TV Mark Wright at The Stage considers what the BBC's going to do with the 5:35pm slot when Neighbours has left the channel. The emphasis is on more soap opera, with River City, Doctors and Waterloo Road mentioned as potential replacements. There is of course Grange Hill too, whose latest series, as Graham has mentioned recently ran on CBBC, but has as yet failed to find a place on the main channel -- there's some ready made programming right there which straddles the generation gap in much the same way as Neighbours.
The other option would be to shift the kids slot up half an hour to end at six, extending the daytime programming period by half an hour on the other side.
But as I said in the comments section of The Stage post, why not create far more variety in the slot with a range of series and one off dramas, comedies and documentaries created by up and coming and established programme makers with the only proviso being that each episode of whatever they're making should come in at £90,000 (which is the price that the BBC were paying per episode for the Australian soap).
Some of the best work can be created under this kind of pressure and it provides an opportunity for the BBC to say that they're investing in new writing and directing and acting talent and there's always the possibility that something might find a following in there somewhere that can be developed to prime time. Plus since most of it would be made independently, it would bump up that quota. It would seem like a missed opportunity just to bung in another soap or game show.
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