Channel 5

Remem­ber when Chan­nel 5 was a laugh­ing stock? From the outset it seemed like a dump­ing ground for soft­core porn and lo-​concept game shows. If you could even tune in. Nowa­days, I find myself watch­ing more and more of their output, due to the fact that in the summer months the BBC and Chan­nel 4 are in thrall to sport (the Com­mon­wealth Games and one-​day inter­na­tional cricket respectively.)

Admit­tedly, C5 is no BBC2 or C4, but with the rights to a brace of decent films, classy trash like CSI: Crime Scene Inves­ti­ga­tion and Law & Order on the sched­ules, decent pop­ulist arts pro­gram­ming and, dare I say it, Home & Away the young pup of British tele­vi­sion is no longer a joke. In fact it’s matur­ing into a pecu­liar amal­gam of high- and low-​brow, plug­ging the gap between the other free-​to-​air chan­nels with a scat­ter­shot approach to grab­bing audi­ence share.

Given the fact that favour­ing one of the estab­lished chan­nels is no longer a guide to a person’s gen­eral inter­ests, it looks like watch­ing 5 is set to become short­hand for a post­mod­ern take on mat­ters cul­tural, where dross and qual­ity hap­pily coex­ist. In fact, from this day forth I’ll be claim­ing to be a big fan of the chan­nel, if only to annoy those who still see it as a joke. Which this post is, in case you were wondering

Posted at 9pm on 03/08/02 by Jack Mottram to the art and culture category.
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