Mark Jeffries wrote: > > Channel 5's reputation from its beginning has been as the "films, football > and f--king channel," as one of its own bosses once said (for its emphasis > on movies, sports and 1 a.m. softcore, although I don't know if they still > do that). I guess you'd add the Australian soap opera franchise, after it > picked up "Home and Away" from ITV and "Neighbours" from the BBC (as I > understand it, saving "Home and Away" because it has lost its popularity in > its home country). Although C5's runner-up status on kids shows be because > ITV got out of the kids show game and Channel 4 has never really entered > it, outside of the morning "schools" instructional shows that moved over > from ITV in the late 80s? >
Dawn Airey, for it was she, actually said the channel was about "more than" the three Fs, but everyone left that bit off when they quoted her. They only do one of the Fs now, the poronography went over a decade ago and they carelessly managed to lose the football in 2012. They hadn't been a major player in terms of major rights but throughout their life they acted quickly to pick up any stuff that wasn't nailed down. Between 2009 and 2012 they had the rights to the Europa League, the secondary competition to the Champions League (a familiar chant at football grounds was "Thursday night, Channel Five" sung to mock teams for not being good enough to get into the Champions League), which cost very little and did really well for them (helped by both Liverpool and Manchester United playing in it during that period), but then they stupidly managed to lose it to ITV (I don't think they even bid) which lost it regular upmarket male audiences. I've barely watched it since. Channel Five has never really benefited from any kind of identity, really. Its most successful period was probably around a decade ago, cira 2002-04, when they decided to hike upmarket, commissioning shows on history and the arts, and luring over quite a few established names from other channels, like Clive Anderson. This was also the period that they became renowned for their choice of imports, as mentioned they landed CSI and that led to them purchasing a lot of US series like The Shield, NCIS and Law and Order (which the Beeb had tried a few years earlier but couldn't make it a hit), and getting the channel lots of critical acclaim. At that point they were doing OK but it wasn't really that distinctive, the highest praise you could give the channel was that it was almost as good as Channel Four, which is not really the kind of thing that makes you stand out among numerous channels. Fifth Gear was a great example, it was perfectly adequate but looked a bit dull next to Top Gear. The output was just OK, nothing more. At the moment Channel Five suffers from a bit of a poor reputation because of the current owner, Richard Desmond, not least because of the hilariously unsubtle cross-promotion from his terrible newspapers the Daily Express and Daily Star which always publish totally ridiculous "news" stories which are just obvious plugs. As for the kids' shows, ITV are still in the kids TV game but almost all of it is now on their spin-off kids channel, and indeed Channel Five is unique for having a substantial number of childrens' programmes on its main channel (which the BBC don't anymore). They're all of the highest quality and it's clear it does well for them. In fact there was the idea they'd have their own kids' channel but that seems to have been quietly forgotten about. For what it's worth I used to watch loads of Channel Five when it started back in 1997, not least because it coincided with me going to university when I watched more TV than I've ever done before or since, and as we didn't have satellite or cable it was quite exciting to have a fifth channel. I quite liked how cheap and homely it all was, having grown up with big budget BBC and ITV shows, it was quite interesting to see obviously cheap telly. Channel Five were also home to the biggest ever attempt to replicate the US talk show in the UK, as The Jack Docherty Show ran every night at 11pm when it started and was sold as a US-style talk show with a monologue and running gags and so on. But they ran out of guests on about day four and nobody watched it, and rather brilliantly it went from five nights a week, to four, to three, to two and, by the time they finally abandoned it in 1999, once a week. And when Jack was on holiday, an unknown Graham Norton stood in for him and became far more famous than poor old Jack. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
