Channel 5 general discussion

Great that they have a larger budget, but if you've got the same tv types who've been around since the RTL era still coming up with the same dire ideas, it won't make a difference to the perception of the channel among the masses of being a diet of low budget documentaries and US imports.

I think they are probably harmed more than C4 were too by the presence of Big Brother. At least C4 could always argue that Big Brother had helped fund shows like Dispatches, Channel 4 News and other content that ticked the PSB box, but C5 is very much defined by it now and is hurt both by not seeming to target the audience outside of the series run, but also not appealing to the non-BB viewer much either.

At least they are trying with The Wright Stuff going LIVE, Rylan's chat show and scripted drama expected

Disappointingly, Channel 5 is up to its old tricks of shifting programmes around the schedule. This time it's Person of Interest, moved from Wed double bill from 10pm to Monday double bill from 10.55.

If you use 5 News as an example, who is it targeting? There's certainly been a slant towards an older audience when Sky took over the contract, but ITN haven't been able to revert to the original template and are in a quandary. It feels like a tick box obligation in the same way London Live do it half hearted too.

Dirty Des at least tried to add Big Brother demographic style programming around the show, yet BB is now a N&S legacy format which Viacom will find hard to shift.

It appears that someone's forgotten to update the DOG inserter for My5 on Sky - despite having the new ident at the beginning of the programme, there's still the old 5-in-a-circle throughout.

They haven't even called it My5 on Sky, they just list it as 'Channel 5' and they haven't updated the channel names on it either, as they still refer to '5*' in the description.

There's talk in the BBC Three thread about the remaining on-telly service (i.e. the looped promos/barker thingumy) ending on 31st March.

Does that mean Channel 5 HD can/will appear on Freeview 105 on 1st April, or is not necessarily as simple as that?

I liked the idea of the HD launch on Freeview coinciding with Channel 5's birthday (30th March), but it's sadly not to be.

Channel 5 have announced nothing whatsoever about launching HD on Freeview. They've simply obtained a licence from OfCom that allows them to do so. Many channels have obtained and still hold licences and have never seen the light of day.

The answer is probably yes they can, but probably won't.

At least they finally showed episode 17 of the previous series which they simply just missed out during the original run. It aired at 10am on a weekday morning on 5USA during a repeat run with even more baffling scheduling, every so often jumping back five episodes.

I had hoped things would change under Viacom's ownership, but obviously not. I remember when Channel 5 used to be the most reliable of the broadcasters for scheduling, now it's the worst.

Don't know if this is supposed to be in here but just recently C5 got planning permission green lighted for Big Brother- which is going to be a complete overhaul with an extension etc.