Search results matching tag 'Five'

Tonight will show why TV matters

1704826 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:59:00 GMT

Television has long been under attack. Digital media, societal change and audience fragmentation mean that those occasions when the whole nation gathers around their set have become increasingly rare. But when they do happen it's a useful reminder of how important TV is as social glue.

And one of those moments will happen tonight.

I refer of course to Countrywise on ITV1 where, according to the listings, Paul Heiney (remember him from the early 80s?) will 'visit a farm and a jam factory'. Sounds like fascinating stuff and it's on just after Five's always excellent and entertaining Live From Studio Five and before Paris Hilton's Best American Friend Forever on ITV2.

Politicians may come and go and politcs may be transitory but television will never die.

Freeview balls-up and it's all just so some people can receive Five

1704826 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:27:00 GMT

In the finest traditions of British balls-ups, Freeview's attempt at successfully managing a retuning process is well up there.

Fortunately I don't have Freeview - telly is too important to be restricted to its limited offering - but 18m homes do. And it's chaos - the websites giving details of the retune don't work, people can't get through to Freeview on the phone (and that's just the people who know about the need to retune their sets, which I should imagine is a minority as the campaign has been so poorly communicated).

Some homes will lose ITV3 and ITV4 while other Freeview boxes will cease to work at all. And it's all so some more homes will be able to watch such excellent entertainment as Live from Studio Five and the 'exciting' return of Name That Tune.

Which leaves me thinking the whole exercise is a waste of time, the DTT platform is fundamentally flawed and that Sky or Freesat, which update automatically, are a better option.

Something extraordinary happened during last night's Top Gear - I switched over to Five

1704826 — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:44:00 GMT

And what's more the channel more or less held my attention for nearly an hour.

This might reflect more on how appalling Top Gear has become with its leaden scripts and false bonhomie as I couldn't even get to the end of the show - is the 'cool wall' really that entertaining? And what on earth was DDB thinking in getting involved in that excrutiatingly unfunny and seemingly endless 'make a VW ad' piece?

Instead I found myself so irritated by Richard Hammond that I found myself watching Britain's Nazi King, a pretty flimsy and cheap documentary on Five about Edward VIII, but with a strangely compelling and slightly misleading title.

It's a strategy that BBC Three uses all the time - make a cheap TV show and give it a screaming tabloid headline and hope that they will come. Much to my shame, it worked on me.

The old TV mantra used to be that content is king but in a world of diminished TV programme budgets, it seems that bunging any cheap old show that includes at least some of the words Monster, Fat, Freak, Pregnant or Nazi in its title is the new way of getting viewers.

Good news for those who missed Robson Green's Extreme Fishing I and II

1704826 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:21:00 GMT

It's all too easy kicking someone when they are on their knees, but sometimes it's just irresistable. So apologies in advance to Five.

The low-budget terrestrial channel, which has seen its share of ad revenue fall off the cliff this year, has just announced its exciting new entertainment line-up (stop sniggering).

Headlining is the juicy offering Farmer Wants a Wife, starring Louise Redknapp. The six-part series follows farmers trying to find a suitor and, in the words of the press release, find out 'if love can blossom in the barnyards and pigsties of rural Britain.'

And if this wasn't sure enough to reverse its double-digit decline in ad revenue, the channel has also kindly commissioned a third series of Extreme Fishing with Robson Green, which will see the loveable/massively irritating Geordie on his most challenging fishing mission yet.

Richard Woolfe, Five's channel controller, describes the line-up as 'brilliant and gripping' with the promise that there's plenty more of the same to come. Streuth.

Given that Channel 4 is in advanced talks to protect its future, after publicly rebutting Five's advances, and with numerous other discussions between broadcasters going on to protect their futures, Five is looking like like the spare dick at an orgy.

Unless its owner RTL finds another company to merge with and fast, I wouldn't bet on Woolfe's promise actually coming true. And I'm afraid that you'd probably struggle to find anyone who would actually miss it.

Hello ESPN America and baseball

255762 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:27:00 GMT

Earlier this year something quite terrible happened. You probably heard. Due to budget constraints Five ended its long running coverage of baseball, but it turns out there was an upside to all of this.

If you ever watched Five's coverage it was quirky. It was hosted by TV presenter Jonny Gould and former GB baseball player Josh Chetwynd and aired around one in the morning.

Five aired it tucked away in its schedule with only chatlines for advertising company for a decade. And then suddenly it went.

All that left British baseball fans with was ESPN America (formerly the North American Sports Network or NASN, which was bought by Disney and rebranded earlier this year), but to get that you had to buy a bunch of channels from Setanta, which made for a slightly pricy option if all you wanted was baseball.

Then something else happened. Sad as it is Setanta went bust and up to the plate stepped Disney's ESPN, which last week acquired its first live English Premier League (EPL) TV rights in the UK and a presence on Freeview.

