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How's Channel 5 doing these days?

Started by Bazooka, April 10, 2019, 02:42:59 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Pranet

Quote from: gilbertharding on April 11, 2019, 10:16:51 AM
Channel 5 is also the only place I get to watch cricket now (although the IPL used to be on ITV4).

Weirdly a couple of years ago a handful of Big Bash games turned up on there.

canadagoose

It doesn't feel quite as exciting when you're not sticking the aerial out your bedroom window and trying to convince yourself the resulting snowy mess is watchable.

imitationleather

I remember them launching and saying they were showing Poland v England from the France '98 qualifying campaign. It then felt like about a year before that game actually happened, but looking at the date it was actually only two months after Channel 5's first broadcast. I guess time moved a lot, lot slower when I was ten years old.

On the day however they did dedicate hours and hours of build-up to it as though it was an FA Cup final. Utter torture. At one point, running low on ideas, they put the teams they thought would be picked into Championship Manager and played a simulation of the match. Zzzzzzz...

petril

Quote from: imitationleather on April 11, 2019, 10:58:55 PM
I remember them launching and saying they were showing Poland v England from the France '98 qualifying campaign. It then felt like about a year before that game actually happened, but looking at the date it was actually only two months after Channel 5's first broadcast. I guess time moved a lot, lot slower when I was ten years old.

On the day however they did dedicate hours and hours of build-up to it as though it was an FA Cup final. Utter torture. At one point, running low on ideas, they put the teams they thought would be picked into Championship Manager and played a simulation of the match. Zzzzzzz...

well worth it for them seemingly sticking it on fast mode and Dominik "Mash And Peas" Diamond not being able to keep up, even at Gamesmaster pace

Pranet

Quote from: canadagoose on April 11, 2019, 10:49:19 PM
It doesn't feel quite as exciting when you're not sticking the aerial out your bedroom window and trying to convince yourself the resulting snowy mess is watchable.

At my Mum and Dad's house when it started they were on some sort of booster transmitter that for some reason was awful. We didn't get Channel 4 for years and years. Anyway, when Channel 5 started I would have been at University, but when I was at home the only was to get C5 was on a portable aerial pointed at whatever the next nearest transmitter was. I think it also picked up Welsh tv but I might be making that up.

Actually this thread has made me remember that I watched quite a lot of Channel 5 when it started, it was before I could afford the internet so I needed some way to waste my time, and so I watched a lot of Channel 5 and listened to a lot of pre Talk Sport Talk Radio.


Pranet

Quote from: imitationleather on April 11, 2019, 10:58:55 PM
I remember them launching and saying they were showing Poland v England from the France '98 qualifying campaign. It then felt like about a year before that game actually happened, but looking at the date it was actually only two months after Channel 5's first broadcast. I guess time moved a lot, lot slower when I was ten years old.

On the day however they did dedicate hours and hours of build-up to it as though it was an FA Cup final. Utter torture. At one point, running low on ideas, they put the teams they thought would be picked into Championship Manager and played a simulation of the match. Zzzzzzz...

For some reason they had a posh man who normally covered horse racing to present it all.

DrGreggles

Quote from: imitationleather on April 11, 2019, 10:58:55 PM
At one point, running low on ideas, they put the teams they thought would be picked into Championship Manager and played a simulation of the match. Zzzzzzz...

20 years on Sky Sports News assess potential transfers using that approach.

Uncle TechTip

Quote from: petrilTanaka on April 11, 2019, 11:12:58 PM
well worth it for them seemingly sticking it on fast mode and Dominik "Mash And Peas" Diamond not being able to keep up, even at Gamesmaster pace

Live and Dangerous, the overnight sports talk show with DD and Shelley Webb. Can't remember a thing about it except that they mixed sports clips with live and dangerous chat like a night time Big Breakfast. Thanks to this thread I've only just remembered it so it's off to YouTube.

I remember that England game well, was it Jonathan Pearce's first live game? It was hosted by Brough Scott, the posh racing bloke which was a total misfire.

Pranet

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on April 12, 2019, 12:02:42 AM
Live and Dangerous, the overnight sports talk show with DD and Shelley Webb. Can't remember a thing about it except that they mixed sports clips with live and dangerous chat like a night time Big Breakfast. Thanks to this thread I've only just remembered it so it's off to YouTube.

