Channel 5

Channel 5 is a British free-to-air television channel. It was launched in 1991, and was the fifth national terrestrial analogue channel in the United Kingdom.

The station was branded as Five between 2002 and 2011, when it was owned by the RTL Group. Richard Desmond purchased the station from RTL on 23 July 2010, announcing plans to invest more money in programming and return to the name Channel 5 with immediate effect, and it was relaunched on 14 February 2011. On 1 May 2014 the channel was acquired by Viacom (now ViacomCBS) for £450 million (US$759 million) before EuroMedia acquired it in 2019. The channel rebranded once again on March 1, 2020 to give the channel a more mature image. Along with this, EuroMedia closed down all of their sister channels in order to focus on the main channel.

Channel 5 is a general entertainment channel that shows both internally commissioned programmes such as Fifth Gear, Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother, The Gadget Show and ''The Hotel Inspector. The station has been very successful with imports from the United States in particular, including the CSI franchise, the NCIS franchise, the first three series in the Law & Order franchise, Power Rangers, Friends, The Mentalist, Body of Proof, Once Upon A Time, Dallas and Under the Dome''. It previously aired The Simpsons from 1991 until 1997 when it moved to BBC1. It attempted to buy the show back from them in the early 2000’s was instead won by Channel 4. Other previous programmes include Seinfeld, The Tonight Show franchise, Action, Dream On (season 3 onwards, seasons 1-2 on Channel 4), One Night Stand, Family Affairs and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (shares with BBC).

Pre-launch
Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited was licensed by the UK's then independent statutory regulator the Independent Broadcasing Authority (IBA) in 1985 after a bidding process that started in 1983 and lasted throughout 1993. The initial round of bidders, which included a network of city-TV stations planned by Thames Television and the Italian politician and media tycoon Silvio Berluscon. (who founded Mediaset, which owns Canale 5 and formerly owned La Cinq, which ceased operations in 1992; he retired his offer a few months later), was rejected outright and the ITC contemplated not awarding the licence at all.

The difficulty with the project lay in use of television broadcast frequencies that had been allocated to RF outputs from domestic videocassette recorders. To achieve national coverage, large numbers of domestic video recorders (which output at a nearby frequency) had to be retuned or fitted with a filter, at the bidding company's expense.

The project was revived in mid-1988 when the ITC re-advertised the franchise. Tom McGrath, then-president of Time Warner International Broadcasting, put together a revised frequency plan with NTL and consulting engineer Ellis Griffiths, involving less retuning and greater signal coverage. Lord Hollick, then chief executive of Meridian Broadcasting (later United News & Media, and UBM) took up the project as lead investor as UK law prohibited Time Warner from owning more than 25%. Pearson Television, who by now owned original licence bidders Thames Television, also came on board. When McGrath left to become President of Paramount, Time Warner dropped out of the project and was replaced by CLT (known in the UK for Radio Luxembourg). Other bidders for the licence included UKTV (led by Canwest and Select TV which bid £36m for the licence, New Century Television (owned by BSkyB and Granada who bid £2m) Virgin TV (backed by Virgin Communications and Associated Newspapers who bid £22m), and Channel 5 Broadcasting, which was backed by EuroMedia, RTL and United International Pictures, who bid 30 million and won the license.

ITV, BSB and Channel 4 advertising, Comet and Saatchi & Saatchi were the main companies behind the pre-launch advertising campaign: "Give Me 5". The channel would be both modern and mainstream. A logo (a numeric "5" within a circle) and visual motif (five lines interacting with people’s lives) were used, and an attempt was made to establish a collection of Channel 5 faces; through the spring of 1991, billboards of The Simpsons were displayed, along with other unknown characters.

A series of pre-launch screens were displayed on the frequencies Channel 5 would begin broadcasting on in the months before launch as well, including a trailer for the channel and information screens. After re-tuning, around 95% of the population's televisions could view the channel on launch night.

The channel would also have a multi-year deal with United International Pictures (which distributed Paramount, Universal and MGM/UA releases) and due to this, their first film premiere was the James Bond movie Dr. No, EuroMedia now owns 33% of the company with ViacomCBS and NBCUniversal.

The launch
The channel's launch on Saturday 16 February 1997 at 6 pm featured the Queen singing a re-written version of Manfred Mann's hit "5-4-3-2-1" as "1-2-3-4-5".[19][20] Presenters Sarah Greene and Eamonn Holmes introduced the nation to the UK's fifth (sixth including S4C) terrestrial channel with half-an-hour of previews.

The rest of the Channel 5 launch night schedule, along with the official viewing figures, was as follows:

Re-brand as Five (2002)
On 16 September 2002, Channel 5 re-branded to Five, in a multimillion-pound project directed by Trevor Beattie.

On 27 February 2004, it was reported that Five and Channel 4 were discussing a possible merger. Channel 4 and Five announced in November of that year that merger plans were being called off. Early in 2009, rumours started re-surfacing about Five, Channel 4 and Granada plc conducting a three-way merger.

