Feature: Channel Five Stirs Up A Storm With Naked Programming
It is unlikely that TV presenter Keith Chegwin ever thought that the more private parts of his anatomy would come under close media scrutiny. Having made his name in children’s television shows some twenty years ago he’s better known these days for location slots on breakfast television. Neither genre is known for its smut, but a recent venture with Channel 5 has this week seen “Cheggers” accused of indecency beyond being far too jolly for that time of the morning.
It all began when Channel 5 screened Naked Jungle at 10:55pm last Tuesday night. The game show, part of C5’s predictably headline-grabbing “Naked Week” scheduling, had the host – Chegwin – and competitors for a £5000 jackpot appearing completely nude. Middle England, or at least, the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, reacted badly, calling it “A new milestone in the degradation of mainstream British television” and “Channel Filth”.
Fuel was added to the fire when the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Chris Smith noted in the Commons that concern had been raised over programme content, particularly on Channel 5 and said that he believed “Broadcasters have a commercial and moral duty to take good account of the views of the public”.
A unscientific survey (above) of the past month’s programming by the terrestrial commercial channels shows that, even when relatively innocuous programmes such as ITV’s Pleasure Island and C4’s Sex and The City and Something For The Weekend are included, C5 is responsible for a large proportion of sex-based post-watershed programming.
That said, there are two perplexing aspects to this week’s furore. Firstly, that straightforward nudity, albeit of a B-list celebrity, should provoke comment from the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport when C5 has built a reputation for filling its night-time schedule with arguably more offensive soft porn films. Secondly, that these attacks should occur when the watchdog for the industry, the Independent Television Commission (ITC), has just released its annual report on the channel which praised its efforts to clean up its act.
“[Sex and Shopping] was the exception rather than the rule,” said the report regarding documentaries and features, “and there was little sign of last year’s over-reliance on sex.” This comment, along with cautious praise for “more noteworthy programmes” and “schedules with growing audience appeals” contrasts strongly with the previous year’s report, which listed “worrying developments” including “the tackiness associated with an increased use of low budget erotic drama late in the evening and of various factual programmes on sexual themes.”
Despite this storm of protest, it seems unlikely that C5 will change the formula that has served to nearly double viewing figures since 1997. It should be noted however, that its best viewing figures to date have been due to films or football (see Eastwood Thriller Has Absolute Power Over Channel 5 Ratings), although these achievements have failed to gain the column inches generated by Naked Week.
The channel’s director of programming, Dawn Airey, was recently quoted as saying she wanted to move away from “films, fucking and football” to “movies, matches, mating, murder and mischief”, but will Daily Mail readers (or any of us, for that matter) spot the difference? More to the point, as Chris Smith stated, “Government cannot and should not direcly intervene” in programme content. C5 may well be low brow to C4 and BBC2’s high brow, but when it comes to adult programming, shouldn’t adults be allowed to decide what’s best for themselves?
Feature: Anna Wise