Better still ESPN America is now free on Sky with certain channel packs. Although confusingly it took a little while to realise this and Sky Customer support is officially Grade A stupid.

I saw on some website at the weekend that following Setanta's demise you could now add for very little ESPN America to you package. Awesome, I mean great, so I emailed Sky and here is what they told me:

Hi Gordon, Customer Account Number: xxxxx

Thanks for your e-mail about adding ESPN America to your entertainment package.

I'd like to advise that, ESPN America is a third party subscription and for the cost and subscription you need to directly contact them on their website www.setanta.com.

If you wish to remove Sky Sports Pack from your viewing subscription, please reply back to the same e-mail or you can contact our Customer Services.

I hope the information I have provided about ESPN America subscription and removing Sports Pack from your viewing subscription has helped with your enquiry. If you require any further assistance, you can respond to my email. You can also contact our Customer Services on 08442 41 41 41, where one of my colleague will be happy to help.

Thanks, Ahsan, Sky Help Centre

Hmm. Sorry Ahsan, but that was far from helpful. I mean don't they tell you anything at the Sky Help Centre, you know, so you can help customers? Apparently not.

Anyway, joke was on me. I then read somewhere else that ESPN America was now part of the News and Events package…which I already had. Errrm, bingo, there it was waiting for me to add it to my favourites. I realised this on Monday just in time to catch the third game of the Subway Series as the New York Yankees went on to beat the New York Mets 4-2 in what was a tightly fought close game with an emotional finish as closer Mariano Rivera went on to make his 500th career save. Awesome.

I'm looking forward to a summer of baseball and I have informed the guys at the Sky Help Centre where they too can find ESPN America: channel 417 on your Sky box. Whoever knew it went up that high?

Follow me on Twitter

Hands up who feels sorry for ITV?

673734 — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Talking to contacts this morning in light of ITV's £2.7 billion losses, it's hard to detect too much sympathy around for those who control the broadcaster. Plenty for those among the 600 who will lose their jobs as it restructures but beyond that there is a feeling that ITV has played a part in its own misfortunes.

Sure the downturn and wider economic picture have hampered ITV's chances of turning around its fortunes, but some are arguing that its content and strategy for diversifying away from ITV1 has not been strong enough.

In mitigation, ITV is performing well in holding its audience share against the BBC but the ad revenues aren't there despite this and now it is pushing for rapid decisions over CRR and Ofcom's proposals that it should be allowed to reduce its regional news commitment.

And it is banging the drum for more radical industry reform, perhaps including a merger with Channel 4 and Five. While there is little appetite for this among the advertising community there is at least recognition that something big and structural needs to happen. As one media agency boss told me this morning: "I'm no advocate of the ITV/4/Five merger but there needs to be a radical rethink of advertiser-funded television because it isn't a model that works right now."

Does Channel 4 have a right to exist?

255762 — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:17:00 GMT

Does it? A god given right? I'm not sure it does. Channel 4 needs to accept facts, embrace the future, and realise with few options left its future lies with Five.

Looking at Channel 4 what's clear is that you can watch a lot of what it broadcasts on any channel. Think about it: 'Big Brother', 'How to look good naked', 'Property Ladder', 'Location, Location, Location', 'A place in the sun', 'Half ton son', 'Grand Designs', 'Celebrity Wife Swap', ' Come dine with me' and the various food shows headed by prize plonker Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Oh not to mention the free advertising segments for Sainsbury Oliver. Sorry, maybe it's Jamie Sainsbury I get confused. A lot of this as Sir Jeremy Isaacs, Channel 4's chief executive from 1980 to 1987, said at the weekend is "dross".

Okay, granted I know that many people like these shows and for their type they are well made and, apparently, entertaining, but none of them can even remotely be described as public service. And yet this is the Channel 4 line-up every night of the week (other than the mostly laudable Channel 4 News).

But as Sir Jeremy pointed out, it is because of said dross that the station has left itself open to claims it should be merged with Five. This is not music to C4's chairman Luke Johnson and chief executive Andy Duncan who don't like the idea one bit. They should be so lucky. The duo seems to be under the impression that the station has a god given right to exist and that it should be bailed out by the government. I'm not sure that assumption any longer has any validity if it ever did.

Channel 4 does exist, but there is no reason it MUST exist in the future. The station is a state-owned anomaly. The government has no place in owning the station anymore and has not done so for a long time. Blame it on the last Conservative government (that's my top tip). It sold off everything else (trains, gas, water, electricity – useful stuff), but somehow it hung onto Channel 4 (stuff we don't need). Was John Major a 'Brookside' fan? Who knows.

Okay, so maybe New Labour should have taken its chance five years ago when the station was still worth something rather than the millstone it is now. Sadly it did not.

