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far, far cry from the broad swathe beaten to the British market by soaps ranging from The Sullivans to Flying Doctors and from Prisoner: Cell Block H to Country Practice which preceded the Neighbours phenomenon there. “The accents” were constantly cited as a crucial point of resistance. KCOP: “People couldn’t understand the Australian accent” (Inouye 1992). WWOR: “We received some complaints about accents, but maybe that’s not the real issue” (Darby 1992). KCOP: “The actors are unknown, and it takes place in a country that few people know about” (Inouye 1992). WWOR: “One problem with anything from out of this country is making the transition from one country to the next. We’re all chauvinists, I guess. We want to see American actors in American stuff” (Leibert 1992). The tenor of these reflections in fact gainsays the New York Daily News’s own report five days prior to Neighbours’s first New York transmission: The program was test-marketed in both cities, and viewers were asked whether they prefer [sic] the original Australian version or the same plots with American actors. “All of them chose the Australian program over the US version,” Pinne said. It won’t hurt, he added, that a program from Australia will be perceived as “a little bit of exotica” without subtitles. (Alexander 1991: 23) The station’s verdict within three months was clearly less sanguine. Australian material did not stay the course, even as exotica. Two additional factors militated against Neighbours’s US success: scheduling, and the length of run required to build up a soap audience. Scheduling was a key factor of the US “mediascape” which contributed to the foundering of Neighbours. Schedule competition tends to squeeze the untried and unknown into the 9–5 time slots. Whatever its British track-record, the Australian soap had no chance of a network sale in the face of the American soaps already locked in mortal combat over the ratings. The best time for Neighbours on US television, between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., could be met no better by the independent stations. For the 6:00–8:00 p.m. period, when the networks run news, are the independents’ most competitive time slots, representing their best opportunity to attract viewers away from the networks – principally by rerunning network sitcoms such as The Cosby Show and Cheers. An untried foreign show, Neighbours simply would not, in executives’ views, have pleased advertisers enough; it was too great a risk. Even the 5:00–6:00 p.m. hour, which well suited Neighbours’s youth audience, was denied it in Los Angeles after its first month, with its ratings dropping from 4 per cent to 1 per cent as a consequence. Cristal lamented most the fourth factor contributing to Neighbours’s demise: the stations’ lack of perseverance with it, giving it only three-month runs either side of the States. This is the crucial respect in which public service broadcasting might have benefited it, by probably giving it a longer run. Until the late 1980s, when networks put on a daytime soap, they would
DOI link for far, far cry from the broad swathe beaten to the British market by soaps ranging from The Sullivans to Flying Doctors and from Prisoner: Cell Block H to Country Practice which preceded the Neighbours phenomenon there. “The accents” were constantly cited as a crucial point of resistance. KCOP: “People couldn’t understand the Australian accent” (Inouye 1992). WWOR: “We received some complaints about accents, but maybe that’s not the real issue” (Darby 1992). KCOP: “The actors are unknown, and it takes place in a country that few people know about” (Inouye 1992). WWOR: “One problem with anything from out of this country is making the transition from one country to the next. We’re all chauvinists, I guess. We want to see American actors in American stuff” (Leibert 1992). The tenor of these reflections in fact gainsays the New York Daily News’s own report five days prior to Neighbours’s first New York transmission: The program was test-marketed in both cities, and viewers were asked whether they prefer [sic] the original Australian version or the same plots with American actors. “All of them chose the Australian program over the US version,” Pinne said. It won’t hurt, he added, that a program from Australia will be perceived as “a little bit of exotica” without subtitles. (Alexander 1991: 23) The station’s verdict within three months was clearly less sanguine. Australian material did not stay the course, even as exotica. Two additional factors militated against Neighbours’s US success: scheduling, and the length of run required to build up a soap audience. Scheduling was a key factor of the US “mediascape” which contributed to the foundering of Neighbours. Schedule competition tends to squeeze the untried and unknown into the 9–5 time slots. Whatever its British track-record, the Australian soap had no chance of a network sale in the face of the American soaps already locked in mortal combat over the ratings. The best time for Neighbours on US television, between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., could be met no better by the independent stations. For the 6:00–8:00 p.m. period, when the networks run news, are the independents’ most competitive time slots, representing their best opportunity to attract viewers away from the networks – principally by rerunning network sitcoms such as The Cosby Show and Cheers. An untried foreign show, Neighbours simply would not, in executives’ views, have pleased advertisers enough; it was too great a risk. Even the 5:00–6:00 p.m. hour, which well suited Neighbours’s youth audience, was denied it in Los Angeles after its first month, with its ratings dropping from 4 per cent to 1 per cent as a consequence. Cristal lamented most the fourth factor contributing to Neighbours’s demise: the stations’ lack of perseverance with it, giving it only three-month runs either side of the States. This is the crucial respect in which public service broadcasting might have benefited it, by probably giving it a longer run. Until the late 1980s, when networks put on a daytime soap, they would
far, far cry from the broad swathe beaten to the British market by soaps ranging from The Sullivans to Flying Doctors and from Prisoner: Cell Block H to Country Practice which preceded the Neighbours phenomenon there. “The accents” were constantly cited as a crucial point of resistance. KCOP: “People couldn’t understand the Australian accent” (Inouye 1992). WWOR: “We received some complaints about accents, but maybe that’s not the real issue” (Darby 1992). KCOP: “The actors are unknown, and it takes place in a country that few people know about” (Inouye 1992). WWOR: “One problem with anything from out of this country is making the transition from one country to the next. We’re all chauvinists, I guess. We want to see American actors in American stuff” (Leibert 1992). The tenor of these reflections in fact gainsays the New York Daily News’s own report five days prior to Neighbours’s first New York transmission: The program was test-marketed in both cities, and viewers were asked whether they prefer [sic] the original Australian version or the same plots with American actors. “All of them chose the Australian program over the US version,” Pinne said. It won’t hurt, he added, that a program from Australia will be perceived as “a little bit of exotica” without subtitles. (Alexander 1991: 23) The station’s verdict within three months was clearly less sanguine. Australian material did not stay the course, even as exotica. Two additional factors militated against Neighbours’s US success: scheduling, and the length of run required to build up a soap audience. Scheduling was a key factor of the US “mediascape” which contributed to the foundering of Neighbours. Schedule competition tends to squeeze the untried and unknown into the 9–5 time slots. Whatever its British track-record, the Australian soap had no chance of a network sale in the face of the American soaps already locked in mortal combat over the ratings. The best time for Neighbours on US television, between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., could be met no better by the independent stations. For the 6:00–8:00 p.m. period, when the networks run news, are the independents’ most competitive time slots, representing their best opportunity to attract viewers away from the networks – principally by rerunning network sitcoms such as The Cosby Show and Cheers. An untried foreign show, Neighbours simply would not, in executives’ views, have pleased advertisers enough; it was too great a risk. Even the 5:00–6:00 p.m. hour, which well suited Neighbours’s youth audience, was denied it in Los Angeles after its first month, with its ratings dropping from 4 per cent to 1 per cent as a consequence. Cristal lamented most the fourth factor contributing to Neighbours’s demise: the stations’ lack of perseverance with it, giving it only three-month runs either side of the States. This is the crucial respect in which public service broadcasting might have benefited it, by probably giving it a longer run. Until the late 1980s, when networks put on a daytime soap, they would
ABSTRACT
GLOBAL NEIGHBOURS?