Following a major deal with the world’s largest video site, Five will be bringing their original programming onto YouTube and will arrive online shortly after being aired. This is quite a big deal for the company – although Five is generally synonymous for lower quality programming, the UKs newest terrestrial television channel is going to be bringing shows like The Gadget Show and Hotel Inspector Online, along with Australian Soaps such Neighbours and Home and Away.

The power of YouTube’s community gives the programmes exposure to a potential UK audience of over 20 million viewers. The channel is joining Channel 4 as the only broadcaster to play all of its content on YouTube in this fashion.

A spokesman from Five said that this “provides the broadcaster with additional advertising inventory and reach, tapping into growing consumer demand to watch Five’s programming online.”

Those in other countries might be disappointed to hear that despite going online, the content will only be available for UK users. However, it will be a completely free ad supported service similar to 4 on Demand.

According to the channel, “Five will have a branded presence on YouTube and its sales team will be able to sell both display and video advertising (typically pre-roll and mid-roll advertisements and sponsorship bumpers) around the content available on the site.”

The channel will also be using YouTube to run various competitions, such as a New Year contest to win a guest role on Neighbours where auditions will take place over YouTube.

Chairman and Chief Executive of Five, Dawn Airey said: “This is a tremendously important deal for Five because in one fell swoop it extends the reach of our content beyond linear TV and our own existing websites to a new audience of younger, upwardly mobile and web-savvy individuals – an audience that advertisers are equally desirous of attracting.”


Written by: Suzanna, who runs a website about Local SEO