Border ITV episodes

[arthurvasey]

Well, a member of this forum has a YouTube channel, austvclassics, which has the complete Sons And Daughters, most, if not all of The Sullivans, A Country Practice, a lot of, but not all The Young Doctors and is, as I speak, uploading Blue Heelers and Home And Away.

The quality varies, due to the source material - Sons And Daughters is mostly from the Channel 5 reruns, though early episodes, some are from Channel 7 in Australia. The Sullivans is mostly from Channel 9 in Australia - but title sequences and ad breaks - even the break slides - have been edited out, so it looks a bit disjointed in places - so you can catch the episodes you missed, or, in the case of Blue Heelers, shows you were not allowed to see.

Not sure if he plans to upload Shortland Street (which is a New Zealand soap, not an Aussie one) or GP. Got a few others, too. Number 96 looks good, from the bits on YouTube. I think some episodes are missing, though - it has Fiona Thompson from Sons And Daughters in it - I think her character is called Dorrie or something.

[Si-Co]

Yes, Arthur - Pat Mac's character in No 96 was called Dorrie Evans. I've seen very little of this show, but I've been led to believe the character was similar in some ways to the 'dumbed-down' Fiona we got for a while in 1986.

Craig - thanks for all that additional info about regional scheduling. I love the way you worded the 13 regions dealing with different murders in MSW. Sunday nights were obviously not the time to be out on the streets!

I didn't realise Border showed The Sullivans via the Thames feed. Do you know which other regions did? According to Wiki Thames started the show in 1977, less than a year after Australia, but showed it at varying paces (sometimes 3 times a week, sometimes 5, and settled into twice weekly Tuesdays and Thursdays with a Wednesday episode occasionally added towards the end of its run). In the early days it seemed to take regular breaks too - so they ended up over 5 years behind Oz. The earliest I remember the show was around 1979 at lunchtimes (on Tyne Tees via Thames).

Yes, Anglia recorded ACP from the Thames feed but screened it sometime later - I've seen evidence of this in a Thames internal schedule.

Any idea what the crack was with S&D on TSW? They screened it Tues, Wed, Thurs for the best part of its run, and were always only 2-4 episodes behind Thames. Were they originally on the Thames feed but broke away, or is this merely a coincidence? Thames ran it Tues-Fri at first, then Tues-Thurs, and then about a year into the run settling into Wed-Fri, moving Young Doctors to Mondays and Tuesdays.

When TYD started in London (in 1983 I believe) it was surprisingly scheduled on Mondays and Fridays, so Thames would play out the Monday episode and LWT would play out the Friday episode. Did they jointly buy the show but then LWT pulled out? I was most surprised when I realised this!

[craigmaxwell]

Arthur, there are also the first 30 or so eps of Cop Shop on Youtube too with ep 2 sadly missing. It is fairly easy to see why ITV would have avoided the programme. The first episode deals with gays being bashed and some of the continuous homphobic language is pretty awful. I can imagine an ITV region may have taken one look at ep 1 and thought "No thanks!"

Somewhere I have a clipping form The Times showing London and all the regional variations for a weekend evening and all of the regions are described with different titled eps of Murder She Wrote. I'll have to dig it out and post it somewhere. Poor busy Jessica Fletcher!!

I did alot of research into variuous region's screenings of Australian soaps a while ago and have yet to complete a full lists of all airdates for all eps (YES - VERY VERY SAD I KNOW!!!) in all regions. I cannot recall which regions took the Thames Sullivans feed, but I am sure that Border, Ulster and Grampian were part of them.

I believe that TSW started SAD in the same week as Thames/TT/Anglia but had various different slots for it Mon, Wed, Fri, also Tues, Wed, Thur. They were certainly very close to Thames and finished third after Central and YTV. I don't think that TSW were ever on the Thames feed for SAD though.

I thought that TYD was originally scheduled for Thurs and Fri 5.15pm in London. Mon and Tues were taken up by Emmerdale Farm. Most unusual for LWT to have screened episodes. It would have made far more sense to have
Mon/Tues Emmerdale Farm
Wed/Thu Young Doctors
Fri (LWT) Diff'rent Strokes / other US comedy import.
The Mon and Tues slot seem to be the most preferred for TYD in many regions following Central's idea's of scheduling SAD and TYD. Obviously Granada and Border seemed to prefer the reverse of this Mon/Tues SAD, Wed - Fri TYD. YTV used the Mon/Tues slot for ACP and were the first region to cut episodes into halves.

[Si-Co]

Craig, you may be right about the original Thursday/Friday TYD slot on Thames/LWT - I was just quoting Monday and Friday from memory. Very odd arrangement, wasn't it?!

I actually used to do something similar, keeping a record of where different regions were at in the soaps, and researched some S&D start dates in detail a few years ago. I no longer have this list, although I sent it to Graham Hysted who I think has put some of the details on his site.

I've also noticed you can browse selected editions of Melbourne newspaper 'The Age' online, and this pinpoints the original tx dates on Seven (although this varied between states and regional affiliate stations). Melbourne screen it in a half-hour 7pm slot until 1985, when it was shown Mondays and Thursdays 7.30-8.30pm, then from 1987 it was moved to once a week on Sundays in Melbourne. Perth, I believe, showed the final episodes in a mid-afternoon midweek slot!

Off-topic, but do you have any detailed info about Falcon Crest? Were the first two seasons networked, then regions broke away? Thames moved it to Thursdays at 1.30pm from season 3, YTV, as you've said, moved it to 1.30pm Wednesdays at some point before season 4. Central, who fed it to TTT and I think one of the Scottish stations, put season 3 at 5.30pm Sundays, but moved it back to a prime-time Tuesday slot for seasons 5, 6 and part of season 7, before relegating it to Thursdays at 1.30pm after a long absence from the schedules. I don't think any ITV region showed the final two seasons - didn't Sky buy the rights?

[arthurvasey]

ITV were hopeless at networking imported material. Falcon Crest was networked on a Thursday night for ages - but regions started showing it at some obscure time as a daytime thing.

The only daytime soaps from America that have ever been seen over here have mostly been on Sky - The Bold And The Beautiful and The Young And The Restless - even then, they picked it up from recent episodes, I believe, and expected UK viewers to understand what was going on.

At least Channel 5 showed Sunset Beach in full - twice.

ITV ran Santa Barbara from the beginning on the network, as part of networked morning offerings from autumn 1987, when schools programmes moved to Channel 14, as my nephew calls it - but even that was split and ultimately discontinued.

Channel 5 showed some The Bold And The Beautiful episodes in the late 90s - episodes from the 80s - later, when they bought Days Of Our Lives, they showed recent episodes of that - and, in the same week, advanced The Bold And The Beautiful to show recent episodes - ratings for B & B dropped rapidly, as viewers missed episodes, as for DOOL, it didn't attract many viewers, cos, though it started in the 60s or so, Channel 5 started it from a month ago.

ABC 1 on Freeview, now defunct, did the same trick with the American soap General Hospital.

[Si-Co]

I remember Santa Barbara briefly replaced S&D on Tyne Tees, a good year or after it had disappeared from the morning schedules. Shortland Street replaced Young Doctors on YTV and TTT and ran for a few years before being pulled, then for some unknown reason it briefly returned in c 2003, but the episodes were way ahead of where they'd left off, and were obviously being beamed in from Granada or London.