Soaps aimed at teenagers

Soaps aimed at teenagers


Since 1990 most new Australian serials have been based on the successful Neighbours formula of forgrounding youthful attractive casts in appealing locations. The main exception to this was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced Something in the Air, a rural-based serial examining a range of characters in a small country town. This series ran from 2000 until 2002.

Attempts to replicate the success of daily teen-oriented serials Neighbours and Home and Away saw the creation of Echo Point (1995) and Breakers (1999) on Network Ten. None of these programs emerged as long-running successes and Neighbours and Home and Away remained the most visible and consistently successful Australian soap operas in production. In their home country they both attract respectable although not spectacular ratings. By 2004 Neighbours was regularly attracting just under a million viewers per episode [18] - low for Australian prime time television. By March 2007 Australian viewing figures for Neighbours had fallen to fewer than 700,000 a night, prompting a revamp of cast and graphics used on the show, and a deemphasis on the action oriented direction the series had moved in with a move to refocus the show on the family storylines it is traditionally known for.[19] However, Neighbours and Home and Away both continue to achieve significant ratings in the UK. This and other lucrative overseas markets, along with Australian broadcasting laws that enforce a minimum amount of local drama production for commercial television networks, help ensure that both programs remain in production. Both shows get higher total ratings in the UK than in Australia (the UK has three times Australia's population) and the UK networks make a major contribution to the production costs.

It has been suggested that with their emphasis on the younger, attractive and charismatic characters, Neighbours and Home and Away have found success in the middle ground between glamorous, fantastic US soaps with their wealthy but tragic heroes [3] and the more grim, naturalistic UK soap operas populated by older, unglamorous characters.[17] The casts of Neighbours and Home and Away are predominantly younger and more attractive than the casts of UK soaps, and without excessive wealth and glamour of the US daytime serial,[3] a middleground in which they have found their lucrative niche.

Neighbours, which is celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2005, was aired on the U.S. channel Oxygen in March 2004, however it attracted few viewers, perhaps in part because it was scheduled opposite well-established and highly-popular US soap operas such as All My Children and The Young and The Restless, and due to low ratings it was cancelled shortly afterwards.

New Australian serial headLand premiered on Channel Seven in November 2005. This new series rose from the ashes of a proposed Home and Away spinoff that was to have been produced in conjunction with the UK's Channel Five, which screens Home and Away. The spin-off idea was cancelled after Channel Five pulled out of the deal, which meant that the show could potentially screen on a rival UK channel, so Five requested that the new show developed as a stand-alone series and not feed off a series they own a stake in. The series premiered in Australia on November 15, 2005 but was not a ratings success and was cancelled January 23, 2006. The series broadcast on E4 and Channel 4 in the UK.

After losing the rights to screen Neighbours in the United Kingdom to channel five, the BBC commissioned new serial Out of the Blue which was produced in Australia, as its replacement. It began screening on BBC One on weekday afternoons on April 28, 2008 [20] but after lower than desired ratings figures, it was shifted to BBC Two from May 19, 2008 [21][22] and production on the series was not renewed beyond its first season.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera