UK Gold Neighbours

[Tracy C]

Just a heads up that this will probably be your last chance to see repeats of old Neighbours episodes as the run finishes on Thursday on UK GOLD.

[Sarah G]

Who thinks they should show the older episodes of Neighbours on either Five or Fiver now.I would like to see the episodes with Billy Kennedy again

[Mrs Clog]

They should, but they won't. I'm assuming that BBC still has the rights upto where it finished before it handed over to Five so unless Five specifically buy the episodes from the Beeb, we're probably not going to see them any time soon!

[jackrew]

Five may as well just buy those episodes, its not as though BBC have any plans to show them again.

[Sarah G]

I wonder if Five or Fiver will put on any extra programmes about Neighbours at any time?

[Swanny]

Five may as well just buy those episodes, its not as though BBC have any plans to show them again.

Yeah but it's not as simple as just Five picking up the phone to BBC and handing over a bit of money or something. The BBC would still have to agree to it.

[mcdoodle]

I'd love to see older episodes again, if channel 5 could get the rights to the entire series it would be brilliant. Since Neighbours is older than me, and UK Gold started showing it pre sky+, I have quite a lot of catching up to do!

[KyalMarsh4eva!]

Would Five or Fiver be able to air the episodes they've shown before? I'd love to see the episodes again and catch up on the ones I've missed or accidently deleted off my Sky+ planner.

[Hawker]

Adam made an interesting post on this topic a while ago, which you can read here.

 

It all boils down to who holds the rights, what restrictions are imposed with those rights and how economically viable such a venture would be.

 

I think nearly everyone on the board would be interested in a re-run from some point in the show's history - although I think we'd all disagree about where from! It would be nice to see some episodes airing from a substantially different era. Over the past few years, I've felt that the UKGold broadcasts became rather pointless.

[Dayve]

I'm not holding my breath on the BBC making old episodes available to buy. Nor do I think FIVE would buy any rights.

 

They haven't been able to get hold of any vintage H&A, but they do show 'classic' episodes of that since they bought the rights in 2000.

[Newtfish]

I don't think they are the BBCs to sell or not, if I read Adam's earlier contribution correctly. The Beeb will have had a contract to show new episodes as they came up. That has now ended so whilst they presumably have physical ownership of the tapes, they don't have the right to show them any more or to sell them on to a third party. If another network wanted to get into negotiations with Freemantle to show older episodes there is nothing to prevent that apart from the financial considerations. Given that these have now been shown in two distinct runs in the UK, and noting Alan Dale's frequent comments over the years about the actors' contracts giving them very few rights to residuals, at least in the early years, you would have thought that the asking price wouldn't be so astronomical, but maybe I'm being too optimistic.

 

There was talk a few years ago of a satellite channel concentrating solely on old Aussie shows, but I guess never turned into a financial runner.

Edited November 5, 2008 by Newtfish

[Hawker]

Yes, I remember us all getting rather excited at the prospect of an Aussie Gold channel, but alas...

 

The price should be Fremantle's to dictate, I would've thought...but they might believe that the show currently has more worth than we'd expect, given that it's moved to a new channel. It's impossible to guess what they would quote - and I would say that Five would be likely to put any repeats onto a spinoff channel, rather than on Five itself...which means that if it's not a cheap filler, it's probably not going to reap back its investment.

 

But that's all speculation - I have no idea what the market price for Neighbours is. I would say that it's likely that the actors don't receive residual payments, least not for the early years - in all likelihood, I would expect the actors to have signed for a set amount including maybe one or two repeats. It's the same as various Australian soap DVD releases - it's unlikely that any of them will have received repeat fees for their work, because DVDs and the like were inconceivable back then when people believed that they were just making throw-away television.

 

If it's legitimately price at the issue, it always surprises me - you'd think that showing older episodes could only be a good thing for Fremantle, as it means an increased interest in the show, which could convert into increased viewership for the current show and even more press... Or even just merchandise or DVD sales.

 

It'd be interesting to know if Five have any sort of repeat clause in with their current contract.

[KiKi]

Fremantle were (are?) looking at the value of putting an entire archive online with a 'pay per episode' scenario. Be excellent if that came about!

[Hawker]

I so need to find a job. Quickly.

 

[Tracy C]

RIP UK Gold Neighbours then unless you are watching it on +1.

[Guest Joey30]

Does anyone know if I can download the episodes as have Sky + recent neighbours but I need to go back to the epsiodes from the start of Five as have been watch UK Gold mainly but need to watch the other epsiodes to understand what's happening now.

[Llama8668]

You can get the last 30 days on DemandFive (or whatever it is called) but other than that you're out of luck for the remainder of the months that you are missing. The Summary Archive is your best friend for the missing ~8 months.