God yes. Live and Dangerous. I also cannot remember anything about that.

I can remember Under the Moon on Channel 4 though. That was actually quite good by the time it ended.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: gilbertharding on April 11, 2019, 10:16:51 AM
I also have to admire their commitment to their roots - even now it's all digital, the picture remains lo-def.

viacom, the cheap bastards. when I was at Mtv (& c5 is now based at my old workplace in camden), they would try to squeeze more & more channels into each digital multiplex, so that by the time I left, some of the Mtv channels were running at a little over 1Mb/sec (& this is Mpeg-2, not H264), so that I would make cracks about lego or animated stained-glass because of the macroblocking.

(I had plans to kill off one of the lower-rated Mtv strands for a few hours on saturday evenings, & allow VH-1 some extra bandwidth to offer music docs & movies in better quality, possibly with 5.1 & all that. scuppered.)

viacom bought viva, a german music channel, & while it didn't interfere with this too much, it used the viva branding to launch a UK music channel on freeview, where viacom was forbidden to put anything else because of the precarious relationship with sky.

viacom clearly had terrestrial ambitions; as far back as 2003, I visited OfCom as part of a fact-finding thing on their part to do with deregulating the frequencies used by broadcasters for radio-talkback & some radio microphones. all of the UK broadcasters sent their chief engineers or CTOs, but viacom didn't have a CTO outside the US, & by then the chief engineer in camden was a bloke who knew nothing about radio spectrum useage, so I was volunteered. we all introduced ourselves.... fifteen suits, & me in tshirt & jeans. on the way out, one of the ITV guys asked me if it was true that viacom was preparing a bid for the entire ITV network. I told him I'd heard the same rumours but that the arrangement with sky probably precluded it, & he seemed visibly relieved.
I expect channel five will gradually change, as OfCom's grip loosens, into a barker channel for viacom's vast library.

imitationleather

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on April 12, 2019, 12:02:42 AM
Live and Dangerous, the overnight sports talk show with DD and Shelley Webb. Can't remember a thing about it except that they mixed sports clips with live and dangerous chat like a night time Big Breakfast. Thanks to this thread I've only just remembered it so it's off to YouTube.

I remember that England game well, was it Jonathan Pearce's first live game? It was hosted by Brough Scott, the posh racing bloke which was a total misfire.

As a child with a TV in my bedroom I used to watch Live and Dangerous all the time, and it led to me becoming very interested in baseball for a while. As I recall, there were a couple of nights a week where it was several hours of, as you say, Big Breakfast-type chat about sports and then on other nights it was just a stream of US broadcasts. I've been trying to remember the name of Dominik Diamond's co-presenter but it just is not coming to me.

After a while the Big Breakfast stuff was completely dropped but the Live and Dangerous name persisted for years and years.

I was late for so much school because of that show.

Pranet

Didn't post cocaine Richard Bacon have an odd late night discussion show for a bit?  Kind of like After Dark? And Victor Lewis Smith did things for them as well.

Looking back it was correctly slagged off at the time but in the context of now early Channel 5 is adventurous and interesting television.

steveh

Quote from: Chriddof on April 11, 2019, 02:23:13 AM
Years before C5 actually launched, around about 1989 / 1990, I remember watching a feature on some current affairs show about the first attempt to get Channel 5 going from the IBA (just before they got murdered). There were clips of some promotional films from various British cities that attempted to convince the IBA to set the channel up somewhere other than London (what with Sky having only just properly launched and the idea of a fifth channel of any kind still being exciting).

After Thames TV lost their franchise, they spent several years trying to persuade the Independent Television Commission that Channel 5 should be used for a series of city-wide TV stations like Canada's City TV or New York One. I believe there was quite a lot of support for the idea from people who worked for the ITC but in the end the ITC board went with Channel 5 TV as a safe, cheap option. Had they done Thames' idea at the time it might have worked rather better than Jeremy Hunt's failed local TV project or Associated Media's short-lived Channel One city news stations on cable.

Norton Canes

So, anyone else watch the live brain surgery last night?

