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.
You can follow me on Twitter, @MichaelAdamsUk
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