Channel 5 general discussion

In a couple of days we’ve got “Peter Kay - in his own words” which contains an interview with him, suggesting a brand new exclusive interview.

I’m guessing it won’t be as the title suggests.

They've had a few programmes like this before.

They normally feature clips from archive interviews, and the only "new" interviews are from the usual talking heads.

This particular programme will probably just be an extended version of The Peter Kay Story, which was shown a few years ago.

I’m just catching up on Greatest Christmas TV Moments that aired on Channel 5 earlier in the month. It was billed as new and to be fair to them there were new elements, some references to recent Christmas shows such as Danny Dyer’s Christmas Message, The Only Way is Essexmas and last year’s festive Bake Off. The programme was strangely put into a countdown that didn’t seem to have any relevance on anything, I’m unsure if you asked the public for a classic Christmas moment, they wouldn’t say Flo’s mixed course cake from the 2018 festive bake off over the Morcombe & Wise Andre Previn sketch.

Anyway, bar the insertion of some new highlights the programme used very old looking and rough quality graphics all the way through, in fact it looked like an old SD quality programme that they’d tried to upscale and insert new parts, the new inclusions looked a lot better than the rest of the programme. The programme started the 3 hour countdown randomly at number 58 and featured vox pops from the late Keith Chegwin.

Why would they go to the bother of half producing a new version of an old programme? What are the countdowns even based on?

Who knows what all these countdown things are based on? Certainly not a public vote of any type. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a pool of 1500 "moments" or whatever they've acquired over the years and they just pick 50 of them at random...

Or 58!

I now wonder if the old programme was a top 50 countdown and they inserted 8 more recent clips.

The programme ended with the caption ‘With fond memories of Keith Chegwin, Leslie Grantham and John Sullivan’ who all featured as vox pops. The caption is then followed by an end cap with the date and production company caption of 2019 in a high definition over the top of a standard definition end board featuring the old red circular channel 5 logo.

Well John Sullivan died in April 2011, so presumably it originally aired in 2010 at the latest, though sure the C5 red logo came in around the time they took Big Brother in 2011.

I just don't see the point of C5 anymore - just seems to add so little to the TV landscape.

They have some good documentary pieces, but I know what you mean. It felt like there was a lot more going on when it launched and was running on a shoestring budget aiming towards a younger demographic.

Agreed, now it feels like it is aiming for a higher demographic, but some programmes lean towards a younger demographic, which makes it feel a bit lost in the middle. I think they are now trying to rejuvenate it to become a more older skewing channel, with some programmes for younger viewers.

When the main TV channels eventually close down, C5 will inevitably be the first.

They’d be better off trying to refocus back towards the younger demographic like in their early days. They made a huge impact then. ITV2 are filling the trashy end of the BBC3-shaped gap but Channel 5 could muscle in if they were brave enough. Trying to look highbrow on a low budget doesn’t work.

I think the days of them aiming for the young ‘uns is long gone. I think they are aiming for a similar demographic to BBC2, albeit a bit younger.

Their documentary slate seems to consist "Secrets of [insert supermarket name]" and numerous repackaged repeats. Their spin off channels are none distinctive too with broadly the same content across 5Star, 5Spike (which is closing), 5Select and Paramount.

New: Britain's Favourite Biscuit is on tonight. Looks to be a repackage from another similarly named countdown that aired a few months ago.

Not that anyone is surprised.