Weekend Spy: Multiples of Five

This week saw Five move into multi-channel territory, with the launches of Five US and Five Life. Backed by a multi-million pound - and in places, controversial - advertising campaign, the biggest since the station's main launch nine years ago, Five are really hoping to make an impact in a competitive market place. Joanne Oatts looks back at the evolution of Five and talks to Five's recently appointed multi-channel controller, Nick Thorogood, about the new channels.

Cast your mind back, way back, to Easter Sunday, March 30, 1997. A new channel had emerged, albeit a bit later than scheduled, in the form of Channel 5. Instead of being full of promise and wonder at what alternative programming it would bring, Channel 5 was instead born amidst confusion around how and who could watch it. At a budget-busting cost of £150 million, 7000 engineers roamed the country, frantically re-tuning videos so conflicting television frequencies didn't clash, resulting in much of the initial perception surrounding Channel 5's launch being not entirely based on its programming. The content however soon gained the reputation of being all "films, f**cking and football"; Channel 5 was not quite the "modern and mainstream" alternative it set out to be, and with its 2.5 million viewers, significantly under the 6 million the channel hoped for.

Fast forward to the more recent past. Channel 5, Ch5, or as it's now called, Five, has had a change in direction over the past few years, with public perception maybe still a little scarred from its earlier incarnations. As it nears its tenth anniversary, shows like Xena the Warrior Princess, Sunset Beach, Family Affairs and Fort Boyard are gone, and you're now more likely to see lifestyle, arts and history documentaries, new comedy and US dramas in the schedules.

The channel has evolved, and efforts by its chief executive Jane Lighting have certainly helped, bringing the channel gradually more upmarket, more diverse, and more appealing to advertisers.

But with Five launching into multi-channel, there is a concern that the content will be "more of the same". What exactly will the new channels offer? Reports suggest that Lighting considered several different channel ideas before going forward with US and Life. A film channel and a children's channel were options, but Lighting decided to bide her time and wait and see what ever one else was doing. "It's been a fantastic learning experience because we've been watching them like hawks," she told The Independent, "which ones have worked, which have gone back to the drawing board. Its been incredibly valuable."

Nick Thorogood, recently appointed multi-channel controller of Five, says there was certainly a defined strategy behind the new channels, their content and the time it has taken for them to go live. "What's really interesting about coming into the market at the time," he says, "is that these channels launches have been very, very carefully calculated to fit into spaces in the market that are very clearly defined. Particularly within Freeview, the advantage that Five have got against others is to say; where are there gaps, where are the things people aren't getting, and where are there audiences that we can sell. Then alongside that say, what are the things that we do well? So it was quite natural to see how it fell into two different categories. One that would suit that more male side of the audience - Five US, and one that would suit a more female audience, Five Life, a mixed-genre entertainment channel."

Thorogood should know his stuff. Until earlier this year he was editor of ITV Daytime, a position he’d held since 2004, and prior to that he was head of lifestyle channels at UKTV for four years overseeing the launch of many of its successes, including UKTV Food, which celebrates its fifth birthday next week.

"When we launched UKTV Food, we had a really clear, focused proposition, which is fantastic to build a channel around. And I feel the same is very true of these channels. Particularly Five US, where we know exactly what that channel is from day one," Thorogood says.

So how was launching channels for Five different than in his previous roles?: "Compared to other channel launches in one sense it's exactly the same in terms of the headaches. You're doing something that's technically complicated, legally complicated - you've got all sorts of rights issues to deal with. And alongside that your working in a creative space, so therefore you have to take some risks and you have to do things that you feel are right in that instant. You can do the consumer testing, you can put it into focus groups, but actually none of these has the true environment of watching a channel playout, when your competitors are running their best shows, when the person sitting at home is being distracted by the baby crying or the phone ringing: that's when you find out whether your creation of a channel - whether it works."

