Five pressing the wrong buttons (From York Press)

Five pressing the wrong buttons

11:00am Thursday 19th August 2010 in

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PEOPLE like me tend to view broadcasting through the BBC prism. This is fair enough up to a point, but perhaps sometimes we should look in another direction.

So let’s press the bottom, sorry button, marked Five. Please pardon the Freudian slip there. Maybe it was caused by the station’s salacious early days. Now the channel has been bought for the comparatively measly sum of £103.5 million by Richard Desmond, whose Northern & Shell empire was built on titles such as Readers Wives, Horny Housewives and Big Ones, so there is at least some continuity.

I have to confess to being unimpressed by Five, which consists of wall-to-wall CSI and the sort of films you might watch if you had just lost the use of your legs and your brain in some sort of freak accident. Possibly one caused by accidentally reading a copy of the Daily Express, also owned by Mr Desmond, and self-proclaimed as the “world’s greatest newspaper”, or something. He also owns the Daily Star and OK magazine, should you wish to expose yourself to further risk.

Five has looked like a basket case for a while now, so the arrival of the billionaire proprietor comes at a good time. Unless you happen to be one of the employees Mr Desmond has just laid off or is about to. For this is an owner with a brutal reputation, as shown at the Express titles, but a strong track record in turning things round financially.

Whether or not he can be the saviour of Five remains to be seen. The station has an unenviable perch in the televisual pecking order, squeezed by the generously funded, inflation-proofed BBC on one side and the ever more powerful and rich Sky, with its massive pay-TV audience, on the other.

It also has to fight for advertising against ITV1 and Channel 4 – both of which, in their different ways, at least have an understanding of what makes a television station tick. Which can simply be put as this: making programmes, or at least commissioning programmes, rather than merely buying stuff in by the tatty yard. A television station without a creative heart is nothing much, even if that is how Rupert Murdoch increased his billions with Sky, which is now slowly beginning to make programmes, rather than just showing them.

Plenty of people criticise the BBC, but the corporation remains a broadcasting giant next to the pygmy-like Five. Just imagine if all television was like Five, with never-ending processions of imports and second-rate movies.

Confession time – I do watch CSI out of slothful habit, even if Horatio and his amazingly significant sunglasses produce sniggers of despair. That’s the Miami one, in case you don’t watch. And to think how good David Caruso was all those years ago in NYPD Blue. Oh, and don’t even get me started on that blonde woman with the annoying voice.

So that’s channel number Five. On reflection, I think Mr Desmond is welcome to it. But do we even want people such as Mr Desmond to own our television stations? Perhaps no one cares any more.

CUTS, cuts, cuts. Here are at least two areas that should worry us.

The coalition chopper is poised over the UK Film Council in a spot of populist quango-bashing. A waste of money, according to the Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

Yet the council actually makes money, with a return of £5 for every pound it puts into a film; and it has buoyed and boosted the British film industry.

Oh, and don’t try to cheer yourself with a walk in the country. The Government is said to be thinking of selling off some of Britain’s most beautiful areas. How disgraceful. These protected areas were offered protection in perpetuity, so should not be auctioned off when cash is short.

If he’s not careful, Mr Hunt – chief coalition BBC-basher, by the way – won’t have any culture left to preside over.