Channel 5 axes 'Live From Studio Five'

Channel 5 will replace magazine show Live From Studio Five with OK! TV next month, it has been revealed.



Richard Desmond - who owns the broadcaster and OK! magazine - is hoping the new teatime show will help boost ratings, reports The Guardian.

OK! TV will start on February 14 and is expected to be backed with a big marketing campaign across Desmond's newspapers, the Daily Star and the Daily Express. It is thought to be part of a large rebranding of the channel following Desmond's takeover last year.

Live From Studio Five was launched in September 2009, but failed to impress critics or win huge ratings despite considerable levels of promotion. The original hosts were Apprentice star Kate Walsh, Melinda Messenger, who quit the programme last March, and ex-footballer Ian Wright, who departed last August.

Jayne Middlemiss and Emma Willis have been among the other presenters that have stood in on the teatime show.

TV critic Charlie Brooker famously claimed that the show had taken TV broadcasting to new levels of "dumbing down". "[It's a] show with a running order Heat magazine would consider frighteningly lightweight," he wrote. "A show which, incredibly, boasts Melinda Messenger as its intellectual touchstone."

OK! TV previously aired on ITV in 1999 and 2000, but was pulled after just one run and Desmond fell out with producers Carlton TV. A planned second outing on GMTV never materialised.