Channel Five News relaunched for male audience
Monday, September 29th, 2008
Channel Five is to re-launch its 7pm news programme an attempt to attract more male viewers, with Isla Traquair as the sole presenter. Her co-host Matt Barbet will take over the 5pm programme. Currently the two presenters appear on both shows.
The 7pm show will be given its own identity to differentiate it from the 5pm bulletin, which currently broadcasts the same stories.
David Kermode, editor of Five News, said that the revamped show would better reflect the demographic that it serves, with more men, whilst the 5pm show will be aimed at a more daytime audience. As part of the changes, a team of experts will be brought in to comment and expand on news stories. Whilst the 5pm and 7pm slot will share the same studio, the lighting will be different, as in Channel 4 News and More4 News.
“This is really a kind of revision of what we are doing at 7pm,” Kermode said. “We are looking at what the available audience is at that time.
“The 5pm show has a lot of daytime values to it, although it is still a news programme. What we are trying to do at 7pm, in what is an incredibly difficult slot, is try to evolve and give the show a separate identity. 7pm is a narrative repeat of 5pm at the moment. What I want to look at is can we make it look a bit different and can we tap into a different viewership. We are mindful of who the available audience is and men form a reasonable constituent.”
Traquair and Barbett took over from Natasha Kaplinsky – who was poached from the BBC on a £1 million contract - when she took maternity leave earlier this year. Her baby boy was born last Thursday, but the presenter is expected to be off for the next six months. Kermode said that he was experimenting with new formats in her absence.
The changes follow the hugely successful overhaul of Five’s news output in February, which saw its 5pm audience nearly double year-on-year. Record viewing figures for the show reached 1.1 million at the beginning of this month. However, the 7pm programme, competing with popular shows on other channels including The One Show on BBC1, Emmerdale on ITV1 and Channel 4 News, has seen little difference in its audience figures.
