Five pays £300m to poach Neighbours from the BBC

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Five is paying around £140,000 an episode, making it the biggest deal the channel has made in its ten-year history.

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Memories: Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan wed as Charlene and Scott in the early days of Neighbours on the BBC

The show, which made stars of Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, has been on the BBC for 21 years but bosses were paying only £25,0000 an episode.

The corporation announced it had pulled out of the bidding on yesterday's lunchtime news, just before the show went out on BBC1. It blamed the decision on the 'unrealistic price demand' by the show's distributor Fremantle.

BBC1 controller Peter Fincham told the One O'Clock News: "It's obviously a sad day for BBC1. We have had 21 years of Neighbours. BBC1 viewers are used to seeing Neighbours twice a day.

"We have paid over the years what we felt was a fair price for this programme, which we were buying in from Australia.

"We were asked to pay a price that we felt the BBC couldn't pay. We are paying with public money, we are paying with licence fee money."

The BBC wants to concentrate its programme spending on original, home-grown productions, he added.

ITV is also believed to have offered about £140,000 an episode for the ten-year deal and was shocked to find out it had not won the bidding war.

Five's owners-RTL, also own Fremantle. Five poached Home and Away off ITV in 2000. It is planning to put together an 'Australian soap powerhouse hour'. It will repeat episodes on its digital channel Five Life and run an omnibus of the show.

Neighbours will switch channels when the current contract expires in March or April next year.

The BBC airs the show twice a day, pulling in around 3million viewers for its 1.35pm slot and a further 2.6million for its 5.35pm repeat. Nearly 13,000 viewers had signed a petition to keep it on the BBC.

Five's managing editor of content Lisa Opie said: "Neighbours is quite rightly much loved by its many fans and it will be a greatly prized part of our schedule and suitably cherished by us."