problems with Channel 5
Since it's controversial launch in March 1997 Channel 5 has been the fifth wheal upsetting the balance of British terrestrial broadcasting. With millions of videos to retune and a paltry programme budget few foresaw success, but C5 was the only mainstream broadcaster to increase its audience share last year1, and at the beginning of this year it was valued at L1.2 billion. The recent purchase of the rights to screen ITV's Australian soap opera Home and Away is a major coup, the first time it has poached from a competitor (it's had to get used to the reverse). The problems C5 have had in the past C5 executives are eager to overplay recent well publicised successes, but the channel has been dogged by problems from the start, some technically unavoidable and some disputably due to managerial misjudgement. At the RTS convention in 1999 Greg Dyke, chairing a session on branding, challenged David Brook (director of marketing during C5's launch) that part of the problem with C5 was that it didn't live up to it's launch. Brook disagreed saying " You must remember, we had to launch a channel without any programmes and amongst all the confusion of retuning" His defence cites two of the three main initial problems C5 faced 1) A budget
Typical schedule content (see appendix 2) was ridiculed from the very beginning - a stigma which still remains at the Channel - it's eagerness to create a brand without a decent product means the thing the public associate the C5 symbol was imported (American) soaps, porn and tackiness (this did generate a small cult following). A representative example is the game-show 'Whittle' on which 3 contestants fight for a share of L100. Contestants who are eliminated have to wear a paper plate over their heads tied with elastic. Television magazine in Dec '99 said, "Channel 5 is about providing a programme service that meets ITC requirements and makes money. This is often read as lacking programme ambition resulting in the lowest common denominator programming, with nothing of quality on the Channel, but televisual junk food". How C5 is attempting to improve the overall (programme) service in the future 2) Marketing Week, 26 August 1999, Media Analysis munication, was short sighted. Brooks successor, Jim Hyther commented (Guardian Nov 1st, 99) "Once the coffee jar is on the supermarket shelf, you can't keep pretending to the customer it's premium ground when it's actually instant granules". audience, remain populist and add diversity to the terrestrial choice. In the longer term though, with the competition of hundreds or millions of interactive channels its fate is as hard to predict as any other small media fish.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Dawn Airey, Norton Kirsty, L100 Contestants, Maze' Pearsons, David Brook, William Phillips, Guardian Nov, David Elstein, , ITV's Australian, dawn airey, channel 5, late night, 'home away', programme service, original drama, flow c5, modern mainstream, william phillips, programming strategy,
Approximate Word count = 1444
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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