Tauranga Coronation Street fans are torn about TVNZ's decision to axe the hour long Saturday night episode of the popular long running soap.

From Saturday, September 1TVNZ will replace the hour long episode of ‘Coro' with Come Dine With Me – an English reality cooking series similar to My Kitchen Rules.

The long running programme set in Northern England currently airs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays on Television One.

From this Saturday fans will only be able to get their Coro fix twice a week at 7.30pm, also putting New Zealand further behind in the series.

At present NZ is about 19 months behind the United Kingdom in Coronation Street episodes with the 50^th anniversary episode that aired in December 2010 in the UK, airing here last month.

SunLive's Facebook page received many mixed emotions from viewers on the decision to axe the Saturday night slot.

Many of whom were not too worried about the axing of Coronation Street, but would like to see it replaced with a programme more worthy than Come Dine With Me.

Tauranga's Vanessa Caseley wrote 'if ratings for Coro are not so great surely they could find something better than Come Dine With Me to replace it with”.

Jenny Gibson posted 'I didn't think there was anything worse than Coro St on Saturday night, but how wrong I was.”

Carole Shirley says 'sure will miss it, but come dine with me ain't that bad, it can be quite funny and ridiculous too, not too unhappy with the replacement, but would rather have Coro.”

Others were glad to see the back of Coronation Street with Dianne Dwight writing 'anything is better than Coronation Street” and Wendy Bree writing 'Coro St is garbage get rid of it”.