Interview: Dan Chambers, Five (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
HOW desperate is Five to shed its reputation for downmarket sleaze? Just ask its programming boss, an energetic philosophy graduate with a penchant for John Stuart Mill. History, the arts, poetry, modern philosophy - these are the "intellectual" shows that Dan Chambers is now making his priority. They might not match Cosmetic Surgery Live for ratings - but as Chambers sees it, they might just save the channel.
"I want to position Five as more upmarket and intelligent than we've ever been perceived," he explains with an enthusiasm that never wavers throughout the interview. "More and more people were defining their viewing habits as not watching Five. If the channel had continued as it was, with Keith Chegwin's willy flapping about, it would be in real trouble by now."
Since he succeeded Kevin Lygo last autumn, Chambers - at 36, Britain's youngest programme director - has accelerated Lygo's strategy of boosting arts and documentaries. Now, with £190 million to spend, he has decided relentlessly to pursue a younger, more upmarket audience. Isn't he trying to steal Channel 4's clothes?
"Yeah, I think so," he replies. "Channel 4 is doing less history and science nowadays, and its commitment to specialist factual has declined. And that's an opportunity for us."
So next year, his schedules will include a specially commissioned Andrew Motion poem, a nightly 45-minute "intelligent" documentary, and a philosophy series starring "the brainiest people in the world".
"I'd love Gorbachev to tell us what's happened to the socialist movement, even if it's subtitled," he says. "I want every week there to be something that makes you say, 'God, I'm surprised to see something that intelligent on Five'."
If highbrow is his big idea, sceptics might question why his current evening highlights include The World's Wildest Police Videos and Sex and the Settee.
But Chambers believes that he can have it both ways.
"At 7pm and 8pm, there's a large available audience if we do upmarket programming," he says. "None of these shows will get enormous ratings, but what they will get is publicity that will help reposition the channel. But by 11pm, the people still up are disproportionately young and we can aim programmes at that audience - although we do far less sex programming than ever in the past."
The late-night erotica scheduled by Dawn Airey, when programme director, has caused lasting damage, Chambers suggests. "We still suffer from the legacy of tits and arse, as a lot of people who don't watch Five regularly still perceive the channel as full of sex and lowquality programmes."
He seems unconcerned that Airey publicly attacked him in August for voicing similar views at the Edinburgh Television Festival. "She just launched into this tirade about how I've got to stop slagging her off," he recalls with a grin. "She apologised afterwards. But when she was here the output was Red Shoe Diaries, Blue Review ... It was really raunchy, dirty-mac-brigade TV."
Chambers has borrowed another trick from Channel 4, where he used to run science programmes and helped launch Big Brother. In 2005, Friday night on Five will become comedy night, with new home-grown shows and some expensively acquired US imports.
Chambers spent a reported £500,000 per episode on Joey, the Friends spin-off - a sum he says is exaggerated, but not too far off.
"I spent the money only having seen one show," he admits, acknowledging the enormous risk.
"But we knew it was the Friends team, and we knew the lead character inside out. And within three minutes you're laughing your socks off, which is a good sign."
GRAHAM Smith, who helped develop Little Britain for the BBC, has joined Five and is overseeing around 10 new comedy projects.
The results, Chambers says, "will be really channel-defining".
He has had his failures. Back to Reality, the £4.7 million reality show, achieved poor ratings, which Chambers attributes to newspaper sniping. "The word 'flop' became attached to it early on, and that becomes self-perpetuating. Yet the three weeks it was on, it repositioned us as the channel that had the youth profile of Channel 4, which in commercial terms was where we wanted to be."
He admits that it was derivative, and that he made a mistake scheduling it against strong opposition at 8pm. "I suppose I didn't have enough faith in the show to put it at 9pm or 10pm. But that wasn't the case when it came to The Farm."
The Farm, in which Rebecca Loos famously befriended a boar, generated lurid tabloid coverage as well as 37 (rejected) complaints to Ofcom. Don't such shows compromise his "upmarket" mission?
