Five is a brand

Probably helped that they acquired CSI and most medical dramas and Five wasn't ridiculed for being "Channel 5" but more "five" as it's own thing. I'd argue the idents of that era were indicative, and ironically could be used today in some cases because it's simple and basic enough to the viewer.

With regards to 5 News, there are still elements that are good. Last week there was a decent special on the 6.30 about Long Covid which I didn't see any other outlet spend so much time analysing. Yet, because it's up against the regional news on BBC1 and the ITV Evening News, I doubt many people watched it.

What has happened to the 5pm bulletin is nothing short of awful. Where's the USP? The innovation of the early 5 News bulletins from ITN have all but gone for a tick box bulletin to meet their news requirements.

However the factual output in peak seems to be working for them, I've lost count of the amount of railway and royal docs that have been commissioned.

Drama is working really well for them at the moment, they know what their audience likes and they can get numbers close to if not beating their rivals at times.

And in no way that will happen.

CBS is clearly an American brand , too American, for a public UK channel.

Can't find a picture of it now, though I know I've seen it on this forum, but the way the Five DOG perfectly fit in the football graphics was my favourite part of the five era branding.

(and if this is my last post, see you on the other place)

I think the problem with the 2002 rebrand is that it's okay to have a single word as a brand name if it's a distinctive, unique name - eg Pepsi, Google, Adidas etc etc.

But 'five' is just an everyday word - you have to add the word 'Channel' to clarify what you're talking about. Given that absolutely no one outside of presentation circles has ever referred to it as anything other than 'Channel 5', it made total sense to officially make it the channel name once again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZBuIoCpwiI

This one, to me, is the greatest ident C5 ever had. I also had a lot of time for the five era, with the exception of the changes to news.


oh really? It's very well adapted into the ident then.

It was definitely the best era of the channel, programming wise. But I think ultimately the change to ‘five’ was a bad idea, if they’d just kept some form of a numeral 5 and not said the full name Channel 5, it might have worked better.

The logo does still look quite contemporary, to be fair, and predicted the trend a few years later for lowercase logos.

Both the “five” eras suited the well... eras they were from - quite perfectly too. five was utterly 2000’s - cool and a little sophisticated, while FIVE was very late 2000s with it’s fun and bounce. I think both can really be appreciated for how creative they were and actually giving the channel a personality.

It’s really a shame looking back - five used to be a channel you’d quite happily watch because it was its own thing, you’d have stuff like Extraordinary People, US imports and The Gadget Show. (when it was good -not the zombified corpse begging to be put out of its misery that it is now...) It was quite cool! and I think the branding really did reflect it.

Nowadays, I know that they’re getting a bit better and going down the BBC Four route - but the branding still feels like such an afterthought to me. To me it’s still the channel that took Big Brother hostage and put a copy of The Daily Star to its head... I think they really can learn from their past selves and make the channel(s) genuinely appealing again because they really haven’t cracked it yet. Every rebrand now feels like interim branding - they are trying... a bit... but all of it now just feels like a company is playing hot potato with a channel and not wanting to spend too much on anything.

This is awesome - cool and fresh, and other than the dramatic celebrity sequence at the start, it’s aged really really well.

I think the current logo is OK, as the graphics are.

Just they can do so much with the idents but they prefer to do so little.

Said that, I think the. "FIVE" was much better than the very bland "5" logo and idents which followed

It's like they belonged to the opposite era, as the FIVE circle logo and idents was ahead of its times .

Never let someone who owns porn channel let own a public channel..