Bad Ambassador

I fondly recall Malcolm McDowell being on the Jack Docherty Show and thinking he was on Channel 4, reacting with baffled incredulity when told the existence of Channel 5.

The Angel screenings were weird, as they were initially Mondays at 7.30pm - right opposite Coronation Street. They were shifted to 8.00pm very quickly, then to a late-night slot before being dropped at the end of S4. I don't think the final season has ever aired on Freeview. I had to borrow the DVDs from a friend to find out what happened.

Rather like Gotham, where the first two seasons aired, C5 had the rights to the third but kept putting it off until after the DVD had come out, then let the rights expire. Netflix picked it up and eventually E4 followed suit - from the next season. This means that S1, 2 and 4 have aired on Freeview, but S3 hasn't.

Replies From View

I actually recorded the first three hours of Channel 5 when it was launched.

Part of my archive that my dad later taped over with random shit films to watch but he never even bothered watching, I think.


THEY WERE MY TAPES THAT I PAID FOR WITH MY OWN MONEY AND I AM SAD

Quote from: Pranet on April 11, 2019, 12:45:04 PM
I liked it when it had baseball. And Lexx.

It briefly used to show South American football live. So I'd get home from a night out and put my feet up over some mental Buenos Aires derby or skin-headed colombians kicking seven shades out of each other.

They did have a go at doing comedy. once. Surburban Shootout was a solid average thing. I rather liked Respectable. Hotel! saw a rather great cast have a great time with some genuinely awful jokes.

petril

Tibs and fucking Fibs as well, and that sketch show that spawned the "I'm wearing corduroy pants" guy from the pre-launch trailer loop.

Oh, and Jim Tavaré in cabaret, win a holiday, in chardonnay which I really liked even though I expect it was ropey oul' shite

JamesTC

Quote from: Replies From View on April 12, 2019, 12:50:19 PM
I actually recorded the first three hours of Channel 5 when it was launched.

Just went and found a video on YouTube of the first 25 minutes. I never expected a young Tim Vine to be their first host.

Brundle-Fly

C5 were premiering TV movie Harry & Meghan: A Royal Romance (2018) last night.

I thought, 'this will be cheesy fun'.

Lasted two minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1v0BgiYgHE

the

Quote from: petrilTanaka on April 14, 2019, 11:04:42 AMthat sketch show that spawned the "I'm wearing corduroy pants" guy from the pre-launch trailer loop.

We Know Where You Live

Ray Travez

Quote from: Pranet on April 12, 2019, 12:37:48 AM
Didn't post cocaine Richard Bacon have an odd late night discussion show for a bit?  Kind of like After Dark?

Not seen After Dark. He had a show called Richard Bacon's beer and pizza club, which I think was on Itv4. I don't remember anything about it apart from that they ate pizza. I don't even remember the beer.

I like New Lives In The Wild on 5; a Fogel-fronted journey into remote landscapes where various renunciates of the modern age carve out a living. Also like Bargain Loving Brits In The Sun, a show following ex-pats in Spain narrated by John Thomson.

They have a nice line in x on Benefits... And Proud! Obviously exploitative and agenda-led. There was a really nasty one called something like Scroungers On Benefits At Christmas ...And Proud! Horrible voice-over. These two old guys found a few sandwiches in a bin, and ate them with a particular brand of strong cider that they favoured. The commentary made out like they were criminals and drug addicts, when really they were just trying to enjoy Christmas on next-to-no money.

Sebastian Cobb

Nah not having that, Fogle is a complete wrister.

a duncandisorderly

Quote from: steveh on April 12, 2019, 08:26:01 AM
After Thames TV lost their franchise, they spent several years trying to persuade the Independent Television Commission that Channel 5 should be used for a series of city-wide TV stations like Canada's City TV or New York One. I believe there was quite a lot of support for the idea from people who worked for the ITC but in the end the ITC board went with Channel 5 TV as a safe, cheap option. Had they done Thames' idea at the time it might have worked rather better than Jeremy Hunt's failed local TV project or Associated Media's short-lived Channel One city news stations on cable.

there'd been talk of it earlier. phil redmond was a bit obssessed with 'urban telly' for a while; we all scoffed & called it 'cat-up-tree-vision', but he got as far as getting a bloke from the ITC, accompnaied by a bloke from the home office, to come to brookside close one saturday while he walked them through his idea & showed some shit that we'd shot using extras. this would've been 1988.

