Better late than never. Five has been slow to enter the digital free-for-all, for which it has received some stick. But to be fair to Five, it has always argued that it was better to take longer and get its digital product right than to just get it on air and hope for the best.
Five should know better than most that when launching a channel, first impressions do linger. Has someone informed the Daily Mail that neither of the new channels is called Five Tits?
So Five has taken longer, but it looks like they've got it right, particularly because Five Life and Five US will have carriage on all three digital platforms. Freeview is the route to audience share and both channels strengthen Freeview's offering; at first glance they are a credible alternative to pay-TV channels like Sky One and LIVINGtv. Five US is a mixture of drama, movies, documentaries and sport. To para-phrase Five's own marketing speak, plenty of good is coming out of America. Painful as it is to acknowledge, the drama output from the US makes British stuff look like, well, Midsomer Murders.
CSI is a relative success for Five, but still doesn't deliver the audience it deserves, and Five US will allow more opportunities for viewers to catch the series. But this is not a repeats channel. Some of the new programming looks excellent, particularly Shark, a law drama - not the most original concept, but anything with James Woods is a guaranteed winner (Salvador, anyone?).
As for American sport, it's an acquired taste, but baseball is the funniest sport in the world for jargon. Fly balls, pinch hits, bunts. Who cares what it all means, it's hilarious.
Five Life, the more female-focused of the channels, is the expected mix of lifestyle, celebrity and reality. Make Me A Supermodel Extra will deliver additional footage of Five's wannabe show and if tears, tantrums, anorexia and wholesale ignorance of the real world is your bag, you'll be tuning in.
So, early days, but the tag "better late than never" might be replaced by "better good than rubbish". Review by Adrian English, Communications director, Carat.
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