Today’s Channel Five

Channel 5, which now trades under Five as of 2002, was licensed by the Independent Television Commission on 27th October 1995 after a long battle between rival companies for the licence. It began in 1990 when the new Broadcasting Act required the Independent Television Commission to provide a fifth terrestrial television channel in the United Kingdom. They were also required to award the licence for Channel 5 on a competitive tender basis. In other words, the highest bidder won the prize. As a result the actual setup process for Channel 5 was long and arduous.
14th April 1992, the Independent Television Commission opened the bidding for the Channel 5 licence. From the start, Channel 5’s big problem would be its transmitters. The British frequency plan simply catered comfortably for only four channels. It was the Independent Television Commission that tracked down the two UHF frequencies that would be available (channels 35 and 37) and should be able to provide at least 70% coverage around the United Kingdom. Initially, only one application was received by the Independent Television Commission for the licence. It was made by a network of city-TV stations planned by Thames Television. The Independent Television Commission chose to refuse it and it is alleged that the Independent Television Commission was thinking of not awarding the license at all.
Later, in July 1994, the Independent Television Commission was informed by the Secretary of State for National Heritage that channel 35 would no longer be available for the Channel 5 licensees but a few months later on 1st November 1994, the Independent Television Commission issued their second invitation to bidders for the Channel 5 licence. By 2nd May 1995 it had received four applications, which included bids from Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited and Virgin UK Limited, who both bid £22,002,000 and were the highest bidders.
Shortly after the project was revived, Tom McGrath, the then president of Time Warner International Broadcasting revised the frequency plan in partnership with NTL and Ellis Griffiths (a consulting engineer) so that the set up of Channel 5 might involve less retuning and greater signal coverage. Having heard the improvements that Tom McGrath and his team had managed to create with regard to the tuning of Channel 5, Lord Clive Hollick, the then Chief Executive of Meridian Broadcasting, which would later be know as United News, and Greg Dyke of Pearson Television knowing that Time Warner were by law unable to own more than 25%, became the lead investor of the project (figure 1 shows the history of ownership and control of Channel 5 since 1995).
With the revised plans for coverage and signal improvements, the Independent Television Commission awarded the licence to Channel 5 Broadcasting Ltd for an initial ten year stint and just under a year later, in September 1996, they are informed that the original frequency channel 35 is again available for broadcasting.
The second licence for additional services, specifically teletext, was advertised by the Independent Television Commission on 16th November 1996. The closing date for applications was 28th February 1997. By this time the schedule for the launch of Channel 5 was far behind. Having due to be launched on 1st January 1997, it wasn’t launched until 3 months after that on Easter Day (30th March 1997). The delay was due to retuning of viewers onto the new channel 35 frequency. Having initially believed they would only have channel 37, Channel 5 Broadcasting Ltd had not prepared for the eventuality that they would gain the channel 35 frequency after the Independent Television Commission had been told that it was no longer available to licensees on 16th September 1996. It was launched by the Spice Girls and their cover of the sixties hit “5-4-3-2-1”.
Finally, on 18th June 1997, the Independent Television Commission awarded the license for additional services to Sky Five Text. Sky Five Text had outbid Teletext UK and they were the only two applicants. The teletext service for Channel 5 was launched on 15th October 1997.
Throughout its first 10 years (Five celebrates its 10th Anniversary on March 30th 2007) there have been many rumours as to the future of Five. It was the first terrestrial channel to be viewed on cable and satellite and now, like the other terrestrial channels, it has begun to broaden its network with its sister channels, Five US and Five Life, though it was surprising late in choosing to set up these additional channels compared with the other terrestrial channels, given that they were the first terrestrial channel to be viewed on cable and satellite. These channels were released on 16th and 15th October 2006 respectively, and were set up by Five after they bought a share in DTT’s pay-TV operator, Top-Up TV.
As a public service broadcaster, Five (formerly Channel 5) is required to adhere to some broadcasting rules. In its basic form the Independent Television Commission told Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited that: 51% of all its programmes must be original productions or commissions; 51% must be of European origin; 25% must be independent commissions; and a minimum of 11 hours per week must be dedicated to news programming.4 In addition to this Five must ensure that they offer educational programmes alongside other entertainment (see figures 2a, 2b and 2c that show statistical information from the Annual Reports from Ofcom from 1997 to 1999 demonstrating this).
But this was not their purpose. As it had promised to investors its initial aim was to achieve a 5% share of the television audience. Dawn Airey (Programme Controller) had said that to do this given their low starting budget they would provide cheap entertainment to avoid a costly production process and to pull in the biggest share possible and at a fast rate. As Airey had put it they would be focussing on the three ‘F’s’: “films, fucking and football.”5 However, Airey also pointed out that out of the total number of broadcasting hours, 60% would be entirely new programming and 7 hours worth would be live. This would not suggest that all production was due to be too low budget.
Patricia Holland argues, Channel 5’s audience aims was to be innovative and to target a much younger audience hence the new style of the channel, the way it has been branded and even the choice to get the flavours of the month, the Spice Girls to launch the channel. In fact, Channel 5’s biggest novelty was the way in which it arranged its scheduling. It was the first UK terrestrial channel to conform to the idea of ‘stripping’.6 Stripping was a form of scheduling, first implemented in the USA, where the channel operators provided repetitious programme scheduling. In short, the same types of programmes could be found at the same time every weekday, week-in week-out. For example, if you refer to figure 3, the running order for Channel 5’s opening night, in the appendices, you can see how the Channel 5 format was first laid out.7 Compared with figures 4 and 5, sample nights viewings typical of today’s Five format, we can see that very little has changed. Essentially, the same sorts of programmes are viewed at the same time. For example, the channel’s soaps are still being shown around 6 o’clock in the evening and the sports programmes are primarily much later in the evening, nearing midnight.8 Some minor details have changed since the Five purchase of some US drama series. For example, where the weeknight film used to be shown at 9pm it is shown later in favour of the new and extremely popular US drama series, notably at the moment, Prison Break and Grey’s Anatomy.
David Elstein, Channel 5’s Chief Executive believed that this sort of programme scheduling would help Channel 5 achieve its goal of attaining a 5% share of the audience. He predicted that Channel 5 “would reach 40million people at launch and 45 million after twelve months” meaning that the channel would attain its 5% audience share by Christmas 1997.
But it is not just the scheduling method that indicates that this may be a channel to target much younger audiences. Elstein and Airey also wanted to develop Channel 5 as a brand, which is perhaps why the first advert on the channel was for Chanel No 5. But more specifically, Channel 5 was the first terrestrial channel to follow the cable and satellite channels in reproducing its logo in one corner of the screen. Similarly, it also showed what has been termed ‘blink bumpers’ near the beginning and end of commercial breaks. When asked as part of a Sunday Times interview, Elstein said that:

