This week, Channel 5 underlined its presence to the media world with a
blockbuster firework display and spectacular party at Holborn Studios.
It was another brave and confident gesture from a station that has
managed to hold off the critics despite its delayed launch and deathly
silence on programme plans.
Even Channel 5’s news programming is shrouded in mystery. It has great
plans, with hourly bulletins and a flagship show at some point between
8pm and 9pm, but it plans to surprise the nation with its presentation
and agenda.
If you think news programmes are just half an hour of some cheesey
anchor reading the headlines, you’ll get short shrift from Chris Shaw,
the station’s editor at ITN. He plans a youthful show, with stories that
you won’t find on any other station. It’s going to be a challenge, and
as such Shaw is the man for the job.
Challenges are his life blood. It is almost impossible to find a single
news programme launch of the last five years that he hasn’t been
involved in. He worked on the launch of Sky News, was a member of the
team that re-vamped News At Ten in 1992, devised and set up ITN’s news
service for the launch of Channel 4’s Big Breakfast and now he’s at the
helm of the news output for the largest TV event for 14 years. Not bad
considering he decided to get into broadcast journalism after graduating
from Oxford because he was a curious fellow with a desire for some
excitement.
Excitement he got. He recalls flying in a ramshackle light aircraft into
Addis Ababa in Ethiopia during the coup in 1992 only to be hauled off to
the guardhouse by a bunch of soldiers. He remembers trying to get Jon
Snow up a mountain on the border between Iran and Iraq just after the
Gulf War in the face of a hostile Republican Guard. He also recounts
with pleasure how he abandoned a promising career in TV journalism to
tour Asia and South America for 18 months on an archeological dig before
returning to find his professional standing undiminished. This man is,
to put it mildly, resourceful.
‘If I hadn’t gone into journalism I might have become an archeologist,’
he says. ‘Either that or a professional footballer. I ought to say I’d
have played for my own team, West Bromwich Albion, but really I’d have
liked to play for someone fashionable like Chelsea. I ended up
supporting West Brom because they were the first full team I collected
in those football cards.
‘No-one wanted the duff teams so I got them. I used to be quite a good
player, but now I’m lucky if I stay on the pitch for the full 90
minutes.’
‘I suppose what I want from life, or at least my career, is a blank
sheet that I can write on,’ he says. ‘I do tend to move around a lot but
I’ll be staying with Channel 5 for a while. I have a tremendous personal
investment in that I’ve recruited everybody to the team and I know what
I want the show to be like. As to what I want to do when my time is up
at Channel 5, if you look back at my career you’ll see I don’t really
plan it. I just keep my eye out for a new challenge.’
HIGHLIGHTS
1992 Home news editor, Channel 4 News
1993 Programme editor, News at Ten
1994 Programme editor, Budget ’94
1994 Launch editor, The Big Breakfast news service
1996 Editor, ITN’s news service Channel 5
