Channel 5 (UK)

*"Five (TV channel)" redirects here. For other channels of the same and similar name, see Channel 5 (disambiguation).*

## Channel 5

### Picture format

576i 4:3/16:9 (SDTV)
1080i 16:9 (HDTV)

### Audience share

3.61%
0.27% (+1)

### Sister channel(s)

5Spike
5Star
5USA
5Select
Paramount Network

## Terrestrial

### Freeview

Channel 5
Channel 44 (+1)
Channel 105 (HD)

## Satellite

### Freesat

Channel 105 (SD/HD)
Channel 128 (+1)

### Sky(UK only)

Channel 105 (SD/HD)
Channel 205 (+1)
Channel 805 (SD)

## Cable

### Virgin Media

Channel 105
Channel 150 (HD)
Channel 155 (+1)

**Channel 5** is a British commercial television network. It was launched in 1997, and was the fifth national terrestrial analogue network in the United Kingdom after BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, and Channel 4. It is generally the fifth-placed network in the country in audience share, and has been since its inception.

The station was branded as **Five** between 2002 and 2011, when it was owned by the RTL Group. Richard Desmond purchased the station from RTL on 23 July 2010, announcing plans to invest more money in programming and return to the name Channel 5 with immediate effect, and it was relaunched on 14 February 2011. On 1 May 2014 the channel was acquired for £450 million (US$759 million) by Viacom, which in turn, along with sister company CBS Corporation, was acquired in 2019 by Verizon, Inc.

Channel 5 is a general entertainment channel that shows both internally commissioned programmes such as *Fifth Gear*, *Big Brother & Celebrity Big Brother*, *The Gadget Show*, *The Hotel Inspector*, *Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away!* and *Gibraltar: Britain in the Sun* and foreign programmes. The station has been very successful with imports from the United States in particular, including the *CSI* franchise, the *NCIS* franchise, the first 3 series in the *Law & Order franchise*, *Power Rangers*, *The Mentalist*, *Body of Proof*, *Once Upon a Time*, *Dallas* and *Under the Dome*. In July 2014, Channel 5 announced plans to open up its production arm and allow it to create shows for other channels, following the new policies of the BBC and ITV Studios.

## History

### Pre-launch

**Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited** was licensed by the UK Government in 1995 after a bidding process that started in 1993 and lasted throughout 1994. The initial round of bidders, which included a network of city-TV stations planned by Thames Television and the Italian politician and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi (who founded Mediaset, which owns Canale 5 and formerly owned La Cinq, which ceased operations in 1992; he retired his offer a few months later), was rejected outright and the ITC contemplated not awarding the licence at all.

The difficulty with the project lay in use of television broadcast frequencies that had been allocated to RF outputs from domestic videocassette recorders. To achieve national coverage, large numbers of domestic video recorders (which output at a nearby frequency) had to be retuned or fitted with a filter, at the bidding company's expense.

The project was revived in mid-1994 when the ITC re-advertised the franchise. Tom McGrath, then-president of Time Warner International Broadcasting, put together a revised frequency plan with NTL and consulting engineer Ellis Griffiths, involving less retuning and greater signal coverage. Lord Hollick, then chief executive of Meridian Broadcasting (later United News & Media, and UBM) took up the project as lead investor as UK law prohibited Time Warner from owning more than 25%. Pearson Television, who by now owned original licence bidders Thames Television, also came on board. When McGrath left to become President of Paramount, Time Warner dropped out of the project and was replaced by CLT (known in the UK for Radio Luxembourg). Other bidders for the licence included UKTV (led by Canwest and Select TV which bid £36m for the licence, New Century Television (owned by BSkyB and Granada who bid £2m) Virgin TV (backed by Virgin Communications and Associated Newspapers who bid £22m, the same as Channel 5 Broadcasting who won the licence)

Wolf Olins and Saatchi & Saatchi were the main companies behind the pre-launch advertising campaign: "Give Me 5". The channel would be both modern and mainstream. A logo (a numeric "5" within a circle) and visual motif (a "candy stripe" bar of colours, reminiscent of TV test cards) were used, and an attempt was made to establish a collection of Channel 5 faces; through the spring of 1997, billboards of Jack Docherty were displayed, along with other unknown characters.

A series of pre-launch screens were displayed on the frequencies Channel 5 would begin broadcasting on in the months before launch as well, including a trailer for the channel and information screens. After re-tuning, around 65% of the population's televisions could view the channel on launch night.

### The launch

The channel's launch on Easter Sunday (30 March) 1997 at 6pm featured the a re-written version of Manfred Mann's hit "5-4-3-2-1" as "1-2-3-4-5". Presenters Tim Vine and Julia Bradbury introduced the nation to the UK's fifth (sixth including S4C) terrestrial channel with half-an-hour of previews.

Overall, an estimated 2,490,000 tuned in to see Britain's fifth free network launch, a figure higher than that achieved by launch of Channel 4, two years earlier.

### Re-brand as Five (2002)

On 16 September 2002, Channel 5 re-branded to Five, in a multimillion-pound project directed by Trevor Beattie. The channel's director of marketing at the time, David Pullen, said:

> "This campaign set out to achieve three key objectives: to clarify the channel's creative strategy; to refresh the channel's on-screen identity; and to address the gap between the common perceptions of Five and the new reality of our programming – stimulating viewers' reappraisal of Five's programmes and brand.
> Channel 5 was a name; 'Five' is a brand. 'Five' as a brand reflects the evolution the channel is undergoing in programming and in becoming a more confident and distinctive viewer proposition."
>
>

On 27 February 2004, it was reported that Five and Channel 4 were discussing a possible merger. Channel 4 and Five announced in November of that year that merger plans were being called off. Early in 2009, rumours started re-surfacing about Five, Channel 4 and ITV conducting a three-way merger.

