Channel 5 (British TV channel)
| Ownership | |
|---|---|
| Owner | RTL Group |
Five, formerly known as Channel 5, is the United Kingdom's fifth national terrestrial TV Channel. The British frequency plan only allowed for four channels to be transmitted using analogue terrestrial transmitters, so it was very difficult to allocate frequencies for the new channel before its launch on Easter Sunday 1997 – UHF channel 37 was allocated in many areas, which meant that large numbers of domestic video recorders (which output on that channel) had to be retuned by an army of retuners across the country at the new company's expense.
Unlike the other four analogue British television channels, the channel cannot be received via analogue terrestrial broadcasts in many areas, notably the south coast of England, where the signal would otherwise interfere with signals from television stations in France. The channel is available on all digital platforms (Sky Digital satellite, and Freeview digital terrestrial, and also most cable operators). Prior to the introduction of digital systems, it was provided free-to-air on analogue satellite for infill coverage, the only UK terrestrial channel to ever use this transmission system, and the first UK terrestrial on satellite.
Programming
The soap opera Family Affairs aired on the channel from its opening night. Five however discontinued production of the soap in 2005, mainly due to low ratings. The final episode aired on 30 December that year.
The channel began with a reputation for lowest-common-denominator broadcasting, famously screening low-budget "erotic thrillers" on Friday and Saturday nights (prompting the comment by the channel's director of programmes, Dawn Airey, that it was all about "films, football and fucking"), and concentrating its output on entertainment and lifestyle shows at the expense of factual programming.
In the 2000s the channel has shown some signs of adding more upmarket programming, such as the cult American series CSI, Law & Order, Alias, Lexx, Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate Atlantis, Prison Break, Grey's Anatomy and House. As part of its attempt to move upmarket Five won a bidding war with the other terrestrial TV channels for the rights to show the then-new Friends TV show spin off, Joey. News media estimate Five's winning bid at anywhere between £250,000 and £500,000 per show, either way in regions unheard of for a new TV show, and very rare even for established TV shows in the UK. The second episode (broadcast 13 February 2005) got an audience of 4.53 million, making it one of the channel's highest rated broadcasts ever.
Five also shows many documentaries, some of which have been moderately successful, such as the Hidden Lives series. There was a period during 2003 and 2004 when it became known for World War II documentaries, many of which were repeats. This climaxed when Christmas Day 2004 was advertised as "World War II Day" on Five, but since then the channel has moderated the war documentaries on its schedules. In 2005 Five acquired the rights to the annual Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.
In a bidding war for terrestrial rights to hit US animated comedy The Simpsons, Five attempted to pick up rights to screen old and new episodes of the long-running cartoon, but were pipped to the deal by Channel 4. However Five were the eventual winners in a bidding war with the broadcaster ITV to show the Australian soap opera Home and Away.
In 2003, the channel controversially acquired the rights to the cult show Robot Wars, for its upcoming 9th series (billed as "The Seventh Wars"), for so long a staple of Friday nights on BBC Two. It was hoped that this would become another jewel in Five's ever brightening crown, but due to a fallout between the show's producers and the Fighting Robot Association (FRA), the first series to be shown on Five was the last, and also the last ever of Robot Wars. After the last ever episode was broadcast, Five sold the whole series to children's cable/satellite channel Jetix.
Late-night sports programming, which has been a feature of the channel since launch, continues, especially focussing on live coverage of major North American sports. The channel has covered Major League Baseball games, both regular season and playoffs since its first week on air, and also covers regular season National Football League and National Basketball Association games. Until 2004, it also covered the regular season and Stanley Cup playoffs of the National Hockey League; but following the lost 2004-05 season, the broadcast rights passed to NASN. However, since 4 January 2006, Five is once again showing the NHL every Wednesday night. With the conclusion of Family Affairs, Five's MLB baseball coverage is the longest continuously run programme on the channel. Jonathon Gould and Josh Chetwynd are the co-hosts. Five also shows a mix of European and international club football, notably coverage from the Netherlands Eredivisie and Portugals SuperLiga as well as Primera División Argentina and Copa Libertadores from South America. Five has also regulary picked up the right to the international Confederations Cup competition, showing live matches and delayed coverage. The channel has also covered motorsports and for a brief time, professional wrestling in the form of the WCW Worldwide show between 1998 and 2000.
