C5 retuning department is still not pressing the right buttons

Tis the season to be jolly, so spare a thought for that merry band of Channel 5 retuners as they chalk up their seasonal overtime payments in a desperate bid to meet the channel’s new on-air date in March. Just think, if it hadn’t been formally delayed, it would have been due on the air in a fortnight.

1997 is set to be the year of Channel 5… for good or ill. If it launches with a bang, it could cause real headaches for ITV and Channel 4. If it arrives with a whimper, like so many other new media, all the attention will be on its relaunch and whether its first management team survives.

I, at least, will now be able to watch its programmes without fear of interference. To those readers who have enquired whether my retuner has yet turned up, the answer is yes, thank you – though only at the third time of asking.

My earlier article on his missed appointment (MW November 8) produced a commendably quick response from the Channel 5 press office: deep apologies, an immediate investigation (I was told it was a computer glitch that had now been corrected) and an executive on the phone arranging a new appointment with my wife. It was fixed for 7pm on November 13 (or so we thought).

I left TV Centre early that evening, promising to return to finish a piece for the following morning’s Breakfast News. I wanted to see the retuning process myself, and also to make sure that in gaining Channel 5 I didn’t lose my video and satellite pictures.

When no one had arrived by 9.30pm, I went back to work and waited to see when Channel 5 would discover I had been passed over again. Its brightly striped letter doesn’t tell you what to do if the retuner doesn’t turn up. Is the ball in their court, or the householder’s?

I didn’t alert the press office because I wanted to find out how non-journalists are treated. But a week later I was having lunch with Polly Cochrane of Channel 5’s marketing department and she naturally asked if I had yet been retuned. When I revealed the second missed appointment, she vowed to find out what had happened. “At least we can’t be accused of giving you special treatment,” she said cheerily.

When the retuning department next rang my wife, it was to say surely the appointment was for the November 30, not 13, and what was the problem?

November 30 was a Saturday. Seven o’ clock on Saturday night doesn’t seem the most sociable time to be fiddling with people’s TV sets, but perhaps Channel 5 is so far behind schedule it’s having to fix appointments at that time. What makes the misunderstanding even more mysterious is that my wife recalls them discussing an appointment for “the following week” – not in three weeks’ time.

Nevertheless, since November 30 was now top of mind, she agreed to stick to that date, though not at 7pm. The new appointment was fixed for 2pm (how was she to know England were playing the New Zealand Barbarians?).

The morning arrived and the retuning department rang to say a supervisor would be there at 2pm. And he arrived on the dot. It rang him on his mobile half an hour later to check he was there. And he was very friendly and efficient.

He said some people wouldn’t have let him in while the rugby was on (I bit my lip). He retuned the videos (sad creature that I am, I have more than one). He tested the Super Nintendo console to see if that got interference from the Channel 5 signal (it didn’t). And he moved the satellite signal from button five to button seven and put Channel 5 in its place.

I now have an excellent picture, better than before. What surprised me was that he didn’t tune every TV to Channel 5. He told me their brief was to retune any equipment connected to a TV which might get interference, not to make sure all sets could receive Channel 5.

Yet when the retuning programme was first announced, we were told it would have a huge marketing benefit: it would ensure every home was tuned into Channel 5 from day one. A decade earlier, Channel 4 had had to overcome viewers’ inertia (and their fear of tampering with their TV) to persuade them to tune it in themselves. It took several years.

Nor have the retuners been told to put Channel 5 on button five, which would be another boost to its branding. Some viewers have cable, satellite or the video on button five. In the multichannel age (at least until we get into the world of the digital Electronic Programme Guide), surely Channel 5 would prefer to be on the button with the corresponding number?

But of course that would take up extra retuning time and the job is already taking much longer than predicted. Cynics might say that as long as the BARB panel members are tuned in to Channel 5, the rest don’t really matter – but this would be a short-sighted view.

I know people who haven’t had their stripey letter at all yet, or who had a stripey postcard put through their door at 11pm (it says “we called but you were out”), or waited in as I did, only for no one to appear. My supervisor admitted this used to happen quite often. Retuners were told about appointments after they were due to have taken place. Now the system has been changed.

Have I been more unlucky than most? Not according to my parents-in-law, who live in Birmingham. They too have made two appointments to be retuned, neither of which was kept, and they too have heard no more.

Let’s hope that Channel 5 has a happier new year.