The Newsroom

Sian Williams moves to Channel 5

BBC anchor becomes latest leaving the Corporation (November 2015)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
LL
London Lite Founding member
bbcfan2014 posted:
London Lite posted:
bbcfan2014 posted:


You could make the same point about any PSB requirement (not just on commercial TV).
Live From Studio Five was atrocious, but Northern and Shell and particularly Viacom have treated 'news' with more respect than RTL did back then.


The same Northern & Shell that inflicted OK! TV on us with Kate Walsh.


True. But I'm sure OKTV was a purely 'entertainment' show and not cynically designed to count towards C5's 'news' output like Studio 5 was


But it was though. OK! TV was really a re-branding of Live from Studio 5 and an excuse to cross-promote Dirty Des's gossip magazine.

Sky News also produced both shows.
IN
Interceptor
London Lite posted:
bbcfan2014 posted:
London Lite posted:

The same Northern & Shell that inflicted OK! TV on us with Kate Walsh.


True. But I'm sure OKTV was a purely 'entertainment' show and not cynically designed to count towards C5's 'news' output like Studio 5 was


But it was though. OK! TV was really a re-branding of Live from Studio 5 and an excuse to cross-promote Dirty Des's gossip magazine.

Sky News also produced both shows.

No, it wasn't. One of the first things Richard Desmond did was cut Live from Studio Five back to half an hour, and give Five News back the remainder (so the total Ofcom news quota was then made up with actual news).


This was all many months ahead of the OK!TV relaunch. The Guardian made the same mistake, as you can see from the footnote of this column from the time: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/feb/14/oktv-channel5-show-aims-low
bilky asko and bbcfan2014 gave kudos
MA
mark Founding member
Channel 5 definitely seems to be a more serious contender nowadays - with Big Brother, the Football League highlights and soon the new series of the X Files. It's certainly on in our house nowadays much more than it ever used to be (which was basically never).

I know 5 News often seems like a bit of a poor relation - but, in this 2013 briefing for PR people...

http://gorkana.com/news/consumer/general-news/gorkana-meets-channel-5-news/

...their Editor said that it's the second most-watched news programme on commercial TV, after the ITV News. He cited viewing figures of 900k to a million a day - so that's pretty decent and significantly more than Good Morning Britain, for example.

Do we know if that's still the case?
IT
itsrobert Founding member
I agree about Channel 5 - before they bought Neighbours I never used to watch it. Now, though, it's probably my most watched channel.
LL
London Lite Founding member
The X Files is about the only programme bar the news that I'll watch on C5 all year.
WH
Whataday Founding member
Mouseboy33 posted:
um wow. It so sad to see creatively and production-wise how....frankly dreadful this broadcast is. Not saying it needs flares going off and swirling cams and stuff. But this almost feels like a placeholder, stop-gap broadcast. There is simply no life to it all. The set, the pacing, the barely-there theme. Everything is sorta clunky and disjointed. They will never top their launch format for freshness and innovation and standing out from whats being offered elsewhere in evening newscasts.



Agreed. This was truly brilliant.

Worzel and LondonViewer gave kudos
WO
Worzel
Whataday posted:
Mouseboy33 posted:
um wow. It so sad to see creatively and production-wise how....frankly dreadful this broadcast is. Not saying it needs flares going off and swirling cams and stuff. But this almost feels like a placeholder, stop-gap broadcast. There is simply no life to it all. The set, the pacing, the barely-there theme. Everything is sorta clunky and disjointed. They will never top their launch format for freshness and innovation and standing out from whats being offered elsewhere in evening newscasts.



Agreed. This was truly brilliant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EsuRXSv2Uo


That was always my favourite 5 News look (and you can see why Wink ).

...Then this happened: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/oct/01/channelfive.television1
AN
Andrew Founding member
mark posted:
Channel 5 definitely seems to be a more serious contender nowadays - with Big Brother, the Football League highlights and soon the new series of the X Files. It's certainly on in our house nowadays much more than it ever used to be (which was basically never).

I know 5 News often seems like a bit of a poor relation - but, in this 2013 briefing for PR people...

http://gorkana.com/news/consumer/general-news/gorkana-meets-channel-5-news/

...their Editor said that it's the second most-watched news programme on commercial TV, after the ITV News. He cited viewing figures of 900k to a million a day - so that's pretty decent and significantly more than Good Morning Britain, for example.

Do we know if that's still the case?


Second most watched if you class 'ITV News' as one. In which case it's basically 2nd in a game of 3.
HC
Hatton Cross
Phil Binding and Simon Moore providing the theme.. And what a theme it was.

Almost as good as LNN's London Tonight theme, but unlike that as the London Tonight logo arrives on screen, 5 News just kept to this side of The Day Today- esque bombasticness.
LL
London Lite Founding member
I know most people will know of Kirsty Young, but it was Rob Butler who was my favourite presenter of that era.
BR
Brekkie
Someone who seems to have vanished off the radar. Was quite interesting to see a complete bulletin from the era and I think it's something perhaps all local channels should look at as it shows how you can cover quite a lot with actually relatively little content.
IT
itsrobert Founding member
A good example of how innovative and market-leading ITN has been - I still don't think it gets enough credit for all its achieved as a company over the years.

One aspect of the 5 News launch that I think gets wrongly attributed is regarding the theme music. Everyone credits the BBC and David Lowe for revolutionising news music in 1999 - but I strongly believe that it was the 5 News theme in March 1997 that started the process of modernisation. Before then, news music was either orchestral or a very cheesy synth track. The original 5 News music in my opinion paved the way for David Lowe a couple of years later. And in fact, I wouldn't even consider David Lowe to be the first composer to use big drums for news music - that would have to be attributed to whoever composed the original News 24 flags music that launched in the autumn of 1997. I think it may have been Dave Hewson and some other composers.

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