fast forward to 1990, & one of the runners at the fac company I was working for said 'your old boss is here'; sure enough, there's phil & his mrs in our reception area, come to talk to the trilion fiananciers about a joint franchise bid. it fell through- reddo wanted to take on granada, & split up the north-west franchise so that liverpool & manchester had their own editorial agendas boxed off, while trilion was going after a soft target (TVSW, as I recall).
we stood round the fax machine that morning, hooting when we read about TVam, but rather less animated when the trilion bid failed- ultimately, it was one of the many fatal blows from which trilion never recovered, & it's to my lasting disgust that the MD of our bit (limehouse tv) didn't orchestrate a buy-out. we had solid bookings, high-profile clients.... useless twat. oh well. when limehouse was pulled under & we were all laid off, I lost about five grand in back-pay & overtime, & took a job at Mtv as a studio tech. within months, Mtv bought the vacated TVam building & I was there for seventeen years.

imitationleather

Quote from: Pranet on April 12, 2019, 12:37:48 AM
Didn't post cocaine Richard Bacon have an odd late night discussion show for a bit?  Kind of like After Dark?

Rather than being like After Dark wasn't this an actual revival of After Dark? I can only recall it being on once and basically nothing about it. You are welcome to this detailed info.

EDIT: I just checked and what I'm thinking of was a 2003 BBC4 revival hosted by Tony Wilson. So completely irrelevant to this thread. You're welcome!

remedial_gash

Wasn't the people versus jerry sadowitz on five? Also, and from their launch era morning/pebble mill  tv schedule I knew that I fucking despised esther mcvey - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFwfiozWEkg


petril

my main memories of Channel 5 are flicking between the Brazilian Grand Prix and the start, and the second night where my brother suffered a nasty gash during a game of high octane Tig and had to go to hospital, so I was left at home with Robocop 3 and the first foray into late night "any old sport we can get" offerings. This was when the BBC still did closedowns, so it was a strange yet interesting place. I remember fuckall of the sport. But I remember the expected rapid dip in quality "films every night at 9 then Jack Docherty/repeats of comedians struggling in Montréal/Tibs and FUCKING FIBS" over the next few months. I only really tuned in out of half arsed curiosity.

The Hamlet 5 advert was so much better, and that was a Channel 4 effort

non capisco

There was something interestingly unslick and scattershot about late 90s/early 2000s Channel 5. Which film would it be tonight, '10 Rillington Place' or a 1970s sex comedy called 'Can You Keep It Up For A Week?' starring the man who went on to play Boba Fett? The schedule seemed to be put together by one desperate person clutching a gallon of coffee sat in front of a bank of telephones just grabbing whatever they could afford the rights for. For at least the first two months it was just wall-to-wall shit on there. I don't imagine Simon Pegg still puts 'We Know Where You Live' on his CV.

The Nazi obsessed years came slightly later, sort of 2002-ish. Nazi mad, they were. The Nazis did this, Goebells said that. Stop going on about the Nazis, Channel 5, you're never going to meet them. I sat and watched a Channel 5 programme called 'Was Hitler Gay?' in the troughs of my 2002 nadir. It showed that photo of him leaning coquettishly against a tree and wearing Bavarian short shorts as possible evidence before taking an hour excluding ad breaks to conclude 'No. If anything, he disliked gays!'

imitationleather

Quote from: non capisco on April 23, 2019, 11:12:33 PM
I sat and watched a Channel 5 programme called 'Was Hitler Gay?' in the troughs of my 2002 nadir. It showed that photo of him leaning coquettishly against a tree and wearing Bavarian short shorts as possible evidence before taking an hour excluding ad breaks to conclude 'No. If anything, he disliked gays!'

Amazing.

Although could have done with spoiler tags for the ending.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: non capisco on April 23, 2019, 11:12:33 PM
I don't imagine Simon Pegg still puts 'We Know Where You Live' on his CV.

I just scoped out a bit of that on youtube and found the fact it queued up '14 actors you may not know are dead' in the 'up next' section far more amusing than the vid itself.