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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carrie Fairchild" data-source="post: 261358" data-attributes="member: 673">Arcade - 1980 <img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-fG18BU0AA5IUI.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />While Skyways was short-lived and mostly forgotten, Arcade was short-lived and remembered for all the wrong reasons. Much like Eldorado in the UK just over a decade later, Arcade became a byword for expensive failure in the Australian TV industry for years after it's brief run.In 1979, Rupert Murdoch bought the 0-10 Network. The new management were keen to increase the drama output and also wanted to launch a new soap as it's flagship series for the rebrand of the channel from 0-10 to Network Ten in January 1980. There were plans for a Melbourne horse racing drama called Centaur but Ten passed on it and started looking at an earlier outline for a drama set in a Sydney shopping arcade. Alarm bells should have rung when it was revealed that network execs wrote the initial ideas for the series on the back of napkins during a boozy lunch. Further alarm bells should have rung when one of the ideas being considered was having a massage parlour with a peephole in the arcade, that allowed the neighbouring photography shop to film porn films.In an attempt to recreate the glory days of Number 96, Bill Harmon was brought in as special consultant along with writers David Sale and Johnny Whyte. The fact that the team had produced nothing but duds since 96 (The Unisexers and a handful of failed pilots for 96 spinoffs) didn't seem to faze Ten. The decision was made to go in hard. Arcade would be stripped five nights a week at 7pm in an attempt to unseat ratings powerhouses The Sullivans on Nine and Willesee at Seven on Seven. As Ten wanted the show on air by January to coincide with the rebrand, they decided to forego making a pilot, such was the rush to get it on the air.In the absence of any pilot or preview clips for the press, the Arcade team began to hype the series as best they could and the press seemed to eat it up. Executive producer Peter Benardos claimed that "Arcade will be the biggest and most ambitious show ever made in the history of television". TV Week helped with the talent search as Bill Harmon stated that they were seeking "actors with limited experience" to appear alongside the more experienced cast. Ten spent the equivalent of $4m in today's money on what would be the most elaborate and expensive set ever built for an Australian TV series at the time.After months of reading and hearing about the show, it finally premiered in a 90 minute special in January 1980. Mike Dorsey of Number 96 and variety stars Lorrae Desmond and Syd Heylen were among the familiar faces on the arcade whose denizens included an alcoholic dry cleaner, a Chinese family with a newly arrived long lost daughter, polar opposite sisters who ran the bookstore and a sporting goods shop run by couple where the wife was convinced that her recently returned brother in law was a hitchhiker killer.Arcade flopped straight out of the gate. The shows it was hoping to topple actually increased their ratings after it launched, with Arcade trailing last in it's timeslot, behind even the low rated ABC news. In addition to it's ratings woes, the show struggled with production issues. The decision to hire inexperienced actors proved fatal, as laughable scenes where an actress could be seen reading directly from her script on the table in front of her made it to air. To give the arcade an authentic feel, they hired hordes of extras to play shoppers who would wander between the stores. This only resulted in high noise levels on set with viewers sometimes struggling to make out what was being said over the noise of so many people moving around. Bill Harmon was only there to get the show off the ground and departed after the opening episode, leaving Johnny Whyte in charge. Actors and crew felt that his scripts were dated & a subsequent disagreement about the writing led to David Sale quitting.There were talks of opening a bar/nightclub in the arcade, in order to get characters into a pub type setting but it never happened as Ten quickly shut up shop after just six weeks on air and after only 30 of the 49 produced episodes had aired. "The biggest and most ambitious show ever made in the history of television" was no more but would be mentioned for years to come as an example of overhyped TV fiasco.</blockquote>

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