I'm a bit confused to be honest. As with many fans I was overjoyed to hear that ITV3 were to begin airing classic episodes of our beloved soap from 1986 onwards - this was the first time since the closure of the Granada Plus channel that we'd been treated to old eps and for fans like myself who weren't even born in 1986, this was going to be a real treat.
However, I do feel that the vast majority of Coronation Street fans probably won't even know that the episodes are airing following a multitude of faults on ITV's behalf when publicising (or rather not publicising).
Back when Granada Plus began repeating episodes back in 1996, it was with a blaze of promotion. Thelma Barlow fronted a special programme called Coronation Street: They're Back, introducing viewers to the characters and storylines of 1976 (see above video). Jean Alexander appeared in adverts on the channel, and within print posters too. The episodes were also cross promoted on ITV at the time.
On weekends, Granada Plus aired an omnibus of all of the classic episodes from this week, and frequently hosted themed weekends featuring just Christmas or Elsie Tanner centred episodes.
Fast forward to 2017, and what do we have? Classic episodes brushed off into a poor time-slot, a mid afternoon when most people are still at work, picking up kids from school or at university in my case. The repeats are the next morning - at 6am! When lazy uni students like me are asleep and everyone else is rushing about before their morning commute.
If it wasn't for me looking at TV listings a few weeks in advance, not even blog readers would have known that the episodes were going to be repeated. We broke the news on Twitter and soon enough the press picked up on it - but even then ITV didn't issue a proper press release. The official Coronation Street social media accounts haven't mentioned it either.
Thankfully for me, the classic episodes were being uploaded to the ITV Hub. They may have been listed alongside the 2017 episodes and confusing to find, but they were there, ready to watch whenever I could. Until they suddenly disappeared due to a supposed 'technical issue', and no more have been added since. I tweeted ITV Hub and apparently there are now no plans to upload them.
I'm finding this so disappointing because there will be many fans missing out for a number of reasons. Many won't be aware that they're even airing, whilst the rest of us are missing most of them due to the ridiculous time-slots and lack of online catch-up. I feel like this is ITV's way of saying "we gave you what you wanted, and it didn't work".
Us fans have waited so long for this, and now it feels like the repeats are written off before they've even really began. What a shame.
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7 comments:
I agree, why show it at all if it is not available to everyone? I also think it is a shame they are not making them available to other countries like Canada, Coronation Street has an enormous fan base there, but it is doubtful the television companies there would buy these old episodes as well as the new ones, so why not put them online and make them viewable world wide? They could probably attract international advertisers for them.
i GET MINE THROUGH A TORRENT-SITE, uk SOAP SHARE, https://uksoapshare.blogspot.nl/
I can remember when Granada Plus started showing old episodes back in 1996, it was one of the main reasons we got SKY installed !! -I was pleased and excited to hear that ITV 3 were going to show classic episodes, however I am disappointed that it is shown mid afternoon, also that is wasn't shown starting at an earlier date than 1986, that means we miss out of characters to enjoy such as Annie Walker, Ena Sharples, Albert Tatlock, Elsie Tanner, Len Fairclough, Stan Ogden etc. I my ideal world that should start it from the very beginning ! so many characters for people to meet and entertaining stories to be relived ! .... its such a shame
The way royalties work is that it's cheaper to show them on ITV3 than ITV, cheaper to show them in the day than in the evening - and cheaper to show them without repeating on ITV Hub.
Granada Plus was Granada's first venture into multi-channel television. They needed it to succeed from a purely business perspective, so they made a big deal about everything that happened on it.
Today, ITV3 is just a repeat channel meant to suck in advertisers, and classic Corrie is another filler. They've got 24 hours of telly to fill. If they're lucky it'll be successful and there will be a slightly larger audience share but if not, they'll take it off and replace it with Man About The House or Poirot or another old show from the archives they can just throw on the air. It's nothing personal for or against the show, it's just business.
Whatever the reasons for the lack of publicity or the awkward time slots I'm enjoying these 1986 episodes enormously. When I'm not at home in the daytime I do that very old-fashioned thing of recording them onto DVD. Yes, that still works and is very satisfactory and simple to do. Sometimes the old methods work best.
Put it on catch up so I Don't have to get up at 7am
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