EXCLUSIVE:
In their 2022 Upfronts Seven announced one new local drama, true crime drama Claremont due later this year, but with no sign of a return for the well-received RFDS.
But Seven maintains Home & Away is it’s biggest drama commitment.
Whilst Neighbours is facing its conclusion on multichannel 10 Peach, Seven screens its home-made drama to its biggest audience possible.
If the show deserves more respect for its consistency, then Seven scheduler Brook Hall is ready to sharply remind it’s critics.
“I know it’s not a sexy thing to say, but Home & Away is our main drama that we run pretty much all year. It’s an expensive drama, a high quality one, it runs on our main channel in primetime,” he tells TV Tonight.
“It’s not something that we use on the multi to get drama points. It is our most expensive outlay of content. And that gets lost.
“There’s no other network would have as big a price a tag on a show. It’s our biggest production of the year.”
While Drama sub-quotas were recently removed, networks must still meet 250 points in commissioned drama / documentary / children’s, with documentary (including reality) capped at 50 points. Without Home & Away Seven would need to find other ways to meet obligations, such as series, miniseries, movies or more.
Yet Hall is not happy that too often in conversations around local drama outputs, the serial is frequently overlooked.
“There’s always a hashtag… ‘# excluding Home & Away‘. That seems very unfair and unreasonable. I’m very proud of Home & Away, and it’s arguably our most important show, and our biggest cash outlay. We don’t have to do it. We believe in it.
“Our competitors meet their drama quota by spending nothing like we do with Home & Away. We don’t do it because it’s a drama quota, we do it because it’s an amazingly successful show.”
Over the decades the Summer Bay serial has also been a pipeline of acting talent, even if some have opted to overlook their time in the show.
“Our most successful acting exports over the last 20 years have come from the show that people don’t want to count as premium drama. It’s a great thing on actors’ resumes for LA because it has such good training,” Hall insists.
“Even though some of the actors don’t like talking about it when they get over there.”
Home & Away, under Drama boss Julie McGauran, last week drew an average of 513,000 metro viewers, but it lifts to around 1.00m in Total TV numbers and has been the solid lead-in for some of the network’s biggest franchises.
In its 35th year, no wonder the network is right to sing its praises.