Home and Away

Delaying the start of the new season will only mean more multiple episodes on Thursdays and even Wednesdays towards the end of the year.

Home and Away should be returned to 7pm five nights a week from mid February. Does everyone in regional Australia (where I believe Home and Away rates extremely well) have access to the multichannels? A soap needs a consistent timeslot.

The last I checked, each and every TV market of Australia has access to 7TWO and 7mate (the latter which may still be HD in smaller regional/remote areas) in some from or another. It’s the newer multichannels which aren’t available everywhere.

Personally I think Home & Away could very well benefit from airing at 7pm weeknights on 7TWO.

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Why? Neighbours audience plummeted when it moved to Eleven. Home and Away’s would do the same wouldn’t it?

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That hasn’t happened in years. What makes you think Seven will return to that now?

I didn’t say I think they’ll do it, I said I think they should do it. The triple episodes are not embraced by viewers and I don’t think it would do any worse than Better Homes and Gardens.

If that was true, they would have brought it back to Fridays before now.

Two new promos aired tonight. The first reveals the new season will start “February after the cricket”. It could mean the first episode will air on Tuesday February 5 (the scheduled final day of the second test between Australia and Sri Lanka) or Monday February 18 (the day after the Big Bash League final). The second is a sneak peek of an upcoming storyline involving Alf and his Martha Stewart (Belinda Giblin), who was thought to be dead but is actually alive and returns to Summer Bay.

Returns in February, so that means it would have to air into late December or we end up with triple episode crap again?

Wonder if it will be back at 7pm, because isn’t moving MKR’s slot by 30mins going to affect that show when H and A returns?

7 shouldve left things alone. People don’t like change .

And face certain defeat? They need to take a risk and hope for the best. Maintaining status quo isn’t going to cut it, especially for dying formats like Home and Away and MKR.

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I’ve always been intrigued why Seven don’t just bring back the Friday 7pm episode for some general consistency. I’m not convinced a 7pm launch of MKR will do it any favours either in the long term.

The timeslot is one factor, creatively the show needs fine tuning or changing in response to dwindling audiences. I wonder if Seven are addressing that?

The most likely scenario is that Seven will run MKR at 7 initially until the Big Bash Grand final, then move it to 7.30 and return Home and Away on the 19th.

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I have to agree, it’s messy scheduling and seems like a gimmick.

It also plays with their scheduling of their flagship weeknight drama, which they should be trying to keep in that time slot consistently rather than holding it back and doubling down unnecessarily on double / triple episodes in the later half of the year due to other commitments.

All for an aging format that they’re over saturating with 2 versions this year which was trounced by MAFS last year.

Yeah, good luck to them with that…

There’s 2 versions of MKR this year ? :nauseated_face:

Apparently because it’s the 10th anniversary year.

WHAT??? Can’t be serious. 2 proper full versions of the show?

Urgh… at least it’ll probably prop up Sevens back half of the year.

The upcoming 10th season of MKR starting on January 28 is a proper full version. The second season later this year is shorter and involves teams from the past nine years. I think the shorter season will raise money for charity.
Anyway back to Home and Away. Although it will return in February, the exact premiere date is not very clear. Seven is in panic mode.

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Starting it in February, doesn’t this mean triple episodes or more doubles ? Does the AFL affect it this year too?

What’s stopping them airing it all year around like Neighbours? (who apparently film on Saturday ! )

Thursday AFL will definitely affect Home and Away scheduling. There are eight matches on Thursday nights this year starting at 7.25pm or 7.50pm Melbourne time.

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For how many months is the AFL ?