Pearson Television and CLT later merged, becoming RTL Group who became part of Bertelsmann and, control the network, after buying UBM's 35.4% stake for £247.6 million on 20 July 2005. The acquisition was approved on 26 August 2005. After Holleck became involved, he and McGrath brought on board Greg Dyke (later Director-General of the BBC) as interim CEO during the application and launch phase of the project.

On 18 November 2005, it was announced that Five had bought a stake in DTT's pay-TV operator, 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.

Following this, Five launched two new digital TV channels in autumn 2006 on Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media:

* **5 STAR** launched as **Five Life** on 15 October 2006, providing dramas, films, soap operas and popular factual and lifestyle shows. The channel previously aired pre-school shows under the *Milkshake!* banner. It was renamed **Fiver** in 2008, **5\*** in 2011 and eventually its current name in 2016.
* **5 USA** launched as **Five US** on 16 October 2006, offering drama, films, sport, comedy and youth programming from the USA. It was renamed **Five USA** in 2009 and **5 USA** in 2011.

### Desmond takeover (2011)

Five was taken over by Richard Desmond's publishing group Northern & Shell on 23 July 2010 for £103.5million. Desmond pledged to top up the broadcaster's total budget to about £1.5bn over the next five years, including new investment of £50m to £100m a year to boost programming and the equivalent of £20m promoting the channel and its shows in a marketing campaign in Northern & Shell publications. The takeover was partly motivated by the opportunities for cross-promotion of Five from Desmond's newspapers (*Daily Express* and *Daily Star*) and magazines (including *OK!*). One commentator warned that "readers will be bombarded with references to Five. The opportunity for cross-promotion between his publications and TV channel are enormous."

Upon completing his takeover of Five on 23 July 2010, Richard Desmond remarked; "I prefer Channel 5 to Five, but... we haven't met with the team yet to discuss these sorts of details". The day after, Desmond's *Daily Express* newspaper noted that the channel's name was to change: "From today the rather vague 'Five' (Five what? Days of the week? Fingers?) reverts to the much more informative Channel 5". On 11 August 2010, Desmond confirmed the restoration of the original name used from 1997–2002. The restoration was revealed onscreen on 14 February 2011.

The relaunch also saw investment in a range of new programming with the debut of the (now-cancelled) nightly entertainment show *OK! TV*. Audience figures for the relaunch were boosted with increased viewing figures for the main *5 News* bulletins and improved figures for *OK! TV* in the 6.30 p.m. slot over its predecessor *Live from Studio Five*. On 18 August 2011, Channel 5 relaunched *Big Brother*, starting with *Celebrity Big Brother 8* and followed by *Big Brother 12*, having bought the rights to air the programme following its cancellation by Channel 4 in April 2011. The deal was worth a reported £200 million. The show helped the channel's viewing figures and audience share to rise slightly year-on-year, from 4.4% to 4.5%, in 2012. It was only achieved by Channel 5 and BBC One later in 2012; all other terrestrial broadcasters fell in comparison.

In 2013, Ben Frow, the channel's Director of Programming, revealed that the station would be moving away from broadcasting just American imports, by introducing shows from other countries such as Canada, Ireland and Australia to the schedules. The station has since begun screening Australian prison drama *Wentworth Prison* and Irish gangland series *Love/Hate*.

### Sale to Viacom (2014)

In January 2014, it was reported that Richard Desmond was looking at selling Channel 5 for up to £700 million. Potential buyers included BT, DHX Media, ITV, Viacom and a joint bid of BSkyB and Discovery Communications.

On 1 May 2014, Desmond agreed to sell Channel 5 to Viacom for £450 million (US$759 million). The deal was approved on 10 September 2014 and at the same time it was announced that it was to co-commission programmes with its pay channels such as Nickelodeon and MTV. The channels operate under the Viacom International Media Networks European subsidiary. On 1 August 2015, Channel 5's five advertising regions: London, South/Central England and Wales, Northern England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland were closed with Viacom considering them financially unviable. The closure of the advertising regions allowed Channel 5 HD for Sky HD viewers to swap with the standard-definition version of Channel 5 on the EPG.

Under Viacom, the channel planned to increase its original programming output, increasing its budget by 10%. On 11 February 2016, Channel 5 also unveiled an overhauled brand, meant to reflect a new remit of "Spirited TV with an Emotional Heart".

## Audience share

Below are the official audience shares in percent for Channel 5 since its launch in 1997. Data provided by BARB. The channel consistently is the fifth most watched network in country, usually being beaten by main rivals BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 and Telewest.

Audience share rose consistently for the first seven years of broadcast, reaching a peak of 6.6% in 2004. Two years later the audience share had dropped to under 5.0%. In 2012, the audience share rose to 4.5%, the first yearly rise for the channel in audience share since 2009. In July 2013, Channel 5 overtook Channel 4 when taking into account consolidated shares, for the first time. As of September 2013, the channel averages 4.0% of the total audience share.

## On-air identity

The second Channel 5 logo used from 30 March 1992 to 16 September 2002The first worded logo used from 16 September 2002 to 6 October 2008The second and final worded logo used from 6 October 2008 to 14 February 2011The fourth Channel 5 logo used from 14 February 2011 to 11 February 2016The current Channel 5 logo used since 11 February 2016
## See also

* List of television stations in the United Kingdom
* My5

## External links

* Official website
* Channel 5 on Facebook
* Channel 5 on Twitter