Channel 5 general discussion

Why has Channel 5 become obsessed with the royal family? Did it start with the change in ownership of Channel 5, that we started to get these never ending rehashes of royal documentaries nearly every Saturday night?

Because they rate well?

Clearly it's been a success because even Channel 4 are getting in on the act with two documentaries about the Queen next Sunday.

Because they’ve always had a lot of success with programmes about dysfunctional families who live off the state.

The thing is with Channel 5 is it goes from one obsession to another ... benefits to Royals, then on the odd occasion its the celebrity tat.... Channel 5 may as well be a gossip/celebrity channel!

Again whilst it does have the documentary stuff in between the other stuff is a letdown for me...

I don't doubt the royal docs do well for C5 but I think it's a bit of a leap to suggest C4 are trying to get in on the act with royal docs. They've been showing royal docs for years, with David Starkey's history of the monarchy a huge hit for them in the noughties, I think it's still considered the definitive series.

It's a bit different as well, the C4 docs are both history pieces, whereas the C5 docs are often pretty gossipy affairs about Kate and Meghan. They do very well for what they are, but they aim at different audiences and do different things. All channels do lots of programmes about the royals. It's a different tone on C4 as opposed to C5 (and obviously the Beeb) but they can all co-exist.

C5 may love their royal shows but all channels have happily jumped on any passing bandwagon if it does well for them. Twenty years ago Saturday night was always nostalgia night on BBC2 and C4, they did hundreds of archive docs. One of the big problems with C5 has always been trying to find a identity and genres where they can excel (as opposed to just doing slightly worse versions of shows on other channels) so the more slots where they can be distinctive, the better.

Good to see further collaboration between Channel 5 and Network 10, given that they are now both part of ViacomCBS.

It is true though that Channel 5 do seem to get obsessed about certain genres and commission lots of stuff

Its like when Airline going behind the scenes of Easyjet was popular on ITV . If they'd done the same as Channel 5 do, within a year they would have also gone behind the scenes of about 5 different other airlines and aired them all

Ben Frow has been quite clear about this, it's key to their strategy, and one of the reasons that they are doing so well at the moment.

Just discovered that 5+1 has stopped showing its 5-9am block of teleshopping, broadcasting regular programmes instead. Probably started a while back.

I'd rather watch Teleshopping given the choice.

According to the Virgin EPG (and I'm not blaming VM for this), the railway journeys slot next Friday 17th was previously shown on Christmas Day last year. I can only presume that C5 are now paying lip-service to the "first broadcast date" that is central to VM's EPG - that or they just don't care anymore.

Yeah, that's wrong. 30th December, maybe? But not 25th.
http://ukchristmastv.weebly.com/channel-5-2019.html