Happy 20th Birthday Channel Five

Channel 5 in retrospect has changed heavily over the past two decades - it's early years saw it aim to be more lighthearted and brash compared to the likes of the all-encompassing BBC ONE and ITV, and the special interest BBC TWO and Channel 4.

But compared to the four mentioned, it never really had much of an impact, nor did it really try to come into its own with the various changes of ownership and the direction with its programmes. Viacom however has been keeping C5 at one of the most stable and flourishing periods in its history.

And as for later channel launches as you mention, the last big ones really have to be BBC THREE, ITV2 and E4. All of them represented their owners' step into the multichannel world, and the direction that the TV industry was heading at the time. It's a busted flush now, considering the growth of multi channels and even more so with the rise of Netflix. Subsequent channel launches with the likes of ITV3 and More4 were a sign of that.

100% was, I felt, undoubtedly odd, as it was the first game show I'd seen without a studio audience (other shows had been done without one present, but had applause and laughter added in post production, and yes, I am looking at you, Going For Gold). No atmosphere at all and it felt decidedly cheap.

I can't say I remember Whittle at all.

The idea of featuring places like The Comedy Store could still be a decent one though. There are plenty of Improv and Comedy venues up and down the country. I'm sure the quality of the acts is variable, but there's a distinct lack of comedy on television these days imo. I still feel Improv could work very well on telly again. I recently saw a theatre production of Whose Line Is It Anyway and I honestly haven't laughed so much in ages.

I remember alot of people in my class talked about Red shoe dairy's?? The channel come far to late to make an impact, and the content isnt that great, apart from Milkshake and The Wright stuff which tickets lots of PSB boxes the the rest of the channel just feels dull. I agree with the above it just like any other muitchannel on freeview, and if it wasn't for the Ozzy soaps and csi I think the channel would have disappeared even further. I do remember there broadcast the first five series of House and then sky got control and I lost interest.

Yeah they certainly milked that.

A lot of early Channel 5 programming was cheap. 100% was about as cheap as it got, a small studio, with dividers, three or four locked off cameras, a disembodied voice and a daily prize of £100. Somebody infamously won £7,500 on that show and had to step down as an undefeated champion but he was the only person who appeared on both versions of the original set including the later CGI one. But it was quite successful for the channel, it ran for literally hundreds of episodes in its vanilla format and the later Gold version.



Here you go:




To be honest I'm surprised the whole Whose Line format hasn't been rehashed even for a cheaper channel like Dave as it probably isn't that expensive to make - after all there are probably no end of lesser-known stand up comedians around who would love the exposure and can ad-lib just as good as Colin Mochrie.

Can anybody remember how long the countdown was on air for on the original day? I'm sure it was a good few hours.

It's been repeated by Challenge a fair bit down the years!

I can't say I watch it but doesn't Mock The Week use improv?

I have to say I enjoyed that audio description of Whittle more than I probably should have.

I used to be a member of the audience of The Wright Stuff just after it moved from Norwich to MTV in the early 2000s when Princess first took over the contract from Anglia. Back then it was really cheap and cheerful using a tiny studio where you could just about fit an audience of 20 people along with the guests and a couple of cameras.

One of the then audience bookers was Beth Palmer who went on to do CA for E4.

I presume it's from a Challenge repeat- they've had some bizzare audio description of shows over the years. Quite bizzare and sarcastic, presumably because they were forced into doing them by Ofcom regulations. I seem to remember an episode of The Crystal Maze where it described a constestant as looking like Hitler.

These days of course, there are quite a few game shows don't have an actual studio audience opting for obnviously canned audience sounds instead removing a lot of the atmosphere of a studio based game show. One of the most high profile examples is The Chase, with an exception for the celebrity specials that do have a studio audience.

Can tell its from a Challenge repeat as it has an endboard for the end of part one which wasn't on the original transmission. Channel 5 playout in the early years (with the square DOG) used to generate their own "end of part one" and "part two" messages by making them appear to slide in and out of the DOG on a green background instead of having them being put on the programmes themselves. This didn't apply to all programmes for some reason but it definitely applied to Whittle and 100% and probably some others too.

Of course when they were forced to tone down their DOG a few months after launch you had the strange scenario of a dimly lit DOG suddenly lighting up so "end of part one" could slide out of it.

Sadly the original audio description for Crystal Maze didn't survive when they relicenced the show as it was in large parts fairly standard but on occasion fairly witty and/or sarcastic as well.

The Bob Monkhouse version of Wipeout was the same. As well as the cheapened daytime versions of Family Fortunes and Catchphrase.

The Weakest Link was sans audience too (apart from the prime time and celebrity ones anyway), though there was no canned audience on that.