Going from nothing to boasting nearly 10% of the TV advertising market in the UK would surely be regarded by any other industry as an unqualified success story.
Yet as Five prepares to celebrate becoming 10 next week, there are doubts being openly expressed over whether it will make it through another decade.
It may have long ago ditched its heritage of the three Fs - films, fucking and football - and introduced us to shows such as CSI, Grey's Anatomy and House, but Five has struggled to live with the pace of the multichannel explosion.
The past 18 months have seen the problems pile up - Five's flagship channel performed even worse last year than ITV1, and if it wasn't for the broadcaster's new digital arrivals it would have gone backwards.
The belated launch of these channels, Five Life and Five US, came after the dissolving of an unhappy marriage that saw United Business Media sell its stake, with RTL taking full control of Five.
It was the highlight of 2006 for Five, yet managing director of content Lisa Opie admitted in a recent Royal Television Society speech that there was still much work to be done to secure the channels' future. The theme of her speech - "What is the point of Five?" - attempted to address a question that many have asked.
Multichannel world
Chris Locke, group trading director at Starcom UK, says: "Ten years ago, Five's launch campaign featured the Spice Girls and to some degree they have gone the same way as the Spice Girls.
"In a multichannel world they don't get enough hits. If an agency didn't put them on a schedule, I can't think of one advertiser who would complain."
Steve Hobbs, head of planning and integration at Carat, also foresees a difficult future for Five: "My view is that RTL has got to decide what it wants from the business. It's not clear what its strategy is, so Five is struggling."
Being written off, however, is something chief executive Jane Lighting says Five is accustomed to. "They used to say we would get a 2% share, then it was 5% and then it was we'd never launch a multichannel strategy," she says. "The fact is that Five never existed in the old world. Unlike all our commercial rivals, we were born into a world which had 350 other channels and, despite that, we have had phenomenal growth."
Potential mergers
So far this year, the Five group's share of viewing across all homes stands at 6.09% - up 3% on the same period of 2006. Five Life has averaged a 0.42% share within its transmission hours, with Five US a 0.62% share, and Five claims the figures are getting steadily better.
A common view is that to increase its share and survive, Five needs greater scale. Lighting admits there have been talks with potential merger partners, with the company linked with a bid for Flextech and a merger with Channel 4.
But she stresses any deal would see RTL as a leading partner, rather than selling off Five as cannon fodder to the likes of Sky.
"Look at the way RTL allowed us to launch two digital channels in a market that was tanking through the floor, even though it knew there was no way in that market we could reach our targets," Lighting says.
"We are an absolute babe in arms in terms of multichannel, but our channels are already in the top 15 out of 450. Last week was our most positive set of results so far. It's quite clear where there are areas of sparkle in our schedule."
Bringing in Opie, her old colleague from Flextech, was a bid to make Five's programming both more consistent but at the same time "a bit braver and a bit bolder", says Lighting. Yet, managing to continue to lure US hits to these shores amid ever more competition, appears vital to its future.
One of these hits, Grey's Anatomy, has just been extended to Five's VOD offering, but the suspicion remains that it is well behind the likes of C4 in knowing where it wants to be in the digital arena.
Although no announcements of new strategies are expected at next week's birthday party, there are hints of plans for further digital channels should capacity on the Freeview platform become available.
But the birthday present that Five really needs is a massive boost in investment from RTL
TEN YEARS OF FIVE
1997: Launches on Easter Sunday, backed by Saatchi & Saatchi's "Give Me 5" advertising blitz, after a major logistical operation to retune 10 million video recorders
1998: Director of programmes Dawn Airey sets out her vision of the "three Fs", with England football internationals, Red Shoe Diaries and Thong for Europe in the line-up
1999: The Broadcasting Standards Commission attacks Five's adult content
2000: Five snaps up the rights to Home and Away from ITV
2001: C4 head of entertainment Kevin Lygo defects to C5 to become the new director of programmes, obtaining the rights to successful US drama series CSI and Emmy award-winning Law and Order
2002: Chief executive Airey resigns to become managing director of Sky Networks and Channel 5 becomes Five
2003: Former Flextech head Jane Lighting is made chief executive, but Lygo returns to C4
2004: Deputy chief executive Nick Milligan quits to become managing director of Sky Media, while Five pays £500,000 an episode to win the rights to Joey and lets Rebecca Loos loose on a defenceless pig in The Farm
2005: After seven years of growth, Five's audience share dips to 6.4%
2006: RTL becomes sole owner and sanctions the launch of Five Life and Five US. Dan Chambers is ousted as programming boss after Lisa Opie arrives from Flextech.