Prior to the launch of Channel 5, Newsline interviewed several key players in advertising to discover what the general feeling was towards the new channel *ISBA Wishes Channel 5 Success. Now that Five has gone live, Newsline has gone back to the industry to find out what it thinks about the final result.
Andrew Canter, group TV buying director at Mediapolis commented: “I watched the opening show and I liked what I saw, there was a good feel to the channel and a bouncy, vibrant look. This should attract the young adult audience that the channel is targeting. It is currently living up to its modern, mainstream image, but it is really too early to form any firm opinions about 5.”
Over at Zenith Media, the company’s broadcast director, Ian Lewis, who has been very outspoken about the channel’s chances prior to transmission, told Newsline: “Channel 5 performed very much as I predicted. They will be pleased with their first day’s figures, but I doubt that they will be able to match this again for several months, if not longer. It was an odd time of year to launch, the BBC and ITV both had strong schedules this weekend. Monday’s figures have shown that Channel 5 is already experiencing the traditional scheduling problems, people are tuning out as soon as the news comes on. The figures also showed that a very high proportion of viewers are under 16. I estimate that an average of 20% of Monday’s audience was children, I think that this figure was higher than a lot of people expected. Overall though, I think that 5 will be disappointed by Monday’s figures, the Jack Docherty Show failed to even cross the one million mark. Although the BBC announcement that it is to extend its Nine O’clock News to nearly an hour, for the election, will benefit 5. It is now the school holidays and I don’t think that we can get an accurate picture of the typical Channel 5 audience for a good few months.”
Speaking on behalf of the advertisers themselves, Bob Wooton, ISBA’s director of media services, said: “From what I’ve seen of Channel 5 it is pretty much what I expected it to be. It’s not amazing, but it is by no means awful. I really liked the format of the news, although I don’t think that they’ve got the order of stories quite right. But, it is only to be expected that 5 will experience teething problems. I even noticed that last night’s 9 O’clock News on the BBC was a lot more informal. Maybe Channel 5 are already changing attitudes towards news. As for an overall view, I still haven’t seen enough of the schedule to make any firm judgments about the new channel.”
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