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Happy 20th Birthday Channel Five

Launched on 30 March 1997, Channel Five turns 20 (March 2017)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
:-(
A former member
My bad. I think it sometimes finished before it got to that bit, maybe that's what I'm thinking of.
RD
RDJ
It's a shame Channel 5 doesn't appreciate some of its old gems like Night Fever and Fort Boyard by bring them back. But maybe they wouldn't work as well now as they did in the 90's.

My personal fave was 100%. So low budget it was painfully obvious but was a perfectly simple fast paced quiz which you could easily play along at home.

Its credibility took a bit of a hit when it changed the rules suddenly and dumped a winner off the show for winning 75 consecutive times. A clip of it, and a 5 News piece on it is here:

AS
Asa Admin
If only they'd had the foresight to have thought of a format that could have used regular members of the public trying to beat particularly clever people.

Like others, I was a big fan of the presentation. It was bold, new, glossy (a bit American?), just great. And 5 News had a pace that had never been seen before, hourly updates and a cracking theme. I remember recording it on cassette just so I could do my own bulletins Laughing
fanoftv and Larry the Loafer gave kudos
JA
james-2001
RDJ posted:
Its credibility took a bit of a hit when it changed the rules suddenly and dumped a winner off the show for winning 75 consecutive times. A clip of it, and a 5 News piece on it is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyQOCsLjYTs


I laughed at the desciption in that video which says the show was "soon dropped" after this. Even though it ran for another 3 years.
TL
toby lerone 2016
Another thing I totally forgot to mention and I loved watching on Channel 5 was WCW Wrestling which was on Friday at 7pm followed by Fort Boyard, it was a great schedule for a young person in Primary School at the time and before you had The Simpsons, Fresh Prince and Robot Wars all on BBC Two on Friday. It was a great time for American Wrestling at the time with WWF Heat as it was called at the time on Sunday afternoon on Channel 4 and they also showed a few Pay Per Views I loved it so much so I used to be into wrestling more than any other sport.
HA
Hazimworks
Never think have been posted on TV Forum before, but here's the loop leading to the launch of Channel 5 (the video is in dial-up internet quality obviously re-uploaded from the MPH site):


And don't forget the loop video during the test transmission:


Continuity from the first night:


And this: http://www.meldrum.co.uk/mhp/continuity/channel5.html
Last edited by Hazimworks on 1 April 2017 7:37am - 4 times in total
paul_hadley and Larry the Loafer gave kudos
HA
Hazimworks
The Josie D'arby show was The Mag. I have no idea what it is about, I only remember a short clip from the launch promo, but it was then replaced by The Core, then became Milkshake FM, and eventually Shake.


The Mag was the most generic Saturday morning show you'll ever see (except it was on in the afternoon) with lots of clunky bits where they talked very earnestly about, yes, "issues". The one interesting bit was that it was produced from Meridian in Southampton, as was the sports magazine Turnstyle which was on before it, and they'd regularly pop in and take the cameras between the studios. I think it stopped being live in the studio quite soon, though.

Turnstyle was an interesting one, a live sports magazine on a Saturday morning, obviously with no actual sport in it. The usual Live and Dangrous mob like Dominik Diamond did it, and there was a spin-off on Sunday nights which was a discussion show.

There's some good stuff about it in Giles Smith's book of columns about sport on TV, he said one show started with them promising to keep us up to date with the test match, and Smith ponders how many people might have decided to go with that rather than watch the actual thing live on BBC1. He also mentions one episode featuring an interview with Coventry's David Buust, opposite ITV's coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix, meaning the choice for viewers was literally Monte Carlo Or Buust. It ended after a year or so but, as was traditional with Channel 5, the Sunday night show was replaced by something exactly the same, but now called Sports Talk.

You're right to mention a lot of it came from Meridian, Anglia and Thames. Bring Me The Head Of Light Entertainment was produced in Norwich, as was a series starring the Australian comedians Roy and HG, which was actually shown the night before on Anglia. That was around the time they were on Ben Elton's show as well, they were doing quite a bit in Britain, and I can now only hear their names in Elton's voice.

Was it Busst , not Buust ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Busst
GL
Gluben
If I'm honest, the launch of Channel 5 was a big thing for me, since I wasn't born for the launch of Channel 4. This was my little "event" if you like, and the last one possible (if you don't count S4C and indeed Six TV which, frankly, I don't).

However, after the launch, we also didn't have great success with reception, until we got Sky Digital in 1999/2000. By this time, of course, I'd given up with the channel. The only programmes I really watched were Whittle and 100% which didn't last very long. I don't think they've really done anything big and original, especially since they don't have a public service remit. I think I just liked the launch for the sake of the launch itself, but not the channel.
Whataday and Hazimworks gave kudos
TE
tesandco Founding member
I was only able to watch the launch via a very grainy picture back. Despite what one of the above videos claims, Pontop Pike was one of the main transmitters never to carry C5 analogue with it being shunted over to the more obscured Burnhope mast instead, so despite having line-of-sight to the main transmitter for the rest, 5 could only be picked up in our household from a really poor relay instead. Still with not having been alive for Channel 4's launch, nor having access to satellite, even just seeing this with a fuzzy picture was such an exciting event at the time after having followed all the test transmissions for several weeks.

I would have liked to have gotten this online yesterday, but it just takes a while to process and manually repair these. However I did manage to recover the ITV Teletext service from the overnight slot around 1.40am on 31/3/1997. Being less than 12 hours after Channel 5's launch, and due to the fact they don't update the pages quite as much at that time of the night, there's quite a lot of the launch schedule covered on the listings pages, as well as Teletext's resident critic Sam Brady already giving his views.

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Bigger images and other pages from that service can be found here for those into that sort of thing:-
https://www.tvwhirl.co.uk/teletext/itv-teletext/#vid_6129
MA
Markymark
If I'm honest, the launch of Channel 5 was a big thing for me, since I wasn't born for the launch of Channel 4. This was my little "event" if you like, and the last one possible (if you don't count S4C and indeed Six TV which, frankly, I don't).


S4C is a day older than C4, launched Nov 1 1982.
WH
Whataday Founding member
Gosh, Teletext bitter they didn't get the C5 contract.
WH
Whataday Founding member
I caught a bit of Milkshake the other day and was stunned to see they're pretty much using the same titles and music they started using 12 years ago. Has to be something of a record surely!

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