[zakman440]

Channel 5 is looking to change its image by showing more upmarket programmes and becoming less defined by the reality show Big Brother.


Sources at the broadcaster say it will undergo a rebranding exercise following its £450m purchase by the American media group Viacom from the Daily Express owner Richard Desmond in May.

Channel 5 is anxious to define its own identity rather than be seen merely as a competitor to Channel 4, which ditched Big Brother in 2010 saying it wanted to undergo “creative renewal”.

The changes at Channel 5 are likely to see Big Brother pushed to the margins of the late-night schedule. Mr Desmond bought the show in 2011 after eight months of negotiations with producers Endemol and it provided the backbone of the schedule during much of his four-year ownership of the public-service broadcaster.

The Northern & Shell publishing mogul made a vast profit from Channel 5, having purchased the network for a bargain basement £104m from the German-owned media company RTL Group in 2010.

Big Brother’s dominance of the Channel 5 schedule has become less pronounced in the past year as the rest of the schedule was improved to fatten the offering ahead of its sale. The new American crime drama Gotham, which started with an audience of 3.8 million, is the network’s best-performing show of the year so far.

Big Brother has already been moved from 9pm in the schedule to 10pm, where it still attracts audiences of up to 2.4 million. It is likely that the broadcaster would be prepared to push the show to 11pm in the belief that the loyal and young, and mainly female, audience would follow it. Celebrity Big Brother, which was last scheduled this summer at 9pm and drew audiences of up to 3.7 million for a series won by the 70-year-old American actor Gary Busey. Channel 5 believes its opportunities are in chasing a young audience and sometimes targeting upmarket viewers when rival terrestrial broadcasters are scheduling populist entertainment shows.

It is looking to win a new reputation for history programming. The historian Dan Jones will next month present Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty: The Plantagenets, and the broadcaster hopes to attract some of the audience that followed recent BBC Two series on the Tudors and the Stuarts. In an attempt to attract younger viewers, it is being presented as a real-life version of hit American fantasy drama Game of Thrones, shown by Sky Atlantic in the UK.

The channel also has high hopes for 10,000BC, which is being billed as mix of social experiment and living history by taking 20 men and women and placing them in the conditions of the Stone Age.

The series, to be shown early next year, is one of several production collaborations between Channel 5 and Group M Entertainment, which is part of Sir Martin Sorrell’s global advertising conglomerate WPP.

Group M Entertainment is also involved in another big Channel 5 history project, Rome : The First Superpower, a four-part series that will be shown from tomorrow in prime time. Filmed across Europe and in North Africa and the Middle East it will give the presenter Larry Lamb, best known as an actor in the BBC comedy Gavin & Stacey, the opportunity to be a modern-day Edward Gibbon.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...r-9811916.html

Well this isn't good news.

[T*]

Good.

[Marsh.]

Pushed to a late night schedule? It's already on pushing midnight, how much later can it get?

No doubt they've axed BOTS and the highlights will be on at 11pm or something. It definitely seemed like "the end" during the last few episodes of BOTS.

[Ant.]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

Pushed to a late night schedule? It's already on pushing midnight, how much later can it get?

No doubt they've axed BOTS and the highlights will be on at 11pm or something. It definitely seemed like "the end" during the last few episodes of BOTS.

BOTS was on til 1AM one point during the series this year so I don't know.

[JoshBB]

Hopefully a different channel (ITV, MTV) will buy it.

[Cal.]

We'll probably just get the main highlights show in the 11pm slot, no live feed and no spin off show.

[Marsh.]

I find the possible death of BOTS as such a positive thing.

[Jamesy]

BOTS got really stale this year. They seem to have been lining it up for an axing.

Maybe for CBB we will see Big Brother on at 9 or 10pm, with BOTS following it. Then for civilian BB we will see it on at 11pm with no BOTS... doesn't seem too far fetched to me.

BOTS was bound to fail though given they have had it finished at 1am some nights and the format has stayed the same since the show was created. Flop.

[Rob!]

...it's nearly dead isn't it?

[Daniel.]

Axe it for good

[duclos]

I like BOTS! I don't watch it every night but I do occasionally watch it and I happen to like it a lot.

[TiBB Frontpage Article]

James has posted a new TiBB frontpage article.

[imga]="left"]http://pictures.thisisbigbrother.com/userpics/10433/thumb_big_brother_15_2014_eye_logo_white.jpg[/imga]According to a report in The Independent, Channel 5 could be broadcast in a late-night time-slot in a rebranding exercise that new owners Viacom want to carry out on the channel.

The American media group bought C5 from Richard Desmond's Northern and Shell in May.

The report says that Viacom want to.....

Excerpt of article quoted above. Read full article here - http://www.thisisbigbrother.com/cele...ot-report.html

[daniel-lewis-1985]

Originally Posted by Jamesy

BOTS got really stale this year. They seem to have been lining it up for an axing.

Maybe for CBB we will see Big Brother on at 9 or 10pm, with BOTS following it. Then for civilian BB we will see it on at 11pm with no BOTS... doesn't seem too far fetched to me.

BOTS was bound to fail though given they have had it finished at 1am some nights and the format has stayed the same since the show was created. Flop.

BOTS hardly failed though it was averaging between 500k and 800k and even surpassed a million on occasions. Compare that to The Xtra Factor which gets around 350k with a lead in from the X Factor watched by 9 million people and that really shows how successful BOTS is as a spin off show.

[andybigbro]

I hope this isn't true

[Cal.]

Eh, probably true tbh.

[swinearefine]

"More Upmarket Programmes" Channel 5 is the one that made Big Brother downmarket... despite what people say I never found the C4 show downmarket at all and don't get why people would. It was unscripted human nature which more often than not is pretty trashy, but that doesn't make the show itself trashy. There are trashy characters on every show.

[MTVN]

I don't think they need to axe BOTS but they could easily cut it down to a half hour show. That's all they need to have some decent discussion and debate in there and then a bit of news, no need for all the dumb gimmicks that they use to fill up an hour

Would also be quite happy for them to cut down the series length of the main show tbh, 6 weeks would probably be plenty. Becoming harder every year to keep viewers interest for weeks and weeks on end

[billy123]

Originally Posted by daniel-lewis-1985

BOTS hardly failed though it was averaging between 500k and 800k and even surpassed a million on occasions. Compare that to The Xtra Factor which gets around 350k with a lead in from the X Factor watched by 9 million people and that really shows how successful BOTS is as a spin off show.

Thats a silly comparison If The Xtra factor was on the same channel as the main show like bots is it would completely destroy that argument. Infact i dare say the xtra factor would rate higher than BB full stop if it was on ITV straight after the main show.