With a little understanding...

The time has come. After nearly a year of blogging, I cannot hold it off any longer. I'm going to talk about Neighbours.

Five have been making a big song and dance about being 'the new home of neighbours', but despite saying all the right things about how they understand what makes neighbours good and that the only thing changing is the channel, they've lost one of its biggest selling points.

I can cope with the adverts, I can even cope with the ridiculous fact that Weightwatchers have started to sponsor it right in the middle of a 'the dangers of slimming' storyline.

No, what really damages the experience is the fact that they've tried to make it look like it's film quality. This basically seems to be achieved by making the screen darker and dropping the frames per second.

The trouble is, Neighbours should never be film quality. It's not a gritty drama, it's a place where the sun always shines, and Five seem to have forgotten that.

In an age of media neutral ideas and all that, it strikes me as odd how they can advertise the show as being the sunny, happy slice of Australian life, then decide to make it look darker and grittier.

One of the things that annoys me most is when there's a great idea behind a product or brand, but somewhere along the line, either laziness or fear stops them from taking that idea and running with it.

One of the things I enjoy most about advertising is coming up with ways of taking an idea and injecting it into every part of a brand, turning the ordinary, everyday stuff into something that identifiably belongs to that company. That to me is how brands build character.

I'll still watch Neighbours though, just as long as they don't start dealing with real issues.