Pearson Television and CLT later merged, becoming RTL Group who became part of Bertelsmann and, control the channel, after buying EuroMedia’s 35.4% stake for £247.6 million on 20 July 2005. The acquisition was approved on 26 August 2005. After Holleck became involved, he and McGrath brought on board Greg Dyke (later Director-General of the BBC) as interim CEO during the application and launch phase of the project.

On 18 November 2005, it was announced that Five had bought a stake in DTT's pay-TV operator, Top Up TV. It was said that the investment may lead to the development of new free and pay services on DTT, and other platforms.

Following this, Five launched two new digital TV channels in autumn 2006 on Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media:
 * 5 STAR launched as Five Life on 15 October 2006, providing dramas, films, soap operas and popular factual and lifestyle shows. The channel previously aired pre-school shows under the Milkshake! banner. It was renamed Fiver in 2008, 5* in 2011 and eventually its current name in 2016.
 * 5 USA launched as Five US on 16 October 2006, offering drama, films, sport, comedy and youth programming from the USA. It was renamed Five USA in 2009 and 5 USA in 2011.

Desmond takeover (2011)
Five was taken over by Richard Desmond's publishing group Northern & Shell on 23 July 2010 for £103.5 million. Desmond pledged to top up the broadcaster's total budget to about £1.5bn over the next five years, including new investment of £50m to £100m a year to boost programming and the equivalent of £20m promoting the channel and its shows in a marketing campaign in Northern & Shell publications. The takeover was partly motivated by the opportunities for cross-promotion of Five from Desmond's newspapers (Daily Express and Daily Star) and magazines (including OK!). One commentator warned that "readers will be bombarded with references to Five. The opportunity for cross-promotion between his publications and TV channel are enormous."

Upon completing his takeover of Five on 23 July 2010, Richard Desmond remarked; "I prefer Channel 5 to Five, but... we haven't met with the team yet to discuss these sorts of details". The day after, Desmond's Daily Express newspaper noted that the channel's name was to change: "From today the rather vague 'Five' (Five what? Days of the week? Fingers?) reverts to the much more informative Channel 5". On 11 August 2010, Desmond confirmed the restoration of the original name used from 1997–2002. The restoration was revealed onscreen on 14 February 2011.

The relaunch also saw investment in a range of new programming with the debut of the (now-cancelled) nightly entertainment show ''OK! TV''. Audience figures for the relaunch were boosted with increased viewing figures for the main 5 News bulletins and improved figures for ''OK! TV in the 6.30 p.m. slot over its predecessor Live from Studio Five''. On 18 August 2011, Channel 5 relaunched Big Brother, starting with Celebrity Big Brother 8 and followed by Big Brother 12, having bought the rights to air the programme following its cancellation by Channel 4 in April 2011. The deal was worth a reported £200 million. The show helped the channel's viewing figures and audience share to rise slightly year-on-year, from 4.4% to 4.5%, in 2012. It was only achieved by Channel 5 and BBC One later in 2012; all other terrestrial broadcasters fell in comparison.[35]

In 2013, Ben Frow, the channel's Director of Programming, revealed that the station would be moving away from broadcasting just American imports, by introducing shows from other countries such as Canada, Ireland and Australia to the schedules. The station has since begun screening Australian prison drama Wentworth Prison and Irish gangland series Love/Hate.

Sale to Viacom (2014)
In January 2014, it was reported that Richard Desmond was looking at selling Channel 5 for up to £700 million. Potential buyers included BT, Granada, Viacom and a joint bid of BSkyB and Discovery, Inc.

On 1 May 2014, Desmond agreed to sell Channel 5 to Viacom for £450 million (US$759 million). The deal was approved on 10 September 2014 and at the same time it was announced that it was to co-commission programmes with its pay channels such as Nickelodeon and MTV. The channels operate under the Viacom International Media Networks European subsidiary. On 1 August 2015, Channel 5's five advertising regions: London, South/Central England and Wales, Northern England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland were closed with Viacom considering them financially unviable. The closure of the advertising regions allowed Channel 5 HD for Sky HD viewers to swap with the standard-definition version of Channel 5 on the EPG.

Under Viacom, the channel planned to increase its original programming output, increasing its budget by 10%. On 11 February 2016, Channel 5 also unveiled an overhauled brand, meant to reflect a new remit of "Spirited TV with an Emotional Heart".

Sale to EuroMedia (2019)
On July 8, 2019, Viacom were looking to sell Channel 5 to another company, with potential buyers now including Channel Four Television Corporation, EuroMedia, Comcast, Sony and El TV Kadsre Television Network. EuroMedia eventually acquired the company for 20 million euros in August 2019 and took full control that October with it being a part of the RTL Group part of the company, for the first time since 2010. The first thing they done with C5 was rebrand it in March 2020, designed in house by EuroDesign Group. The new branding was to signal the start of a new era for the channel, dropping it’s documentary programmes (although Police Interceptors was saved from cancellation by Channel 4) to focus on US imports, movies, sporting events and entertainment. The new service would also show repeats of ITV programmes since it was now owned by Granada.