In 1974 in Milano 2, a satellite city built by Silvio Berlusconi, Giacomo Properzj and Alceo Moretti, the private cable television station Telemilanocavo was founded, and the first transmissions began on 24 September.

[1] With the transition from cable to terrestrial, Telemilanocavo moved its studios to the Palazzo dei Cigni and became Telemilano 58, from the name of the UHF channel frequency used and taken over by the local broadcaster TVI Television International of Milan, with a system in Hotel Michelangelo.

The name was chosen by Berlusconi with Adriano Galliani "for a matter of euphony" but also because a local name like that of Telemilano was starting to feel tight for a broadcaster that aspired to become a major national television network.

The experiment officially began with the game show I Sogni Nel Casetto (Dreams in the Drawer), hosted by Mike Bongiorno and produced by Reteitalia.

[4] The opening and closing theme of the programmes began with the song Rondò Veneziano by Gian Piero Reverberi, chosen by Berlusconi under the advice of Freddy Naggiar of Baby Records.

The first sporting event of great interest broadcast was the Mundialito (from 30 December 1980 to 10 January 1981), a football tournament held in Uruguay to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first edition of the World Cup.

Reteitalia secured the European television rights but then sold them to RAI and in exchange, was able to broadcast the matches of the tournament, except those of the national team and the final, live in Lombardy and delayed in the other Italian regions.

However, the programme did not get the ratings it expected, due to the network's inexperience in the production and creation of variety shows and the lack of live coverage, then reserved for RAI and local broadcasters.

Also in 1981, Canale 5 bought the rights to broadcast the American soap opera Dallas, which, in the following years, was the focus of a true "audience war" against rival show Dynasty on Mondadori's competitor Rete 4.

In the early 1980s, Canale 5 also broadcast container programmes such as Pomeriggio Con Five and Okay, which featured a variety of cartoons from North America, Europe and Japan.

From 1982, after Loretta Goggi and Mike Bongiorno, many other Italian television personalities from RAI signed a contract with Fininvest such as Corrado, who led to the debuts of morning quiz show Il Pranzo è Servito, which occupied the noon time slot, and the variety show Attenti a noi due, presented by couple Sandra Mondaini and Raimondo Vianello.

A few days before the blackout, Canale 5 began to offer a schedule based on information, with new programmes hosted by Arrigo Levi, Guglielmo Zucconi, Giorgio Bocca and Peter Nichols.

In 1987, Canale 5 achieved a historic record: the prime-time premiere of the film The Woman in Red on 14 January, was followed by almost 13 million viewers, reaching over 48% share.

Following the Mammì law of 1990, Canale 5 (together with Italia 1 and Rete 4) obtained the authorization to broadcast live nationally; the direction was assigned in 1991 to Giorgio Gori.

[5] During this period the Canale 5 schedule was based on self-produced TV series and programmes such as Ore 12, Stranamore, Beato Tra Le Donne and Tira & Molla.

On 5 December 2012, Canale 5 HD was activated on Mux La3 visible throughout Italy with the exception of northwestern Tuscany, where the Monte Serra transmitting centre switched off the multiplex for interference.

It was also available until 11 July 2011, in high definition (though forced) Canale 5 HD in regions where transition to digital terrestrial switch-off occurred and reached by Mux Mediaset 6.

Mediaset always has Hotbird 13° E of service frequencies to power terrestrial DTT / DVB-H repeaters (transmitted in a professional mode with dedicated equipment, so it can not be tuned by the end-user) only sporadically in case of testing you can receive from the standard DVB-S2 decoders.

Canale 5 has always been the flagship channel of Mediaset, in correspondence with Rai 1: for this reason the programming varies from major events (Film Festival, New Year's Eve, Christmas concert) to information, insight and entertainment.

In the summer of 2006, an app was launched that allowed viewers to watch archive Mediaset television series such as Odiens, La Sai L'ultima?

The current logo of the network is a number 5 overlapped by the stylized head of Biscione (a reference to the Visconti family and the city of Milan), from whose mouth, unlike the original, emerges a flower.

Other announcers of Canale 5 (for short periods) have included Fabrizia Carminati, Alba Parietti, Paola Perego, Susanna Messaggio, Michela Rocco of Torrepadula, and Daniela Castelli.