5 News

Lore & Background

5 News was one of the new station's flagship programmes when it launched on 30 March 1997. One of the launch newsreaders was Rob Butler, who became MP for Aylesbury in 2019. It was originally produced by ITN, which at the time also provided the news for Channel 4 and ITV. It was announced on 9 March 2004 that Sky had won the new contract to provide Channel 5 with its news bulletins. The first Sky-produced bulletin was planned for 3 January 2005 but the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami brought this forward two days in a short Saturday evening update. In January 2009, the contract with Sky was extended to 2012. Originally provided by ITN, from 1 January 2005, Sky News took over the contract to provide the news for Channel 5, replacing ITN, which had provided the channel's news service from the channel's launch in 1997. On 14 February 2011, the service was rebranded back to its original name, 5 News, having been called Five News from 2002 until 2011. On 20 February 2012 the contract returned to original provider ITN.

Reader's Guide

5 News originally provided afternoon and evening updates on the hour, every hour during the week. A 'ticker' was used during these updates, the first seen on a terrestrial news broadcast, outside of a simulcast with a news channel. This was switched to a weather ticker before being dropped entirely in 2007. A presenter standing up or 'perching' rather than sitting behind a desk (which has since been used by other broadcasters). This feature was banned by the channel in 2007, with presenters at the seating area for all bulletins, although the presenters stood again when 5 News was relaunched in February 2011. On air 'teases' from production staff. Live discussions involving various experts, campaigners, celebrities and political commentators. Guest editors – these included Ms. Dynamite, Dame Kelly Holmes, Howard Marks and Alastair Campbell. Your News, a segment of most bulletins given over to viewers' videos and now adapted by many other news programmes under the banner 'user-generated content'. On-screen email addresses were shown for reporters while they're on air, a feature previously seen in newspapers. This was dropped a few months after introduction. When the contract transferred to Sky News, Five News was the first programme to broadcast (and, for the first time, in widescreen) from the news centre at Sky's headquarters in Osterley.

Did You Know?

• The first Sky-produced bulletin was brought forward two days due to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
• The contract returned to ITN on 20 February 2012.

From Philadelphia to the Nation

The story of morning television in America begins not on a national network but in a single Philadelphia market. From 1950 to 1952, comedian Ernie Kovacs hosted Three to Get Ready on WPTZ, a local station whose channel number gave the show its name. Though the program leaned heavily toward entertainment, it wove in brief news and weather segments, and its local success caught the attention of NBC executives. They saw the potential for a national version, and on January 14, 1952, Today premiered on NBC, becoming the first morning news program broadcast to a national audience. CBS, meanwhile, stumbled through its own attempts. The network debuted a two-hour morning show in 1954 but cut it to one hour within a year to make room for Captain Kangaroo, then abandoned the slot entirely by 1957. Through the late 1960s and 1970s, CBS offered only a straight one-hour newscast with notoriously high anchor turnover, before finally launching a new program called Morning in January 1979.

The Rhythm of a Morning Broadcast

A well-crafted morning show is essentially a two-act structure designed to match the audience shifting in front of the screen. The earlier portion speaks directly to commuters heading to work or school, packing in hard news: overnight developments, political interviews, business and sports headlines, national or regional weather, and—especially in densely populated markets—traffic reports. As the clock moves past the mid-morning mark, the tone softens. Segments pivot toward what the industry calls infotainment: human-interest pieces, lifestyle features, and entertainment stories that skew toward a dominantly female viewership. Local and regional productions add their own flavor with field reports on neighborhood events, local businesses, and attractions. One host captured the spirit of this tonal whiplash perfectly, recalling how one minute the show would deliver a laugh-a-minute comedy bit with Eric Morecambe, and the very next minute a top government official would appear. That seamless blend of the serious and the lighthearted remains the genre's core appeal.

A Format That Conquered the World

Today's impact on global television is difficult to overstate. Premiering in 1952, it holds the distinction of being both the first and the longest-running national breakfast or morning show in television history. For roughly seventy years, it dominated the morning ratings for the vast majority of its run, and in doing so, it established a template that broadcasters on every continent have since replicated. The combination of news, lifestyle features, and on-camera personality became a blueprint that local stations and international networks adopted, adapting the format to their own markets. In the United States alone, the genre has matured into a competitive trio of national programs—CBS Mornings, Today, and Good Morning America—alongside Spanish-language counterparts that extend live coverage across the Eastern, Central, and Mountain time zones. The format's universality is such that even a breaking-news event or a special live occasion, like a British royal wedding, can pull a morning show into a full nationwide broadcast, overriding the usual tape-delay arrangements.

The Invisible Machinery of a Live Morning Feed

Behind the polished on-screen presentation lies a complex web of logistical decisions. In the United States, the three major English-language morning shows air live only in the Eastern Time Zone; viewers in other regions receive a tape-delayed feed, with an updated version cut specifically for Pacific Time Zone audiences. Local affiliates can interrupt the national feed with brief cut-in segments covering regional headlines, weather, and traffic, and some even slot a local forecast into the national weather package. Anchors in multi-time-zone broadcasts refer to the current time as a set number of minutes after or before the hour, while on-screen graphics display the time and temperature throughout. Originally a morning-only convention, that clock-and-temperature bug expanded to midday and evening newscasts beginning in the mid-1990s, starting in major markets and gradually reaching smaller ones. The early 2000s brought another layer: scrolling news tickers carrying local, national, and international headlines, sports scores, and even lottery numbers, a feature that some stations confined to morning hours while others extended across the full broadcast day.