Is the BBC right to pull out of the bidding war for Neighbours? Is £300m over eight years, which the BBC claims Neighbours distributor Fremantle is demanding, too high a price to keep the long running Australian soap?
That certainly sounds like an awful lot of money and with a less generous licence fee settlement than it asked for, the BBC is certainly in belt tightening mode.
The BBC said "paying that sum would also have compromised our ability to invest in new original programmes" - fair enough.
But the loss of Neighbours will also knock a substantial hole in flagship TV channel BBC1's audience share, with the soap providing five hours a week of high rating daytime programming.
For what it's worth, here's my colleague Chris Tryhorn's back-of-a-fag-packet calculations of how the cost of Neighbours may change, per viewer: assuming 5 million viewers (combined audience for two showings daily) , if £75k per episode = 1.5p per viewer; if £100k = 2p; current level is £25k = 0.5p.
And it looks like the game is up for the online petition to save Neighbours for the BBC. Although nearly 13,000 signatories shouldn't be sniffed at.