"The Farm was for young people, our poetry is very much for an older audience," he says. "A brand can accommodate a spectrum of shows. Besides, coverage of Rebecca and the pig didn't do us any damage. The Sun's interview with the pig certainly added 300,000 or 400,000 viewers, which can't be bad."
The show is likely to return next year: Chambers "loves" reality programming, and is actively seeking fresh new formats.
"The Farm was a genuine challenge, not like I'm a Celebrity with its bushtucker tasks, or Big Brother, where they sit around and do nothing in an artificial environment." As for Big Brother, he believes Channel 4 is in a difficult position. "They got so much attention this year because they made it so outrageous. But they also incurred the wrath of the regulators and all the channel's founding fathers. Next year they'll have to be more cautious - but that might get a smaller rating."
THE big question for Five is whether it merges with another broadcaster or goes it alone.
Either could work, Chambers believes - but he is relieved that a merger with Channel 4 was formally dropped two weeks ago.
"It was always going to be an uncomfortable partnership," he says. "And I think we can do a lot better. With Five, there's a very clear growth story, which 4 haven't got. On Freeview, the platform increasing at the fastest rate, we're regularly doing 10 per cent [of audience share]. If Freeview becomes the dominant platform for viewing terrestrial TV, we'll be the second biggest commercial broadcaster after ITV1."
Five is also likely to announce its own digital strategy within a few months. "It could be one channel, it could be four or five," he says. "Yes, we're coming to the party late, but as a broadcaster reaching almost seven per cent of the population, the cross-promotion potential for new channels is enormous."
As for his own future, Chambers is reluctant to think too far ahead.
His career has been "a whole sequence of luckinessses", ever since his friendship with the Marquis of Bath's daughter at Oxford gave him diary stories that led to newspaper work.
Still, how did he rise so high so young? "The thing about TV," he reflects, "is that age doesn't matter.
Nothing really matters - apart from how well your programmes perform. But I'd like to think I've got another two or three years here."
(Evening Standard, December 1, 2004)
HOW desperate is Five to shed its reputation for downmarket sleaze? Just ask its programming boss, an energetic philosophy graduate with a penchant for John Stuart Mill. History, the arts, poetry, modern philosophy - these are the "intellectual" shows that Dan Chambers is now making his priority. They might not match Cosmetic Surgery Live for ratings - but as Chambers sees it, they might just save the channel.
"I want to position Five as more upmarket and intelligent than we've ever been perceived," he explains with an enthusiasm that never wavers throughout the interview. "More and more people were defining their viewing habits as not watching Five. If the channel had continued as it was, with Keith Chegwin's willy flapping about, it would be in real trouble by now."
Since he succeeded Kevin Lygo last autumn, Chambers - at 36, Britain's youngest programme director - has accelerated Lygo's strategy of boosting arts and documentaries. Now, with £190 million to spend, he has decided relentlessly to pursue a younger, more upmarket audience. Isn't he trying to steal Channel 4's clothes?
"Yeah, I think so," he replies. "Channel 4 is doing less history and science nowadays, and its commitment to specialist factual has declined. And that's an opportunity for us."
So next year, his schedules will include a specially commissioned Andrew Motion poem, a nightly 45-minute "intelligent" documentary, and a philosophy series starring "the brainiest people in the world".
"I'd love Gorbachev to tell us what's happened to the socialist movement, even if it's subtitled," he says. "I want every week there to be something that makes you say, 'God, I'm surprised to see something that intelligent on Five'."
If highbrow is his big idea, sceptics might question why his current evening highlights include The World's Wildest Police Videos and Sex and the Settee.
But Chambers believes that he can have it both ways.
"At 7pm and 8pm, there's a large available audience if we do upmarket programming," he says. "None of these shows will get enormous ratings, but what they will get is publicity that will help reposition the channel. But by 11pm, the people still up are disproportionately young and we can aim programmes at that audience - although we do far less sex programming than ever in the past."
