The Neighbours finale broke something in the schedule
Not just grief. The shape of a whole country's week was arranged around a soap ending.
What gets lost in the parasocial framing is how much of this is civic. Fifty years of the same people, the same houses, the same four themes. When it ended, entire broadcasts moved. That is not a relationship with a television show, that is a relationship with a shared piece of infrastructure, and I do not think the vocabulary for attachment has a good word for it yet.
ABC News (Australia)Read →