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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carrie Fairchild" data-source="post: 272051" data-attributes="member: 673">Neighbours - 1985 to present - Part 2 <img src="https://i2-prod.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/article11344501.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/CS79070919.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Unbeknownst to Seven, while they were in the process of winding down Neighbours, Grundy's were shopping around for another network to take it on. Ten stepped in, announcing "We feels Neighbours fits our needs". It was a shock move, as it was the first time in Australian TV history that an axed drama had been revived by a rival network. It wouldn't be an easy transition though, as Ten found out when they tried to collect the sets, only to be told by Seven that they'd been "accidentally" destroyed in a fire. Producer John Holmes explains "the word injunction was flying around a lot. There was no way Seven was going to co-operate". Tasked with rebuilding the sets, Ten decided to give the show a more colourful look with the Holiday Island resort being revived as new location, the Lassiter Hotel complex. In addition to a new look, the show would also have a new tone, with the writing to be focused 50/50 on comedy and drama. One of the seemingly more minor changes, was the recasting of Scott Robinson, who would now be played by Jason Donovan.As well as a "Meet Your New Neighbours" ad campaign, Ten decided to pull off a publicity stunt that The Sun described as "one of the most bizarre showbiz gimmicks ever seen". On the morning of it's January 1986 premiere day on Ten, various cast members were loaded on to the back of two toploader trucks with sets designed to resemble the rooms in their Ramsay Street houses. After bribing the security guard, they drove the trucks into Seven's Epping studio complex in Sydney before driving them out again while waving to the news cameras of Ten's breakfast show, which was capturing the whole event from a helicopter overhead. Each truck was emblazoned with a banner reading "We're moving Neighbours to a new home!". Various other promotions included cast meet and greet barbeques in real life suburban "Ramsay Streets" and cast members hand delivering portable TV's to competition winners every weekend. Keen to pull in the youth audience, Grundy's also actively encouraged and accommodated shopping centre appearances by the teen cast into their filming schedules.Premiering on Ten on 20th January 1986, the revamped Neighbours included a number of new faces including ex-S&D star Ally Fowler as Zoe Davis, Vivean Gray as busybody Mrs Mangel and Possession survivor Anne Charleston as Max's domineering sister Madge. The arrival of Kylie Minogue a short time later, as Madge's daughter Charlene, would set Neighbours on course for soap super success. But not before Ten suffered some ratings woes themselves, which made them wonder if they'd done the right thing by taking on the show. Publicity went into overdrive again, with a newspaper ad campaign and promotion of the packed shopping centre appearances, but it wasn't until they started spinning headlines about "Teen Sex on Ten" that ratings began to rise and the Scott and Charlene phenomenon was born. As the characters paired up onscreen, Kylie and Jason got together offscreen, although they were instructed to never confirm their relationship in order to drive tabloid speculation both in Australia and the UK, where the show had started airing on the BBC in October 1986. Kylie and Jason mania dominated the TV ratings, pop charts and tabloids for much of the late 80's, culminating in Scott and Charlene's blockbuster wedding which became one of the highest rating soap episodes ever on Australian TV while 19.6 million viewers tuned in to watch it when it aired on the UK. Neighbours was now firmly established as a soap superhit both at home and abroad.By 1989, both Scott and Charlene were gone, with Jason and Kylie leaving to pursue their burgeoning pop careers. Neighbours would never see such fan hysteria again but it had established a fanbase that, through thick and thin, has kept the show on air to this day. Heading into the 90's, the original Robinson clan was mostly still intact while the Willis and Alessi families represented the new wave of residents on Ramsay Street. It's glory days behind it, ratings began to falter, and 1992 saw a revamp to give the series a darker, more adult tone in order to appeal to international audiences. There was also talks of E Street being stripped five days a week and taking over the Neighbours timeslot but the E Street producers refused to relocate the show to Melbourne in order to facilitate this and the plan was nixed, saving Neighbours from the axe. As long running characters including Paul and Jim departed, new characters including the exuberant Cheryl Stark (Caroline Gilmer), her husband Lou Carpenter (Tom Oliver) and the long running Kennedy clan (including future House and Chicago Fire star Jesse Spencer) took centre stage. Ratings were still a concern, with Ten using the show's tenth anniversary in 1995 to launch a "Get Back To Ramsay Street" advertising campaign featuring the show's latest sex symbol Annalise Hartman (played by a pre-Pacific Palisades Kimberley Davies) and the show continued to plod along. As the decade came to a close, the Scully family were the newest big family to arrive on the street.The Scullys, the Kennedys and the newly arrived Hoylands provided much of the drama in the 00's while 90's teen comedy character Toadie (Ryan Moloney) grew up to study law and remains a pivotal member of the cast today. In 2004, Paul Robinson returned to the street in a literal blaze of glory, as he torched the Lassiter's complex. Much of the drama since then has revolved around his various villainous schemes, affairs and marriages. A major change took place in the late 00's, that would alter the Neighbours broadcast model. In 2008, after failing to come to a contract agreement with the BBC over UK broadcast rights, Neighbours moved over to rival UK network Channel 5 in a lucrative deal, where it aired alongside the other Aussie soap success story Home and Away. Meanwhile in Australia, ratings were on a steady downward slide. With the show's budget mostly covered by the Channel 5 deal, Neighbours was no longer a financial issue for Ten and keeping it on air meant they reached their local drama quota. However, as rating continued to fall, it was announced that as of 2011, the show would be moved to Ten's sister digital channel Eleven (now called Ten Peach), where it continues to air today. Seen as a demotion by some, it became one of the higher rating programmes on digital TV.  Neighbours is now in it's 36th year and despite it's best days being a distant memory, it is still considered an Australian TV institution. It is the longest running soap opera in Australian TV history and while it's characters and storylines are too numerous to mention, any Australian soap actor or actress that you can possibly think of has probably appeared in it.</blockquote>

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