In 1985, a little over a year before the legislative elections, the Socialist Party feared failure and wanted to create a new space, outside of the institutional domain of public television, capable of reaching a large audience (contrary to the private subscription channel Canal+) and constitute a relay of opinion to its ideas if it was to return to the opposition.
The next day, the police were forced to intervene in order to allow TDF technicians to install La Cinq's transmitters at the top of the Eiffel Tower, after the City of Paris refused to do so for security reasons.
Up until midnight, Christian Morin, Roger Zabel, Amanda Lear, Ėlisabeth Tordjman and Alain Gillot-Pétré hosted major French stars (Johnny Hallyday, Serge Gainsbourg, Mireille Mathieu, Charles Aznavour) as well as international stars like Ornella Muti, who had been invited by Silvio Berlusconi to support a show that would be able to compete with TF1 or Antenne 2.
The first hosts had formerly been presenters on TF1 (Christian Morin), Antenne 2 (Alain Gillot-Pétré, Roger Zabel and Élisabeth Tordjman), or one of Berlusconi's Italian networks (Amanda Lear).
Most of these series were familiar to viewers, because they were broadcast on other French networks in the 1960s and 1970s: Diff'rent Strokes, Happy Days, Mission: Impossible, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Dukes of Hazzard and Wonder Woman.
The block helped popularise Japanese animation in France — it was sufficiently prominent in 1989 to be a target of criticism by then-representative Ségolène Royal.
Under the weight of the debts accumulated since 1987 caused by the failure of a large portion of the programmes created, Robert Hersant criticised Berlusconi for selling American series that were too expensive.
Hersant, after a legal battle, realised that La Cinq's debt burden was threatening to crush his media group; he then ceded his share in La Cinq to the Hachette group, then directed by Jean-Luc Lagardère, an unsuccessful candidate for the acquisition of TF1 in 1987 and who dreamt of acquiring a national television channel.
Instead of trying to reduce the channel's budget deficit, Hachette commissioned an abundance of newer television series, including American import Twin Peaks and the game show Que le meilleur gagne.
From April 1991, Pascal Josèphe put the prime time access schedule on the air which he intended for Antenne 2 and which he revised.
Instead of trying to reduce costs and make up for the existing deficit, Hachette was increasing expenses (rebranding network identity, repairing all the premises, creating too many programmes), and La Cinq had completely changed.
As a result, 22 new programmes were put on the air in April 1991, but they all stopped after a few weeks or months, without succeeding in significantly increasing its market share with the exception of motorsports, with 40% of market share, for Formula 1 snatched from TF1, the Paris-Dakar, the Grand Prix de Pau, the Walt Disney movie slots on Tuesday evenings, Twin Peaks and the news, which were successful.
Not only did its new programmes fail to attract new viewers, but these upheavals confused some of the faithful audience, to the point that the channel announced a rerun of Kojak to save the prime time access slot.
In addition, Lagardère did not succeed in relaxing the constraints imposed by the government and regulations, so it remained at the mercy of political power.
On 17 December 1991, its CEO, Yves Sabouret, in a cost-cutting move, had to forcibly lay off 576 employees, amounting to more than 75% of the channel's staff.
A few days later, interviewed by Jean-Claude Bourret during the 8pm news, the CEO would hear the presenter say that the action taken "looks like a Formula 1 racing team that sells the tires to buy the gasoline".
On-screen, the "5" logo was displayed in black for 24 hours while a banner indicating that "La 5 will not be Matra-Racing" was brandished in the offices of the editorial staff.
It was officially declared bankrupt on 2 January 1992 and placed in legal redress the following day, due to its inability to repay its entire debt.
The programme ended with an animation of a planet with the number 5 orbiting around it being eclipsed by static noise, as the opening to Also sprach Zarathustra (former news theme) was played, followed by a pair of text slides which read: It would be almost two years before the network's infrastructure was reactivated as a public educational channel La Cinquième (now France 5) on 13 December 1994.
It was inspired by the work of Jasper Johns (founding father of pop art), who produced canvases featuring numbers in the 1960s.