Good Bye "Friends"

Elmo

Endless repeats of Friends on Channel 4 are to come to an end in September 2011.

Channel 4 bids farewell to Friends

Channel 4 has today announced that it has decided to relinquish its UK broadcast rights to long running TV series Friends.* The channel has agreed a deal with Warner Bros International Television Distribution to end its association with Friends in autumn 2011.

Ending its tie to the fifteen year old series will provide an opportunity to refresh the schedule across Channel 4 and E4 and, alongside the decision not to re-commission Big Brother past summer 2010, frees funds to develop new UK content and acquire the latest shows coming out of the US.

Gill Hay, Head of Acquisitions says:* “After 15 years, 10 hit series and 236 terrific episodes it’s time to say goodbye to old Friends and welcome new ones, in the form of more comedy, drama and entertainment from the US and UK.* We are incredibly proud to have been the home of Friends for so long, but at a point when the Channel is undergoing a period of creative renewal it felt like the right time to part company.”

Channel 4, E4 and More4 will continue to be the home of the best free-to-air US drama and comedy, including the critically-acclaimed vampire drama True Blood and Golden Globe winning hit musical comedy Glee, and brand new series The Cleveland Show and The Good Wife. Ongoing popular US series include The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters and 90210.

Wonder if we can expect the same from TV3.

Stench Blossoms

Aw. I like watching my Friends re-runs in the evenings.

phasers

Comedy central got the rights so it's not going very far!

Elmo

phasers wrote: »

Comedy central got the rights so it's not going very far!

give them a rest.

amacachi

Comedy Central got them? Deadly. Even more OTT censorship.

Diabhal Beag

Its like the Simpsons. They won't ever stop showing it, unfortunately.

Richard Dower

I never liked Friends, i've seen a fair few on repeats....but it never appealed to me.

Mr.Nice Guy

I used to watch it when I was a younger but it's an instant channel-changer for me now. I find The Simpsons, Father Ted, Family Guy etc. watchable time and time again but Friends is just painful.

Hank_Jones

I love watchin the earlier ones, could watch them over and over again.
Same thing with the good episodes of The Simpsons.

I'm not going to watch something because of the name.
If it's a shit episode then I'm certainly not going to waste my time watching it, regardless of what show it is.

Bonkers_xOx

Hungover weekend mornings will never be the same.:(

tvnutz

Its not goodbye,some other channel will defintaly pick it up and it will still be on the same amount of times. It still gets great ratings for E4,they jsut want to change their image a bit. So whatever channel gets it will still get good ratings and will show it daily like E4. Nothing will change but the channel.

RobertFoster

Mr.Nice Guy wrote: »

I used to watch it when I was a younger but it's an instant channel-changer for me now.

I'm the same. It's just too 90's for my tastes.