Australia's Comedy Channel are to start showing Series 1 of Spaced from June.
The first episode of the series will be aired on the channel at 9.30pm on Saturday, 7 June.
The previous holders of rights to the series in Australia are the channel ABC, who are in fact currently finishing a run of the series.
Credit due to ABC for leading the way in buying rights to both series, but infamously the channel scheduled the show at bizarre times - most notably, during the early hours of the morning, at 2.30am.
That's why the Comedy Channel's showings are so refreshing - not only are they give a much higher profile in terms of advertising, but they have a good Friday-night slot.
Spaced Out's correspondence, and our logs show there's a keen following already in Australia, and the showings from a week today can only serve to enhance that.
There's more information on the Comedy Channel's website here.

It's also worth noting the channel holds the rights to the BBC Comedy series Hippies which starred Simon Pegg with Julian Rhind-Tutt, Sally Philips and others.

Spaced is also currently airing on the British Airways Cult Comedy Channel - that channel is only available on First, Club World (aka Business) and World Traveller Plus (aka Premium Economy), and then only on planes which uses BA's new 18-channel system. There's more info here, and thanks to Matt Collinge for letting me know after seeing the show on a recent BA flight to Cape Town.

Also, mucho thanks Wayne Davidson for all the information on Spaced down under.

If anyone else has anything newsworthy.... you know the email nick@spaced-out.org.uk - cheers.

This is not good news. Sure it's a higher profile for the show but it also means that any chance of the show being available at ABC shops is now dashed.

I must point out that the while the ABC did originally show it at 2am, it then put it on Fridays at 2:30pm in the afternoon. There's nothing like hearing Daisy and or Marsha say "Fuck off" 5 minutes before Play School.
(a children's program).

Classic!

There weren't any in the first place. So there were no chances to dash...

N.

Hopefully the Kaleidoscope DVD label (which is the video arm of the sucessful indy distrubutor Shock records here in Oz) Will distribute the serries in a similar fashion to when it put out both serries of 'black books' after a run on pay TV (cable) well after its one off abc airing.

Nicklee, why are you so negative? There is always a chance.
I mean both seasons of Black Books are now on DVD at ABC shops.
I'll have you eating crow one day.

Thank you Capt Argo.

Hmmm, I think it's time for a little Ontological Terrorism over at Kaleidoscope then. Thanks for the link.

I'll believe it when I see it, put it that way.

Black Books is a different kettle of fish to Spaced altogether.

Let me know when I'm proven wrong, but until then I remain sceptical, and heavily so.

--N

Well, I got an email back from Channel 4 and they said there were no plans to release it in other regions. I don't know why Black Books is another kettle of fish.
Both have Bill bailey and both are made by Channel 4.

If there was anyone who could pass along the suggestion that Region 1 and Region 4 to Sion Pegg himself, it would have been you.

I'm keeping hope alive though. There are plenty of Aussie fans.

I now have my own copies of the British version of both seasons.

This is as I sorta said above - did you not believe me?


Well, there you go. Channel 4 have started deciding where to release their DVDs on the basis of whether Bill Bailey appears in them...





Are you suggesting that Simon has any control over this? He doesn't. He's only the writer/co-star. He's not a producer or anything like that. He could keep telling C4 till the cows come home that he'd like to see R1 and R4 releases, but they'll only release them if there's commercial potential. And, unfortunately, I don't think there is as things stands commercial potential for a R1 and R4 DVD release of SPACED. Just to prove my point, anyone who knows the SPACED crew know that if they had any sway with Channel 4, we'd have seen a re-run of Series 2 on the channel before now.


You're right - there are. But not enough to justify a DVD release, I don't think. I could be wrong. Maybe there will be a DVD release soon, but the cost of such a release remains expensive if you're not getting good return - and what kind of profile does SPACED really have down under? I appreciate that you know plenty of people who like it, but if I took a sample of - say - 1000 people in the street, how many would have heard of SPACED let alone want to buy the DVD?

Thank you for your answers. The ABC had the show on the wrong timeslot.
The ABC isn't a highly viewed channel in the first place. So, it's rare to meet anyone that has seen the show. I wonder is some of the commercial channels might be interested.

I did believe you and I believe them, however I also believe that this show will now have a larger underground following. "There are no plans currently" who knows what may happen in the future?

I mention in another post that hardly anyone saw the show here except for the few aussies that post here.

Is there a market here for the dvds? Yes of course. But like everything it's going to be slow at first. look at League of Gentlemen and the following that that now has.

The ABC is currently showing the second season of League of Gentlemen again.
(why they sold Spaced is beyond me). Currently the ABC had 26 million cut out of it's budget so I doubt they'll be buying the rights to it anytime soon.
I hope that channel 9 has the smarts to buy the rights to it after it has finished it's Comdedy channel run.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...vd_encryption_7

It's now illegal to hack your dvd player in the USA.