Massive Catch-Up for Coro St

TVNZ 1 at last has joined the 21st century with its programming of Coronation Street and will screen the soap only a week behind ITV from next month.

For the first week of transition, the serial will air 9.30 weeknights from June 11-15 before reverting to its Wednesday-Friday slot the following week.

And on June 10, the network will air a two-hour special that summarises key storylines to catch viewers up with the latest cobblestone shenanigans.

For those fans who want to watch these storyline unfold in full, there will be 1pm weekday hour-long broadcasts of the episodes that are being leap-frogged.

TVNZ 1’s gambit is to be applauded and at last brings Coro screenings into line with the topicality of other UK soaps, like Emmerdale and EastEnders.

In the mid-’80s, TVNZ got tantalisingly close to catching up with UK broadcasts, when it aired hour-long eps five night a week at 7.30.

But under Aussie-import programming chief Mike Lattin’s reign in the ’90s, the soap slipped out of favour and has fallen progressively further behind ITV’s transmissions over the past 20 years, with the lag at one stage being as long as two years.

Recent moves to close the gap and rescheduling Coro from Thursday-Saturday to Wednesday-Friday have helped to boost its ratings.

But with this long-overdue catch-up, TVNZ’s belatedly demonstrating a welcome commitment to one of its blue-chip HD series that coincides with a major serial killer-storyline being played out in the UK that is only just getting under way here.