[5] It is a general entertainment channel that shows internally commissioned programmes such as The Drowning, All Creatures Great and Small and Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild.

A logo (a numeric "5" within a circle) and visual motif (a "candy stripe" bar of colours, reminiscent of TV test cards) were used, and an attempt was made to establish a collection of Channel 5 faces; through the spring of 1997, billboards of Jack Docherty were displayed, along with other unknown characters.

[14] The channel's launch on 30 March 1997 (Easter Sunday) at 6 p.m. After a brief voice over by continuity presenter David Vickery, the first broadcast was the Spice Girls singing a cover version of Manfred Mann's hit "5-4-3-2-1" as "1-2-3-4-5",[15][16] for which they were reportedly paid around £500,000.

[17] Presenters Tim Vine and Julia Bradbury were the first people to introduce the nation to the UK's fifth terrestrial channel with half an hour of previews.

'Five' as a brand reflects the evolution the channel is undergoing in programming and in becoming a more confident and distinctive viewer proposition.Five was taken over by Richard Desmond's publishing group Northern & Shell on 23 July 2010 for £103.5 million.

[24] Upon completing his takeover of Five on 23 July 2010, Richard Desmond remarked; "I prefer Channel 5 to Five, but... we haven't met with the team yet to discuss these sorts of details".

[30] In 2013, Ben Frow, the channel's Director of Programming, revealed that the station would be moving away from broadcasting just American imports, by introducing shows from other countries such as Canada, Ireland and Australia to the schedules.

From 23 April 1997, the channel was also provided on the analogue Astra satellite service, which enabled people outside the terrestrial reception areas to receive it via a dish.

[39] It was the first terrestrial channel in the UK to use a permanent digital on-screen graphic, though this was removed in September 2002; however, the children's programming strands kept the DOG.

On 6 October 2008 at 9 pm, Five launched and aired a new look, replacing the lower-case "five" logo with an upper-case "FIVE" in a circle occasionally with pink, turquoise and purple light effects.

After the takeover by Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell, major changes and considerable financial investment were promised by the new owners, alongside a return to the 'Channel 5' moniker.

They echo the predominantly red colour scheme of the channel's new corporate image, each based in a spacious studio with a large screen as the backdrop for the action.

[56] Several special idents have also been used for The Hotel Inspector, The Walking Dead, Impossible?, Big Brother, The Bachelor, Europa League, The Mentalist, Tamara Ecclestone: Billion $$ Girl, It's All About Amy, How to Take Stunning Pictures, and The Gadget Show: World Tour also based around the same theme of the studio and screen.

On 11 February 2016, Channel 5 launched a new logo across all of its properties—a segmented 5 which can be rendered with various designs and animations, alongside a new series of "cinematic" idents, and break bumpers with text messages on them.

[34][58] The idents were changed on 26 February 2020 with a new set focusing more on the logo on coloured backdrops pink, green, orange, blue, teal and black.

[74] The channel frequently sticks to a regular schedule during the day, which during the 2010s included a phone-in chat show at 9:15 am (currently Jeremy Vine, which replaced The Wright Stuff in 2018), TV movies in the afternoon, after the Australian soap, Home and Away.

showing children's programmes include Thomas & Friends, Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig, Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom, Little Princess, Fifi and the Flowertots, Roary the Racing Car Fireman Sam Joshua Jones and many more.

[117][118] In addition, the 'Spirit of Queensland' episode of the channel's Bill Nighy narrated luxury train travel series was held back a week[119] with the Al Andalus train journey from Seville[120] taking its place on 22 July and the Brisbane to Cairns trip's title amended to Australia's Most Scenic Railway Journeys to fit in with the Neighbours theme night on 29 July 2022.

On 7 September 2022, a two-part day-by-day documentary with Xand van Tulleken and Raksha Dave[121] called The Great Smog of 1952 started with the second episode scheduled for the following night.

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the concluding part was dumped from the schedule after the channel went into a rolling royal documentary mode for the rest of the night.

[125] The second part of The Great Smog of 1952[126][127] was rescheduled for 13 September 2022, with the documentary and a repeat of Paramount Pictures' award-winning romantic drama film, An Officer and a Gentleman,[128][129] replacing a double bill of murder investigations.

Even though the channel is known for its royal documentaries, on the day of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II Channel 5 decided to go with a counter-alternative schedule to all the royal coverage due to being shown on the BBC, ITV and Sky, with their regular Home and Away episode and Jeremy Vine dropped to make way for family-friendly productions like The Emoji Movie, The Adventures of Paddington and Stuart Little.

[147][148] In 2023, Paramount Global closed VIS UK,[149] its non-scripted production division, which meant that travel shows featuring Susan Calman and Jane McDonald were moved over to Lionsgate's Daisybeck Studios,[150] the company responsible for a number of rural programmes on Channel 5 like The Yorkshire Vet, The Highland Vet and all the farming shows filmed at Cannon Hall Farm.

On 6 March 2024, after footage from Willy's Chocolate Experience in Glasgow went viral, it commissioned an hour-long documentary about the event, called Wonka: The Scandal that Rocked Britain,[165] from Mentorn TV.

[184][185] The three-day event was based around Channel 5's ...on the Farm series (featuring series regulars Rob and Dave Nicholson, chef Tim Bilton as well as presenters Adam Henson, Helen Skelton, Jules Hudson and JB Gill) with appearances from people featuring in a range of Channel 5 programmes associated with farming, food and animals.

In a 2022 Radio Times interview with Mark Lawson,[188] Channel 5's director of programmes Ben Frow gave answers to some of the regular criticisms viewers had over the past few years about scheduling.

[192] Frow apologised to all the Radio Times readers who were annoyed by these regular occurrences but explained that when listings go to press he does not know what the competition from other channels might be and so may have to retitle a programme to make it stand out on the EPG or temporarily remove that show from the schedule until there is a better place for it.

For example, the programme Billion Dollar Holiday City[193][194] which turned up in the Channel 5 schedule on 17 July 2022 before new episodes of the holiday series Bargain-Loving Brits by the Sea and The Cruise[195] was a revised and retitled version of late-night programme Secret World of Las Vegas: 24/7[196][197] which originally was broadcast by the channel in 2019, and put into production as Vegas 24:7 by Viacom Studios UK (now VIS UK).

[200] However, the marketing around this episode made it look like it was a new free-to-air series that was going to continue on the channel and Paramount Plus every week, which resulted in the first of several Feedback letters to the Radio Times[201] about the practice of 'taster TV'.

This time the viewer complained that this was just a 'puff piece' to get people to subscribe to a paid service and thought the practice might be against the channel's PSB commitments, while in the magazine's 20–26 August 2022 issue,[202] after one-off starter episodes of Halo, La Brea and The Box[203] had been shown on the channel, a piece of viewer criticism headlined "Taster TV is no good to me" was highlighted as the magazine's Letter of the Week.