2025 will be a “whole new world” for Channel 5, director of programming Ben Frow has pledged as the broadcaster plots a first-ever major marketing assault for VOD and a clearer commissioning approach.
Speaking at Sky Media’s annual upfronts event in London, Frow admitted that Channel 5 faces a “big challenge” when building a bridge between linear TV and streaming.
“The only way to go is to make as much noise as possible,” Frow said in conversation with 5 News presenter Dan Walker.
“We will be shifting our content spend towards bigger things that can make more noise… The things that are mediocre, we will kill. It’s a kind of fight for survival.
“You might have to be big, noisy and probably quite expensive, or you’ve got to be pretty cheap, high-volume and utterly bingeable. But there’s not really much room there for the middle tier.”
Frow praised the performance of Channel 5’s VOD player My5, having seen a 56% increase in viewership this year “despite having zero marketing — ever”. He claimed that My5 had achieved this with “very strategic identification of certain programmes and utilising our linear platform to drive people to My5”.
Parent company Paramount had previously planned to merge My5 with its global free ad-supported TV service Pluto TV in the autumn, but in August opted instead to keep the services separate and relaunch the whole broadcaster as 5. Channel 5 has since hired ad agency Pablo to launch a major marketing campaign in the spring.
The objective, Frow said, was about “catching up on our competitors who are ahead of us on streaming”.
“My ambition is that we will hold our linear share, because linear still is very, very, very important. We can still get bigger audiences than anybody else can [and] you can do it by understanding our audience.”
On how the new-look 5 VOD player will look, he said: “If you think about the population who have never experienced 5, they don’t even know why 5 exists, because it’s never been marketed.
“The incredible range of content that the new 5 will have, because we can take the best of Paramount, plus we can take the best of MTV, we can take the best of Comedy Central — you know, we’re a platform that really is going to represent the very best of Paramount as a family, which is a great place to be.”
Frow, known for his candour in interviews, referred to taking Prozac to deal with “overwhelming anxiety and tension”. Having rejoined Channel 5 in 2013, he revealed last summer that he had secretly resigned after being burnt out and dealing with isolation during the pandemic.
“I’m in an incredibly good place… I’m a great believer in, you know, whenever you need to go and get help. I got help and it’s transformed my life. So I’m very happy.”
Speaking at a showcase of Sky Media’s ad sales proposition (Sky Media handles Paramount’s ad sales in the UK), Frow did not shy away from criticising UK broadcast rivals ITV and Channel 4.
“Our live audience is probably different to our streaming audience. It is an older audience, but a very valuable audience. They’re not really being catered for some of our competitors — most of our competitors, actually,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, he has been “very clear about ratings, revenue and reputation… then you look at what we stand for”. He continued: “I believe in origination. I believe in having a voice that is different to our commercial competitors. If you look at ITV now, it’s game show, game show, game show — fantastically cheap, I’m sure, but I’m not sure how diverse that audience is.”