“Consumers are very brand-conscious these days… and we are definitely describing ourselves as a very modern channel. It would be curious to launch an old-fashioned channel without an image in the era of Next, Levi’s and Nike.”

Brian Appleyard, the interviewer, also broadened on what Elstein and Airey had both said in his report, arguing that:

“Channel 5’s candy stripes are intended to join the Nike tick, the Levi’s tab and the three Adidas stripes as signifiers of belonging… Brand identity is the new holy grail of marketing… Product recognition is the winning move in the new consumer system. Channel 5 is being sold like a car or a running shoe. Not surprisingly it will be the first of our terrestrial channels to wear its own label on the outside… Of course, branding can work against you. Remember the Skoda jokes? On 14th April 1997, Teletext reported that 70% of viewers calling in to its special C5 Logo poll voted for the logo’s removal. “The station admits it has received complaints about the logo but has decided to keep it on screen.” David Elstein told me that the logo has already been toned down. On C4’s Right to Reply I told him I didn’t like it! In November 1998 for another edition of the programme, I visited C5 to specifically ask them again about the logo.”

The Five logo itself has changed, like many other channel logos have, and most likely this is part of the re-branding of the channel in order to remain modern and appear innovative in order to retain its young target audience. Karen Lury argues that the appearance of the logo as a ‘blink bumper’ during commercial breaks also acts not only with the branding of the channel but as a method to punctuate the flow of programming.11 In fact the logo has changed a total of four times in the last 10 years and you can view the images in figure 6 in the appendices.12 In addition to these logos, Five also tried to introduce new emotion idents in January 2006 as part of the Five branding process. There were to be four idents: ‘love’, ‘hope’, ‘rush’ and ‘live’. The love ident was released as a preview of the idents to come and the others shortly followed. However, as of January 2007, Five returned to its original logo (image 4 of figure 6) and the idents haven’t been broadcast since.13 Since 16th September 2002 the logo has not been on screen during programmes.
Five Life also started its equivalent of CITV and CBBC, called Milkshake which specifically targets children, as well as showing lifestyle programmes, dramas, soaps and so forth for other viewers. This is perhaps another way in which Five continue to target young audiences.
Like ITV and Channel 4, Five, as a commercial channel, has always gained its income from advertisements. By comparison the BBC channels achieve their income from TV licensing. This provides a steady income for the BBC but also perhaps gives them a higher audience share than the other channels not just because they are the longest standing broadcasting group of the terrestrial channels, but also due to the fact that their audience is paying for the BBC to broadcast. Perhaps there is an audience incentive there.
Five on the other hand get their income from advertisers. This is far more unreliable, especially for a channel like Five. The issue is that, as John Bignell argues, the channel’s coverage and audience share is significantly smaller. For advertisers a higher audience share would mean higher exposure for their company and therefore a better chance for higher revenue. Channels with a low audience share decrease the amount of exposure companies can get through using them and are therefore less appealing. This makes Five a high risk channel in some ways and yet in a heavily branded world can offer them a high revenue themselves provided they can maintain a high audience share.15 As of January 2007, Five’s audience share is 4.7%, distinctly low given its new channels, which should increase exposure for advertisers.
As such, the annual budget for Five is very low compared with other channels. Its budget is approximately £110 million. In comparison with the other terrestrial commercial channels, ITV’s is £800 million and Channel 4’s is £280 million.17 As a result, the budget is primarily spent on the maintaining the production of current programmes. However, portions of it are also used to buy out the rights to old programmes in order to show the repeats, particularly from the US of late, and into new programming and documentaries in order to adhere to the regulations laid down by the Independent Television Commission when Channel 5 was first set up.