problems with Channel 5
Since it's controversial launch in March 1997 Channel 5 has been the fifth wheal upsetting the balance of British terrestrial broadcasting. With millions of videos to retune and a paltry programme budget few foresaw success, but C5 was the only mainstream broadcaster to increase its audience share last year1, and at the beginning of this year it was valued at L1.2 billion. The recent purchase of the rights to screen ITV's Australian soap opera Home and Away is a major coup, the first time it has poached from a competitor (it's had to get used to the reverse). The problems C5 have had in the pastC5 executives are eager to overplay recent well publicised successes, but the channel has been dogged by problems from the start, some technically unavoidable and some disputably due to managerial misjudgement. At the RTS convention in 1999 Greg Dyke, chairing a session on branding, challenged David Brook (director of marketing during C5's launch) that part of the problem with C5 was that it didn't live up to it's launch. Brook disagreed saying " You must remember, we had to launch a channel without any programmes and amongst all the confusion of retuning" His defence cites two of the three main initial problems C5 faced 1) A budget
This is often read as lacking programme ambition resulting in the lowest common denominator programming, with nothing of quality on the Channel, but televisual junk food". The conservatism of the British public, which caused its initial rejection of C5, is also the cause of its 4th problem - familiarity cannot be bought. C5, along with cable and satellite providers, will continue to gain !audience, remain populist and add diversity to the terrestrial choice. C5's unashamed late night erotic content has turned off viewers aged 40+ and has lead to publicised tellings off from the BSC and more recently the ITC who called it's output "tacky". The million pounds spent on marketing and producing the glamorous opening was supposed to tackle the first 2 problems, however critics say the reliance of style over substance - faith in the power of persuasive com!munication, was short sighted. Obvious example of this strategy come with the remakes of BBC's 'It's A Knockout' and Channel 4's 'Crystal Maze' (Pearsons 'Fort Boyard') which were dropped when the ratings fell, but fit well into the C5 schedule. It has recently been proven in a study on sky that younger consumers ignore Channel brands in their decision of what to watch and instead make the choice by the television programmes they like - C5's proportionately hefty emphasis on branding may then have been misguided. C5's success is in not competing directly with the big players and instead chipping away in areas which the other networks have no time to schedule. C5 will always face this problem while they concentrate resources on 'one offs' like big films and football matches which provide unsustainable peaks in audience to the detriment of building loyalty and taking advantage of flow. expensive single dramas, sitcoms and drama series, they are not something you would see on 5. The LE budget is getting concentrated on the 8pm hour long specials and comedy (!from Open Mike). England can make sense because I can stunt a week of programmes around such a high profile event"The fifth regularly identified problem is the uncompromising concentration of programming and marketing resources on the "modern mainstream" (young generation C5 identified as it's target audience).
Common topics in this essay:
Dawn Airey,
Norton Kirsty,
L100 Contestants,
Maze' Pearsons,
David Brook,
William Phillips,
Guardian Nov,
David Elstein,
,
ITV's Australian,
dawn airey,
channel 5,
late night,
'home away',
programme service,
original drama,
flow c5,
modern mainstream,
william phillips,
programming strategy,
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Acceptance Essays
