Five have finally revealed their new free-to-view digital channels: Five US and Five Life. I'll be ignoring Five Life since it's basically Living TV in disguise (“Five Life will be aimed at women, with soaps and lifestyle programming as well as an extension of the channel's children strand, Milkshake” - where are the psychics then?), but Five US is going to be all-US programming.
Well, that's the power of blogging for you. They've finally developed a TV station just for me. Hooray!
Updates and related entries
June 8, 2006: Well, they may have invented a channel just for me, Five US, but no good deed goes unpunished. It looks like there won't actually be any programmes on it, according to Broadcast. Five’s new US acquisitions channel is facing...
July 12, 2006: Everyone's fifth-favourite channel, Five, unveiled its multi-channel digital strategy a little while ago. One of the main elements of the strategy was to have a channel called Five US dedicated to US imports. It wasn't long before Hallmark threw...
July 21, 2006: Digital Spy has some news on when ABC shows are going to air in the US this season, as well as which UK networks are picking up the remaining unwanted stragglers. Lost is going to start again on October...
June 5, 2006 | Reply
Bugger, does that mean all the good US stuff will be booted to the digi channel?
Fecking freeview...
June 6, 2006 | Reply
Lisa -- Jane Lighting, head of Five, has said that any series that premiered on Five will continue to premiere on Five.
Five US could, therefore, be used for secondary rights acquisitions (programmes that premiered elsewhere -- aka "repeats"), or they could use it for repeat plays during the week, working in parallel as Channel 4 and E4 do.
With Five's ratings being as bad as they are right now, they're unlikely to want to do anything that jeopardises the existing channel's share.
June 6, 2006 | Reply
"...or they could use it for repeat plays during the week, working in parallel as Channel 4 and E4 do"
Yes, but noticeably NOT More4. Grumble grumble, West Wing, grumble grumble...
June 6, 2006 | Reply
I'd agree with you there. And also it's noticeable that ITV don't really do anything similar with ITV3 and ITV4 (although they did try with Numb3rs, IIRC)).