Channel 5 boss admits regrets over pandemic programming

THE boss of Channel 5 has admitted to looking back at shows he commissioned during lockdown and asking: “What were we thinking?”

“I’m always happy to talk about failure because we do have failure and we do have things that don’t work,” said Ben Frow.

“Let’s just say I seem to have commissioned an awful lot of programmes during lockdown where we look at them going, ‘Really? Two hours on this subject? Really? What were we thinking?’”

But Mr Frow, who is known in the industry for his straight talking, said the pandemic had curtailed programmemaking. “We needed to keep this show on the road – you’re very limited in what you can make when you can’t travel abroad, and you’re trying to keep the business going,” he said.

Despite a handful of failures, Channel 5 performed strongly during the pandemic,

‘We needed to keep this show on the road – you’re limited in what you can make when you can’t travel abroad’

with prime time ratings up 17 per cent on the previous year. The Drowning was the most-watched drama in the broadcaster’s history, and Our Yorkshire Farm was its highest-rated factual series. “We got the pandemic on the nail with people moving to the country – Our Yorkshire Farm, All Creatures Great and Small,” Mr Frow said. However, he said he did not know if rural shows would maintain their popularity: “We know that people have been giving up their houses in London and moving to the country, but I think they’ve all moved to the country now.”

Mr Frow said it was impossible to predict a hit, citing a 2016 show called Penguin A&E with Lorraine Kelly. “It’s got penguins, it’s got A&E, it’s got Lorraine Kelly. Perfect! Total flop,” he said, jokingly, during an appearance at the Edinburgh TV Festival.

The channel does have ratings success with its supply of royal documentaries, and Mr Frow disclosed that at least one member of the Royal family is a fan.

He said: “I got a very nice letter via an agent from the Duchess of Kent, saying she liked her documentary.”

He added: “I have done Princess Anne three times now. I literally go, ‘We are not doing any more royals. We have got to stop doing royals. It is getting embarrassing’. And a rival might play a royal doc and we go, ‘I’ll be damned if they are going to do a royal doc – ok, let’s think of another angle’. I make them up essentially.”

Elsewhere at the festival, Netflix announced that it would be producing more factual shows. New commissions include Snowflake Mountain, a reality show in which “clueless kidults” go to a survival camp in the Lake District.