So where does that leave us? Ideally, Johnson and Duncan want more government money or a bit of the BBC. They should get neither – the BBC has built BBC Worldwide into a thriving business. Channel 4 has dug itself into a financial hole that no amount of celebrity pap will get it out of.

It seems to many that the best (if not the only) way out is a merger with Five. A merger with Five makes perfect sense. They are in the same market (unless I'm mistaken reality shows and American imports are their bread and butter?). Channel 4 might consider Five to be the less attractive sister in this duo, but I'm sure they will come to appreciate each other.

Sir Jeremy is right when he says that "shocking has become a remit in itself" for Channel 4.

Seriously, what else was the justification for the broadcaster inviting Israel hating Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give its alternative Christmas message?

Sure there might be some good stuff in there somewhere, but it is lost amongst the dross. I mean come on aren't we bored already of year after year of 'Celebrity Big Brother'?

None of this contributes to public-service broadcasting, which is apparently the reason we are trying to ensure its future.

I'm hoping that when Lord Carter, the communications minister, publishes his report on January 26 including proposals on its future he is brave and bold and takes this opportunity to get shot of Channel 4. Maybe the government will hang onto a stake and when the markets pick up it will be able to realise a better return for the tax payer, but it should definitely go.

Unlike Johnson I don't think many will see a merger with Five as being "a tragedy for Channel 4". It is more like a match made in heaven.

Follow me on Twitter

Mark Thompson's intervention is too late to save Trisha

1704826 — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:44:00 GMT

Writing in today's Financial Times, BBC director-general Mark Thompson indicates that he would support a merger between Channel 4 and Five in order to save them costs and preserve his precious licence fee from any proposed top-slicing.

Sadly for Trisha Goddard, who has just been dropped by Five for being too expensive (yes, really) his intervention hasn't come soon enough.

Interestingly it was four years ago while Thompson was at C4 that a merger between the two stations was first mooted; it subsequently came to nothing. The rationale is still the same though and seems reasonable enough - cost efficiencies could be achieved by merging back office functions a merger while an increase in scale would create greater clout for negotiations, particularly in advertising.

Well that's the theory, but in practice what would a merged C4 and Five look like and how big a bargaining chip would its ad sales team have? Well here are some choice cuts from their terrestrial schedules today: as well as Going for Gold and Going for Gold Extra, Neighbours x2, Home and Away x2, a very old repeat of The Simpsons, Celebrity Dine With Me and Celebrity Big Brother, there is a TV movie and the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain.

Not great stuff to work with really is it - in fact in the entire day for both channels there are only two hours of what could be called original and distinct programmes worth advertisers buying into - the excellent War Zone on Five and the voyeuristically intriguing Half Ton Son on C4.

A merger is only part of the solution; better content for both is the key.

Five's breaks break the mould

1704826 — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:57:00 GMT

Regular readers (hello mum) may recall that I recently called into question whether Five has ever managed to shake-off its image as little more than a provider of cheap frequency to advertisers' schedules.

While I still maintain that Dawn Airey has much to do upon her arrival as chairman to turn Five into becoming a must-have on any media buyers wish-list, there is strong evidence that the channel is working hard to earn this place.

Break junctions and bumpers - bear with me - may not sound like the most interesting of things but they are increasingly crucial in order to retain viewers throughout the day, and this is important not just for the channels themselves but also the advertisers in the breaks in between programmes.

Real credit is therefore due to Five for attempting to inject a little excitement into the breaks by running frequent and genuinely creative bursts that are intended to describe the brand values of the channel and its programming - something that critics have long said that the channel has struggled to communicate.

Although Channel 4, ITV and the BBC have tried to liven up their break junctions, often, the executions are so few as to have become predictable and tired - for example who can't have failed to notice that when the BBC has hippos swimming in a circle a nature programme is sure to follow.

Five's move is not without risks and therefore shows real confidence in its tone and product. And for that, it should be applauded.

I've upset Five

1704826 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:59:00 GMT

Oh dear. Five are upset with a media analysis that I wrote in last week's mag.

In a letter they have produced lots of figures that counter the argument and the data that we published. There are some good points (see next week's Marketing to see it in full) but boasting that Five has managed to out-rate Channel 4 more than 40 times in peak looks an impressive statistic but doesn't stand up to closer analysis. When you consider that because of its heavy public service obligations Channel 4 is forced to show worthy minority-interest programmes that by their very nature would not rate highly, it doesn't seem that significant.

Anyway I'm left with the impression that Barb audience data can be cut so many ways depending on audience, daypart and measurement that you can virtually prove anything. Perhaps to some extent I was guilty of this too.

I do however concede, though, that every channel relies on too few programme formats - ITV1 with Coronation Street, Channel 4 with Big Brother etc. Five's failure to innovate with new formats just shows and dependence on Five is just the more striking. I'm also embarrassed to admit I spelt Carl Ratcliff's name wrong. Apologies.