It's chopping an hour of popular soap Coronation Street from this weekend: the Saturday screenings are being cut!
Now, perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if Coro was standing aside for something else of value (like an Attenborough doco or - miracle of miracles - a half-decent series, if it can afford one!). Instead, it's being replaced by Come Dine With Me, a series about British strangers competing for the title of ultimate dinner party host. Even in its own publicity material, TVNZ generously describes the replacement show as "hilariously
So why make this change, and incur the wrath of middle NZ for such crap? Usually Come Dine With Me screens weekday afternoons where it can't bore anyone to death! And surely viewers are fed up with all these desperate cooking shows (pun very much intended)? Coro was last cut back for the Masterchef final and then the *yawn* Rugby World Cup...
TVNZ's decision means we'll now only get our fix of Coro on Thursday and Friday nights at 7.30pm. We'll quickly fall further behind: even before the axing of Saturday evening screenings, we were still about 19mths behind the UK. Hell, we've only just seen the tram crash episodes (and resultant mega domestic fall-out) that Brits saw in December 2010!
In the past when TVNZ dared crap on Coro, the Aussie programmer concerned nearly lost his job over the public furore. Even the PM waded in to the debate. The anger is no less raw this time around, with one viewer saying "Coronation Street might be just a soap opera but it is almost Shakespearean compared to the likes of Come Dine With Me." Hear-hear, verily, foresooth!
TVNZ says extra episodes of Coro will be aired when appropriate. Yea, right. Surely if a tv show can last in the broadcasting world for 50 years, it has some merit and deserves to be treated as such, not constantly pushed from pillar to post, on the whim of a programmer who's probably not even old enough to remember The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, let alone Ena Sharples!
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