Paramount-Owned Channel 5 Programmes Boss Ben Frow Labels Some Competitors’ Shows “Lazy”, “Second-Rate” And “Mediocre”
deadline.comBen Frow, the man who has spent the past decade turning around the fortunes of Paramount-owned Channel 5, has labelled some shows on BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and Channel 4 “lazy,” “second-rate” and “mediocre.”In a typically candid Royal Television Society Q&A session with Apple Europe Video boss Jay Hunt, who has run programing for BBC One, Channel 4 and Channel 5 in the past, Frow urged the UK’s Public Service Broadcasters to “ensure we do our very best to keep our viewers watching us” in the face of mega competition and rising budgets.Including his own channel in this analysis, Frow said he “sometimes looks across the schedules and thinks ‘Is this the best we can really be?’.”He went on to call some competitors’ shows “lazy,” “second-rate” and “mediocre” and said “99 out of 100 times I can tell when they won’t work.”“Viewers aren’t stupid and they know when something is mediocre,” Frow went on to say. “We need to be brave and anarchic.
If we are going to go down it should be all guns blazing.”Frow used the example of Channel 4’s Gogglebox as a show that his former employer took a risk on by moving to a Friday night slot for its second season.
Studio Lambert’s format has now run for 19 seasons, won a BAFTA several weeks ago and is arguably Channel 4’s most successful original of the modern era.Frow joined an ailing Channel 5 almost 10 years ago and has turned around its fortunes, slowly shifting the dial on the nation’s perception of the network and increasing linear share year-on-year in a time of deep competition and declining viewing.“There was a pungent smell about Channel 5 for many years,” he said. “I was part of creating that smell [during his first stint as Controller of Features and Entertainment from 2004 to
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