes, but it got good again once Sally and Flynn came to the foreground.

I would agree that the Braxtons were something different from tradional H&A to start with, but I think they would have worked better as guest characters for 6 months.

Do you think the show could have survived if the Braxtons never came to the show?

Without a doubt H&A would still be very much alive and well today, had they kept to the traditional H&A formula. What might have damaged ratings would have been an over-reliance on teen romance storylines and sidelining the adult cast, like Ms Bower did with Neighbours. Certainly I think the current adult cast of Alf, Roo, Irene, Marilyn, John, Leah and Zac could carry the show.

[sindikatas]

Do you think the show could have survived if the Braxtons never came to the show?

What do you mean when you say 'the show could have survived" if you say that you don't care about ratings? Ratings is what determine whether the show continues or not.

[jodlebirger]

Do you think the show could have survived if the Braxtons never came to the show?

Of course it would. It is a matter of writing, and not about which characters who are in it. There have also been a lot of complaints about the show for the past 4 years, not everyone have praised it.

As I said, the show didn't rate or rank any worse in 2009 or 2008 than it does now. And even if it did have a dip in 2010, it wasn't that bad either. In Australia the show was always in top 15 every night, and I don't think it dropped that much in other countries either that year. Both Denmark and Sweden dropped the show before 2010 season.

[Homeandawayfan.]

The first 20 or so years of H&A was waaaay better than Neighbours. At the minute Neighbours has nicked the "better show" title off H&A. As I said, in 1988 H&A was much more fun and vibrant than Neighbours, grittier but not in a depressing way. Neighbours was lighter with topical things but was more spartan and dull, teens in Neighbours were less developed. H&A had this exotic look and this get up and go, rewatching 1988 H&A just reiterates that.

I am confident H&A can improve, but to me the Braxtons have not saved the show, it was nice initially to see a darker side to H&A when they first arrived but that was built on and took over.

I'd certainly say that H&A was much better than Neighbours for most of the 1990s, especially around the middle of that decade. From a production standards point of view, H&A has always been ahead. Overall, the mid-90s were especially good for H&A and really bad for Neighbours. While H&A had several disasters around that time, the bush fire, the flood and the earthquake, which were all amazingly well done, it felt genuinely dramatic and exciting, but still maintained the family atmosphere. I must admit to going off H&A a little in 2000 when there were major cast changes, but it got good again once Sally and Flynn came to the foreground.

I would agree that the Braxtons were something different from tradional H&A to start with, but I think they would have worked better as guest characters for 6 months.

Do you think the show could have survived if the Braxtons never came to the show?

Without a doubt H&A would still be very much alive and well today, had they kept to the traditional H&A formula. What might have damaged ratings would have been an over-reliance on teen romance storylines and sidelining the adult cast, like Ms Bower did with Neighbours. Certainly I think the current adult cast of Alf, Roo, Irene, Marilyn, John, Leah and Zac could carry the show.

1988 H&A had much more exciting younger characters, and a bigger amount of them, plus there was much more location filming, and as said better production values. Both Neighbours and H&A may have been good in their 1988 seasons but H&A in the 1980s was the more modern and exotic one by a mile. In 1988 even the older characters were exciting such as Nev, Floss, Betty Falwell, Gordon Macklin, Morag etc.

[Red Ranger 1]

At the risk of going off at a massive tangent, while it has reached the point where I enjoy Neighbours more than Home and Away, mostly because of the characters, I don't see it as a shining beacon of perfection that Home and Away should aspire to be.I mean, I guess it must be doing something right, since it's the only soap which doesn't have viewers calling for the producer to be sacked (Coronation Street, EastEnders and Hollyoaks are receiving similar "Ruined forever!Get rid of Blackburn/Treadwell-Collins/Kirkwood or I'll never watch again!" comments and Emmerdale isn't far off going the same way), but I also think it's guilty of much of what Home and Away is accused of: Bland characters played by actors cast for their looks, endless teen love triangles and a villain whose many crimes including murder are never punished thanks to the police being portrayed as incompetent (and he's been on the show over ten years and the actor doesn't look like he's going anywhere, so there's not even that hope).Perhaps the thing that makes it different is that that isn't all there is.Or maybe not, since I don't think that's all there is to Home and Away either.On the other hand, I do think Home and Away over-emphasises the crime storylines and tends to use the criminals as the viewpoint characters a bit too much, whereas when Neighbours does bring in criminal gangs they do tend to be just visiting.

I'm not really buying that the current HA producers have no respect for the show's history.I mean, when Neighbours was at its worst in that regard, they completely rewrote the history of characters from the 80s, introduced a new family member to the two founding families without any regard as to plausibility, and brushed off queries from UK soap magazines with an arrogant and patently untrue "Australian fans don't care about the show's history, they only care about what's happening now." It was kind of telling at the time that fans compared it to the way Home and Away had quietly added Miles to Sally's back story in a carefully thought-out and plausible way that fans completely accepted.I don't think Home and Away is disrespecting its past by not bringing back Morag again, or by continuing a tradition stretching back to the 1990s of not mentioning Irene's children more than they have to, or by giving the younger castmembers more to do than the older ones, that happens in every soap.The references are there for the fans and no-one's overwriting the show's history.There are some lighter characters and storylines and a few well-acted and empathetic young characters, and the older ones are given enough to do that we value their still being around.This year may well be the high water mark in regards to whether the show manages to move away from certain themes that have put people off or dives right back into them.