The late-night erotica scheduled by Dawn Airey, when programme director, has caused lasting damage, Chambers suggests. "We still suffer from the legacy of tits and arse, as a lot of people who don't watch Five regularly still perceive the channel as full of sex and lowquality programmes."
He seems unconcerned that Airey publicly attacked him in August for voicing similar views at the Edinburgh Television Festival. "She just launched into this tirade about how I've got to stop slagging her off," he recalls with a grin. "She apologised afterwards. But when she was here the output was Red Shoe Diaries, Blue Review ... It was really raunchy, dirty-mac-brigade TV."
Chambers has borrowed another trick from Channel 4, where he used to run science programmes and helped launch Big Brother. In 2005, Friday night on Five will become comedy night, with new home-grown shows and some expensively acquired US imports.
Chambers spent a reported £500,000 per episode on Joey, the Friends spin-off - a sum he says is exaggerated, but not too far off.
"I spent the money only having seen one show," he admits, acknowledging the enormous risk.
"But we knew it was the Friends team, and we knew the lead character inside out. And within three minutes you're laughing your socks off, which is a good sign."
GRAHAM Smith, who helped develop Little Britain for the BBC, has joined Five and is overseeing around 10 new comedy projects.
The results, Chambers says, "will be really channel-defining".
He has had his failures. Back to Reality, the £4.7 million reality show, achieved poor ratings, which Chambers attributes to newspaper sniping. "The word 'flop' became attached to it early on, and that becomes self-perpetuating. Yet the three weeks it was on, it repositioned us as the channel that had the youth profile of Channel 4, which in commercial terms was where we wanted to be."
He admits that it was derivative, and that he made a mistake scheduling it against strong opposition at 8pm. "I suppose I didn't have enough faith in the show to put it at 9pm or 10pm. But that wasn't the case when it came to The Farm."
The Farm, in which Rebecca Loos famously befriended a boar, generated lurid tabloid coverage as well as 37 (rejected) complaints to Ofcom. Don't such shows compromise his "upmarket" mission?
"The Farm was for young people, our poetry is very much for an older audience," he says. "A brand can accommodate a spectrum of shows. Besides, coverage of Rebecca and the pig didn't do us any damage. The Sun's interview with the pig certainly added 300,000 or 400,000 viewers, which can't be bad."
The show is likely to return next year: Chambers "loves" reality programming, and is actively seeking fresh new formats.
"The Farm was a genuine challenge, not like I'm a Celebrity with its bushtucker tasks, or Big Brother, where they sit around and do nothing in an artificial environment." As for Big Brother, he believes Channel 4 is in a difficult position. "They got so much attention this year because they made it so outrageous. But they also incurred the wrath of the regulators and all the channel's founding fathers. Next year they'll have to be more cautious - but that might get a smaller rating."
THE big question for Five is whether it merges with another broadcaster or goes it alone.
Either could work, Chambers believes - but he is relieved that a merger with Channel 4 was formally dropped two weeks ago.
"It was always going to be an uncomfortable partnership," he says. "And I think we can do a lot better. With Five, there's a very clear growth story, which 4 haven't got. On Freeview, the platform increasing at the fastest rate, we're regularly doing 10 per cent [of audience share]. If Freeview becomes the dominant platform for viewing terrestrial TV, we'll be the second biggest commercial broadcaster after ITV1."
Five is also likely to announce its own digital strategy within a few months. "It could be one channel, it could be four or five," he says. "Yes, we're coming to the party late, but as a broadcaster reaching almost seven per cent of the population, the cross-promotion potential for new channels is enormous."
As for his own future, Chambers is reluctant to think too far ahead.
His career has been "a whole sequence of luckinessses", ever since his friendship with the Marquis of Bath's daughter at Oxford gave him diary stories that led to newspaper work.
Still, how did he rise so high so young? "The thing about TV," he reflects, "is that age doesn't matter.
Nothing really matters - apart from how well your programmes perform. But I'd like to think I've got another two or three years here."
(Evening Standard, December 1, 2004)
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