Early signs of 'Life' are that any new channel needs time to 'breathe'. Five Life launched last Sunday night registering an audience share of just 0.21%, making it the 45th most watched in multi-channel homes, behind ITV2 (2.55%), Film4 (1.65%) and BBC Three (1.46%). Things picked up on Monday with a share double that of launch night and the documentary The Woman with Half a Face picking up 125,000 and a 0.92% share.

Autumn is a traditionally tough time for all channels, which Thorogood is very aware of - everyone has there best 'wares' on the table. But for Five US, the signs are more promising. The channel managed a share of 1.24% on launch night, with Stephen King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes picking up an audience of 283,000, and a 1.61% share. CSI picked up 167,000 (0.96%) when it launched the channel at 8pm, and overall US acquired a larger audience share than both More4 and Film4, which picked up 0.42% and 1.02% respectively.

Playing to its strengths is the best way for Five to compete. The content is certainly there. Warner Brothers' The Ellen DeGeneres Show, award-winning Australian drama Love My Way and Supermodel Extra feature on Life, with popular children's strand Milkshake! being shown every morning. First-chance viewings of Australian soap Home and Away, which has been with Five since it snatched the rights from ITV in 2000, also make up the schedule, and are already proving a success with a 6.30pm episode on Monday this week attracting 354,000 and a share or 2.42%, the highest figures for any programme available on multichannel at that time.

Five 's other key strength in recent years has been its acquisitions of sought-after American drama programmes like Law and Order and CSI - Crime Scene Investigation. Five US will be a major showcase for this, with CSI becoming its flagship show. US will go right back to the beginning, showing some of the earliest episodes, and special 'behind the scenes' programmes fronted by comedian Russell Kane. So is there a danger of US becoming "the CSI channel"? Exactly how many hours of CSI is Five going to broadcast on US?

"I'm not sure exactly. Not enough!" says Thorogood. "It's 7 or 9 now, and it's going to change over time, but it's going to be a lot and I'm not going apologise for running a lot of the world's favourite show. The feedback we've had is CSI is one of the most incredible TV brands, in that viewers feel that whenever they want that magical hour, they're going to get it delivered by CSI. So we're gonna show it whenever we can and make the most of it."

It's not a completely new strategy - Five is showing fewer hours of CSI than Channel 4 shows of Friends across its network each week, and yet it remains E4's most watched programme. Thorogood agrees: "There's nothing as fantastic in TV as something that you know is going to deliver on its promise. We've all been caught out with big dramas on terrestrial channels or dipping into films that we've never heard of. You waste an hour and a half of your life and in the modern world we live in, our time is so precious, so to know you're going to get what you want from it (in TV) is a tremendous thing."

With programmes like CSI, Shark, Vanished and Stephen King's: Nightmares and Dreamscapes, starring William Hurt, where the first episode featured no dialogue, Five US couldn't be accused of not offering alternative, quality programming: "It’s a really different watch. It defines the fact for me that, yeah we're going to have CSI, yes were going to have lots of movies, but were also going to be prepared to put things on that challenge us and our viewers, and we're going to put them in peak slots."

Thorogood's enthusiasm for the channel is clear, even though he admits to having not been a regular viewer of Five before he was given the role. Does he think the public's perception of the channel has changed?: "Five is still a young channel, it's not yet ten years old. Inevitably it had to find its feet and had to make a splash into the market and it had to grow and mature as a channel.

"I don't think, I know, the public's perception of the channel has changed, because I have marketing showing me documents. In the last two years, not only has its 'viewership' moved more ABC1, more upmarket and younger, but in a survey which shows the perception of channels, in terms of Five being listed as the first or second choice of channels, it's grown by 4%. That's an extraordinary change."

Thorogood is very aware of the need to be looking forward and to continue to come up with the goods beyond launch. New shows are planned for January and February: "It's very easy to make a splash and a noise but it's very hard to change perception. So that's why it's very important with the new channels to get the brands right because people will make a valued judgement and once they make it, its hard to change." A lesson that Five has had to learn the hard way before.

Thankfully no Spice Girls were present this time.