New Neighbours move in to Five
Thursday, January 24th, 2008Ramsay St. regulars emigrate from the Beeb
Five, who won the broadcast rights to long running hit soap Neighbours last year, have begun broadcasting a series of shorts in between programmes advertising the fact.
BBC’s loss of Neighbours, after failing to come to an agreement with Neighbours producer Fremantle Media, was announced last year.
The BBC said in a statement: “[We have] had a long and fruitful relationship with Neighbours, which has transmitted on BBC1 for 21 years, and this has come to an end because of an unrealistic price demand.” It was reported that Fremantle were asking for a sum in excess of £300million, a price tag which the BBC “[did] not believe that we could have justified to [our] viewers”.
The news of the soap moving to Five was not received well by many loyal Ramsay Street fans, a number of whom still cannot receive the channel even after switching to digital. It was understood that ITV, whose boss Michael Grade first brought the soap to British screens when he was controller of the BBC back in 1986, was interested in buying up – the contracts were eventually passed to Five.
Fremantle Media and Five are both owned by broadcaster RTL Group.
