



Tuesday 1st July
The BBC's Australian-based soap Out of the Blue, planned as a replacement for Neighbours, has been sensationally axed by the BBC.
Broadcast magazine reports that the BBC's head of fiction Jane Tranter said on Monday that Out of the Blue would not be recommissioned after the current run.
She added that it 'just didn't grab hold' of the loyal, daily audience that soaps need to survive.
Out of the Blue premiered on BBC1 in April at 2pm with just over a million viewers a day. But this audience soon slipped to around 500,000 and it was switched to BBC2.
Since then audiences for the multi-million pound production have dwindled further, with some episodes getting less than 100,000.
The BBC commissioned 130 episodes of Out of the Blue, of which 31 have screened. The remaining episodes will be broadcast.