5 News

History

5 News launched as a key programme when Channel 5 began broadcasting on 30 March 1997. One of its original newsreaders was Rob Butler, who later became the MP for Aylesbury in 2019. The bulletins were initially produced by ITN, which also handled news for Channel 4 and ITV at that time. On 9 March 2004, it was revealed that Sky had secured the contract to produce Channel 5's news. The first Sky-produced bulletin was scheduled for 3 January 2005, but the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami pushed it forward by two days, resulting in a brief Saturday evening update. In January 2009, the Sky contract was renewed through 2012. So, from 1 January 2005, Sky News took over from ITN, which had provided the news since the channel's launch in 1997. On 14 February 2011, the service reverted to its original name, 5 News, after being called Five News from 2002 to 2011. On 20 February 2012, the contract returned to its original provider, ITN.

On 18 February 2008, Five News got a refreshed look with new theme music and titles, which were updated again in October 2008 to match Five's rebranding. The 7pm edition was renamed Five News at 7, and presenters began standing up to read the news again. On 10 August 2009, Channel 5 announced that Five News at 7 would be cancelled in autumn 2009, along with its presenter Isla Traquair. On 28 August 2009, Isla announced her departure at the end of the programme, and Matt Barbet hosted the final edition on 4 September. It was replaced on 14 September 2009 by Live from Studio Five, an hour-long nightly magazine show mixing news and chat, airing at 6:30pm on weeknights and competing with the BBC One programme The One Show. In November 2009, James Partridge, from the facial disfigurement charity Changing Faces, presented the lunchtime news bulletins for a full week.

On 2 August 2010, after a change in channel ownership, Five News at 7 was brought back, and Live from Studio Five was shortened to 30 minutes. On 14 October 2010, Natasha Kaplinsky announced she would leave Channel 5 at the end of 2010, having spent much of her three years there on maternity leave.

Features

5 News began as a service offering hourly afternoon and evening updates on weekdays. These updates featured a ticker, a first for a terrestrial news broadcast that wasn't simulcasting a news channel; it later became a weather ticker before being removed entirely in 2007. Presenters initially stood or perched instead of sitting behind a desk, a style later adopted by other broadcasters. The channel banned this in 2007, requiring presenters to sit for all bulletins, but they returned to standing when the programme relaunched in February 2011. Other distinctive elements included on-air teases from production staff, live discussions with experts, campaigners, celebrities, and political commentators, and guest editors such as Ms. Dynamite, Dame Kelly Holmes, Howard Marks, and Alastair Campbell. A segment called Your News devoted most bulletins to viewer videos, a concept later widely adopted as user-generated content. Reporters had on-screen email addresses displayed while on air, a feature borrowed from newspapers, but this was dropped after a few months. When the production contract moved to Sky News, Five News became the first programme to broadcast from Sky's Osterley news centre, and it did so in widescreen for the first time.