Channel 5 launch 30th March 1997

[Stuart]

It's a channel which seems to have no confidence in its brand position and has sought to change that roughly every 5 years since they launched - which has been interesting from a presentation nerd perspective but I don't think has overall done the channel any favours reputation wise.

I think that's probably an unfair judgement.

C5 have certainly suffered from what appeared to be a constant change of ownership, and therefore possibly a cohesive direction, but since the purchase by ViacomCBS I think they have become more focussed.

I actually like the pres style on C5 and 5USA

[Brekkie]

I think it's fair to say they've gone through many eras - started off being brash, bold and seemingly wanting to be entertainment focused, just without the budget. Then when five came along started going down the Arts route and became somewhat a bit duller. Never quite dropped that though as they sought to become MTV-like for a few months of the year, whilst at the same time being obsessed with Jayne McDonald. And then abandoned that audience almost completely since axing Big Brother but after 20 years of not contributing much to the UK drama industry have found real success in that field over the last couple of years, and more surprisingly the audience finds those shows too and they usually comfortably rate above 2m whilst C4's attempts in that sort of genre struggle to pass 1m.


I think Milkshake is worth celebrating too - quietly done it's thing in the morning for a couple of decades and I do wonder if C5 gave them an hour of the late afternoon schedule, especially as they don't seem to know what to do at 4pm, whether they could raise it's profile further. 5News though really needs to find it's core values again - would be much more beneficial to see the hourly bulletins reinstated, say from 1pm to 9pm, than have an hour at 5pm. Personally I'd move it to 6pm for half an hour to tick off the primetime commitment and have Home and Away and Neighbours in the 5pm hour.