The power of Five
In the late 1980s attention was diverted momentarily
to satellite tv in the guise of BSB, though this was
'merged' with the News Corp.-owned Sky service in 1990.
Initially it was envisaged that the remaining terrestial
allocations would be used for local services, but a change
of heart caused by a lack of suitable applicants combined
with a desire to generate revenue caused a fifth 'national'
service to be born. It was essentially a two-horse race,
with the winner having to arrange for thousands of video
recorders, games consoles, etc. to be adjusted because a
common frequency used to distribute video signals (UHF
channel 36) was widely used by Channel 5. Retuning delays
forced a planned December 1996 launch to be postponed.
Channel 5 was launched on Saturday March 30 1997 into
what was a much more hostile media climate than what
existed at the start of the previous four services. As well
as the other four terrestial channels, Channel 5 has to
compete against the numerous and growing number of
satellite channels, as well as (arguably) 'new media'
services such as the internet (which was starting to grow
rapidly at the time); these rival services also happen to
attract mostly the young target audience that the new
channel was aiming at. To cap it all, due to the restricted
coverage, less than 70% of the country could receive it,
and many of those that could had to suffer an inferior
picture due to many transmitters operating on a lower
power.
Who better to launch a new tv channel wanting to
portray a young image than the hottest popular music act of
the moment which also happens to have five members as well
! Enter the Spice Girls, performing a song based on Manfred
Mann's "5-4-3-2-1" (same tune, different lyrics: retitled
"1-2-3-4-5"). Trivia time: Channel 5 is the only terrestial
station never to have had a test card (though before launch
it did have a tuning signal caption), and has provided a
24-hour service from day one. It was also the only
terrestial station to feature an annoying permanent
on-screen identification 'bug' or DOG (digitally originated
graphic), though they subsequently made the symbol less
prominent before ditching it altogether with the change
from Channel 5 to "Five".
Tim Vine and Julia Bradbury presented the very first
programme at 6 pm, showing highlights of forthcoming
programmes. The channel (like those before it) was aiming
to be different from existing services, though some of the
ideas were 'borrowed' from various sources. The concept of
a short news bulletin (except during movies) every hour is
similar to many radio stations, and having a 'stripped and
stranded' schedule whereby the same type of programming is
shown at the same time slot every weekday was a practice
already adopted by various satellite channels.
Where Channel 5 really innovated was its news
service. As well as the concept of short hourly bulletins
which was new at least to terrestial television in the UK,
there were differences in the presentation and content of
the main news programme (initially shown at 8:30 pm).
Originally produced by ITN (who also provide ITV and
Channel 4 news programming),
Channel 5 News aims to
be highly visual yet informative but at the same time less
formal in style - for example the presenter does not sit at
a desk as is traditional. The end result has won various
awards. Kirsty Young (pictured above left) who was the main
presenter has since moved to ITV, and
Five News is
now produced for the channel by Sky.
Every general purpose tv channel has its obligatory
soap opera; the home-grown effort is entitled
Family
Affairs which is now due to finish at the end of 2005,
though the channel for a while also showed imported US
soaps such as
Melrose Place and
Sunset Beach
which were hitherto only viewable on satellite channels in
the UK. The channel's programming arrangements are
identical to that of Channel 4: most programming is
provided by 'independent' producers - though some of the
production companies that were originally used such as
Grundy are infact owned by Fremantle Media (now Talkback
Thames) whose parent company (Bertlesmann/RTL) at the time
owned a majority share in Channel 5.
The early evening period (originally 5:30-6:30pm)
during Monday to Friday was initially used for now defunct
quiz shows such as
100% (pictured) and
Whittle; the latter being suspiciously similar in
format to a quiz previously tried by ITV and then dropped.
100% featured three contenstants answering 100 multiple
choice questions - the person at the end with the highest
percentage of correct answers wins £100 and is invited back
to appear on the next show. This format was later extended
for
100% Gold (for older people) and
100%
Challenge (featuring winners from
Mastermind),
as well as a variety of special one-off programmes devoted
to specialist subjects.
Channel 5 regularly shows programmes featuring
animals of some description, whether it is about the work
of a wildlife sanctuary (
Wildlife SOS, pictured), or
wild animals in continents such as Africa.
Channel 5 also heavily promoted a regular late night
weekday chat show (10:30 pm) presented by Jack Docherty.
This scene is interesting since it shows one of the
billboard posters used to promote Channel 5 before its 1997
launch; in this case showing the man himself. Nowadays the
promotional emphasis tends to be more towards serious drama
imports such as
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,
The Shield and the acclaimed hospital drama series
House.
At weekends, Channel 5 often relied on American
imports such as
Xena: Warrior Princess (pictured)
plus the very similar
Hercules: The Legendary
Journeys, as well as entertainment shows such as the
now defunct karaoke show
Night Fever for its peak
time schedule. Early Channel 5 viewing figures remained
small (often less than a million) though it atttracted
larger figures for special events such as the England v
Poland football match, and later improvements are largely
due to the power of the Croydon (London) transmitter being
increased along with the greater takeup of digital
satellite/cable and Freeview which now collectively account
for more than 13 million homes.
For its first four or so years, Channel 5's audience
share was still small compared with the other four
terrestrial channels, but the channel's majority
shareholder (Bertlesmann/RTL) had other plans. Indeed RTL
openly declared that they were no longer interested in
acquiring any part of ITV and are concentrating their
efforts instead on improving Channel 5's audience figures
in the UK which included a major investment in new
programming. However Channel 5 still had a decidedly
downmarket image that sometimes even included soft porn
after the 9 pm watershed, so major moves were required to
improve this situation.
With Dawn Airey as programme controller (she recently
defected to BSkyB), some radical moves were made in order
to improve Channel 5's programming along with its
reputation. Its one quality import,
CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation was heavily promoted in quality
newspapers, and changes were made to the schedule such as
the axing of
Night Fever and the acquisition of
Home and Away which was originally shown on ITV. The
channel even put in a bid for
The Simpsons which
caught Channel 4 by surprise and helped escalate the
bidding war as a result, but better programmes were just
one part of its quest for self-improvement.
In order to convince more people to start watching
the channel on a regular basis, some drastic action was
taken. Firstly what was known as Channel 5 is now simply
known as Five, with the word being used in lower case as a
logo. The rebranding was accompanied by a whole new
presentation package which includes a mixture of new live
action-based and plain idents with the word 'five' often
appearing and disappearing with a 3D effect; the 'five
stripes' device (shown above) also being abandoned in
preference to individually using five shades of five
colours for text and background colours.
But it didn't stop there - Five scrapped the
contentious permanent on-screen logo as well so it would be
identified more closely with the other four terrestrial
channels. Five's presentation package was developed by the
same agency (Spin) that worked on the previous Channel 4
idents, hence some general similarities between the two
channels' overall presentation until Channel 4 changed its
on-air identity on 31 December 2004. The channel is now
100% owned by RTL, the Bertlesmann-owned company that
operates various other European TV channels, after UBM
(United Business Media) sold its stake in July 2005.
