From Big Brother To Big Sales Houses, Channel 5 Prepares For Battle
Channel 5 lost out to Channel 4 in its attempt to buy the rights to Big Brother, and looking at that programme’s accelerating popularity (see Big Brother Is Watching Audience Figures Go Up) its easy to see why Dawn Airey has decided that Jailbreak, the channel’s most expensive commission yet, will form the centrepiece of 5’s autumn schedule.
Something of a case of “anything you can do, we can do bigger”, where BB has a high security compound, the makers of Jailbreak are constructing a bona fide Category C jail. Where the residents of the BB household stand to win £70,000, the prize for the first contestant to escape from prison in Jailbreak could be as much as £100,000.
BB has established TV babe Davina McCall hosting its Friday night episodes, while Jailbreak will have established TV babe Ulrika Jonsson hosting every one of the 18 episodes beginning 5 September. Like BB, Jailbreak will follow the contestants with cameras 24 hours a day, although the output is designed to be family viewing, so naked body painting is not on the cards.
There will also be web coverage, but in this instance the viewers have more input than simply voting to boot people out. Instead they can help contestants via email and phone as they complete physical and mental challenges, at the same time getting a shot at their own cut of the prize money.
Jailbreak will head up a schedule which, at a cost of £51m, will be the channel’s most expensive yet. While Channel 4 and BBC 2 may be seen as its closest rivals in terms of audience share, a schedule featuring a late night talk show headed by Jerry Springer, who will also compere the 50th Miss World competition at the Millennium Dome, and documentaries on Princess Diana’s last love affair, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Charles Bronson (the criminal, not the actor), killer viruses and premature burial, it is obvious that 5’s populist approach continues to make it more akin to ITV and Sky 1.
Having already danced on the prime ITV territory of Saturday night entertainment with Night Fever (due to return in October), C5 is now up for emulating another ITV success story by trying its hand at daytime television, as it puts its Mirror recruit Matthew Wright up against This Morning with a “topical talk show”.
Off-screen, Channel 5 has another David and Goliath battle on its hands as it continues to lobby for the ITC to ban anti-competitive deals formed by the main ITV sales houses (now reduced from three to two by the recent merger (see Future Of ITV Laid Out As Granada Seals Deal)). David Elstein said today that they are expecting a ban to be enacted by the ITC within weeks but added, “It will be up to advertisers to make the ban work.”
Elsewhere in sales, an official announcement is on the cards regarding the creation of E5, a new media subsidiary which would act as an umbrella for projects including further digital plans and also 5 Interactive, an internet sales house which will launch in September. Interactive programming, meanwhile, has a new controller in the form of Sam Sandhu, pinched from the BBC (see Appointments Brief).
A hurdle to Channel 5’s competitiveness continues to be its coverage. At present only 83% of UK households receive the service, and even the company admit that not all those households get a decent picture. The take-up of digital television is said to be improving this however, and 460,000 households have also been added to coverage capability in the last six months.
With programme budgets still running at around 3-4 times less than the average for BBC 2 and Channel 4, Channel 5 would clearly benefit from more investment. A possible boost could occur if RTL goes ahead and buys UNM’s stake in the channel, as many have been predicting (see RTL Lists On Stock Exchange With Value Of £16.6bn). Elstein said this was definitely a possibility, “If the right price can be found.”
Channel 5: 020 7550 5555