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This week, Five made its conspicuously belated debut into the digital television arena with the launch of Five US and Five Life, but a glance at its core terrestrial channel suggests it has precious little else to shout about.

According to BARB's latest data, Five achieved an audience share of 5.7% last month, down from 6.3% in September 2005.

Of all the terrestrial broadcasters, the RTL-owned station has suffered the biggest overall ratings drop in 2006, with a 5.8% share to 1 October, compared with 6.5% at the same point last year - a 10.8% year-on-year decline.

Even more ignominiously, in September, digital channel ITV2 managed for the first time to get a better audience share than Five across all dayparts.

This gloomy story is borne out by ad sales figures. MediaCom estimates that Five's 2006 ad revenue will be £285m - 5%, or £15m, down on the 2005 figure of £300m.

After Five's much-hyped launch in 1997, the channel was hailed as a welcome alternative for advertisers, who were impressed with its youthful audience profile and low cost per thousand. But the explosion in multichannel platforms, coupled with a lack of good programming, has hit the youngest of the terrestrial channels hard.

The launch of digital sister channels should finally provide it with the ability to extend its brand and cross-promote from the main channel, but given how far Five is lagging behind its terrestrial rivals, it will be difficult for the female-focused Five Life or Five US to make an impression.

In an attempt to revitalise its image, Five launched fresh idents at the beginning of the year. The four letters of the Five logo have been replaced by the words live, fast, hope, risk, dare, play, free, rush, love and life to reflect its positioning. At no point does the channel's logo appear on screen - a first for a terrestrial broadcaster - and while this is a brave move, it has hardly reignited viewer passion for the channel.

We asked Bill Griffin, managing director of Emap's Kiss radio and formerly head of marketing at Channel 4, and Martin Bowley, chairman of the British Television Advertising Awards and a former chief executive of media at Carlton TV, to plot a way out of trouble for the Five.

DIAGNOSIS 1 - BILL GRIFFIN MANAGING DIRECTOR, KISS

There are many great things about Five - Kirsty Young, The Shield, CSI, Grey's Anatomy, even the Milkshake! strand does its thing pretty well. However, nearly 10 years after its launch, its confused overall identity and purpose remains.

The launch of 'Channel 5', as we are not meant to call it, was marketing-driven and a rift quickly appeared between the modern mainstream positioning and the reality of its programming.

This fissure has never been adequately resolved. The channel seemed destined never to be taken seriously, but a slick re-invention in 2002 ushered in a period of greater credibility. Successful ads from Trevor Beattie and an impressive on-air identity created by Spin gave it some modernity and desirability.

Four years later, the paint is starting to peel again. People still are not sure what Five stands for and, increasingly, anything it does reasonably well can be found in superior form elsewhere.

The two new channels look OK, but they are pretty late to market, so it is time for some radical thinking.

REMEDY

- Find a sense of purpose to make the station feel part of something bigger.

- Embrace the revolution in media consumption by becoming the first mainstream TV station to champion user-generated content.

- The current idents aren't working. Have viewers create some for you online.

- Stop producing derivative versions of other people's programmes.

- Revitalise the tacky and dated website.

DIAGNOSIS 2 - MARTIN BOWLEY, CHAIRMAN, BRITISH TELEVISION ADVERTISING AWARDS

There was a time when Five was the cheeky determined upstart in the television playground which, despite everyone's efforts to halt its launch, did so and did so brilliantly. The Spice Girls countdown to launch video was a masterstroke and the sales team punched above its weight.

However, this was in a pre-Freeview, pre-interactive age. Five now sits rather uncomfortably between terrestrial and multichannel broadcasting, having neither the cross-promotion capabilities of BBC One, ITV1, or Channel 4, nor the family of channels of Sky or IDS.

Recently, I kept a family viewing diary and a log of what we had 'Sky-plussed'. The family did watch some Five, namely an episode of CSI and The Truth About Trinny and Susannah, and both were very good. The problem is that on closer examination of the rest of the schedule, you find films you have seen or the 100 best of something, with clips you have also seen before. The two Five sister channels look good but do have the potential to drain the current CSI audience.

REMEDY

- Merge sales into Sky or IDS to maximise sales weight and negotiating power.

- Strike a cross-promotion deal with either.

- Return to the Kevin Lygo/Dawn Airey style of 'get noticed' programming alongside excellent imports.

- Review the movie policy. Film4 for free and the growth of Freeview is a real threat to these core commercial offerings.

- Focus the marketing effort on winning 'pick of the night' in the press.