Hi there
I remember when the British soap "Coronation Street" first hit our tv screens. It was in the early nineteen-sixties, and i was still a giggly young lady slavishly devoted to The Beatles - I saw them at Wellington's Town Hall, twice - and bop skirts with layers of stiff petticoats, and stiletto heels, and Coca-Cola sponsored Saturday night dances... Most of the contents of my fortnightly pay envelope was spent on long playing records.
My mother adored "Coronation Street". I remember sighing, "Please let there be a second channel and then I wont have to watch this rubbish."
The second channel came, and a third, and a fourth. I was still watching Coro. And loving it! Ten years, twenty, thirty, forty. My mother had often wondered if she would be alive to see the last ever episode (nope). I would answer her that I'd probably not live to see the end either (am I psychic?) On my answerphone, was a message telling callers never to ring during Coro.
Then a plotline came that was drawn-out and boring (Shelley losing her mind). I sneaked a peek over to another channel to see "The Amazing Race" and, for me, that was the end of Coro. I discovered the world of other programming.
Coro is still running. Its on later in the evening now, proably to wean the older viewer mainstay group away from it. Is there anyone left at TVNZ, I wonder, who remembers the time there was a NZ-wide outcry and petitions to save the show when our tv people were going to throw it under the bus? I dont think there would be such an outcry today.
The storylines, I have been told, have kept up with the times: male rape, bullying, me-too, hate crimes. But are such plotlines enough to save our tv people from finally canning the show, when confronted with a dwindling audience? I wait with not-really bated breath for the outcome.