News
From 1 January 2005, Sky News was awarded the contract to provide the news for Five, replacing ITN, which had provided the channel's news service from the channel's launch. The lead presenters/News Readers on launch were: Helen Fospero, Kate Gerbeau, Barbara Serra and Kirsty Young. Priya Kaur-Jones joined after Barbara Serra returned to SkyNews, and John Suchet joined on a temporary basis while Kirsty Young is on maternity leave.
Company
Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited (As of 2006, still the legal name of the company, though it now trades exclusively as Five) was licensed by the UK Government in 1995 after an exhaustive bidding process that lasted from 1993 and throughout 1994. The initial round of bidders, which included Thames Television, was rejected outright and the government contemplated not awarding the license at all. The difficulty with the project lay in the frequency distribution plan which, in some regions, interfered with existing frequencies for video and satellite equipment. Achieving national coverage entailed a physical visit to the home of every effected UK TV set owner and then "re-tuning" the effected video or satellite receiever so it wouldn't interfere when the station began broadcasting. Some homes also needed equipping with a new TV aerial. Eventually the sheer volume of assumed effected homes became overwhelming for the company and so to reduce the backlog the company began a test transmission with a telephone number, and based their engineer visits solely on people who phoned that number to complain that they couldn't use their video equipment. In homes where a re-tuning would not remedy the problem, consumers were provided with a filter to completely block the Channel 5 signal.
The project was revived in mid 1994 when Tom McGrath, then president of Time Warner International Broadcasting, put together a revised frequency plan with NTL and consulting engineer Ellis Griffiths, involving less re-tuning and greater signal coverage. Lord Clive Hollick, then CEO of Meridian Broadcasting (later United News) took up the project as lead investor as UK law prohibited Time Warner from owning more than 25%. Ironically, when McGrath left to become President of Paramount, Time Warner dropped out of the project and was replaced by CLT/RTL who today control the network.
Five, with its mix of popular programs acquired at significantly lower cost and original comedy fare, was an almost immediate success and in less than ten years has become firmly established as a leading UK national network.
On 27 February 2004 it was reported that Five and Channel 4 were discussing a possible merger; this was widely seen as a potential upset for Channel 4's pride. Some comics joked that the merged company should call itself Chanel 9 [sic] after the spoof foreign network on The Fast Show. C4 and Five announced that merger plans were being called off in November of that year.
On 20 July 2005, RTL Group paid £247.6 million for United Business Media's 35.4% stake in the channel. The acquisition was approved on 26 August 2005.
January 2006 Branding
On 23 January 2006, Five launched new idents which are based on human emotions. Instead of displaying the channel's logo, each ident displays a word that is suggestive of what is being shown (using Five's current branding style), such as 'love', 'hope' and 'live'. Prior to the relaunch Five released a preview of the "love" ident. The ident has sperm with the word "love" forming from an egg. It is speculated that this is simply a move away from the Five name and that a relaunch as RTL could happen in the future.
Multi-Channel Strategy
British television has undergone a lot of change since Five's launch. Digital television has grown in popularity with the free-to-air Digital Terrestrial Television service Freeview proving especially popular, with set top box sales topping approximately 10 million. Digital Satellite is also popular with 8 million subscribers. All of the channel's rival terrestrial services have adopted a "multi-channel" approach to broadcasting to combat competition from digital only television channels, launching services like ITV2, BBC Three and E4.
At present Five has no sister channels, and rents out the digital spectrum gifted to it by the government to premium service Top Up TV.
On 18 November 2005, it was announced that Five had bought a stake in Top Up TV. It was said that the investment may lead to the development of new free and pay services on DTT, and other platforms [1].
Five have recently received a licence for a new channel with the working title of "Five.2" [2], and have publicly stated they aim to launch a new channel by the end of 2005, (although this didn't materialise) as well as a licence for Five.3 [3], which nothing has been mentioned about. Five are bidding on valuable free channel spaces on Freeview, presumably to carry the new channel.[4], although neither Five.2 or Five.3 have DTT broadcast licences, as yet.
Five is also thought to have been one of the a bidders for Flextech Television. Flextech Television is the television channel operating arm of cable company Telewest, which was offered for sale before Telewest's merger with NTL was annouced. Flextech Television, which runs and owns 10 television channels and has a 50% stake in the UKTV business. However after bids were received, it was announced that Telewest would not be selling Flextech. It has been suggested that it was never seriously up for sale and it was actually an operation to obtain a valuation for the company in advance of the merger.
See also
External links
- Five's Official site
- RTL's Official site
- idents.tv Channel Five idents