Is Kaplinsky worth her £1m a year pay packet?

Natasha Kaplinsky has almost doubled the audience for Five's flagship news programme in only her first outing on her new burgundy coloured sofa. According to Brand Republic, 1m viewers tuned in at 5pm, well above the six-month average of 600,000. Is Kaplinsky worth her reported £1m a year salary? Will you be tuning in?

I really like Kaplinsky, but I don't think even she couldn't persuade me to watch the Americanised tripe that is Five News.

Although I do watch C4 just for Jon Snow's ties...so who knows. 

I think she was worth the outlay. Five's programming needs a lift - while the digital channels have been successful, the main channel wasn't doing as well. Whether or not the £1m salary translates directly in ad revenue, she will have a halo affect on the daytime schedule, which it needs having paid so much for Neighbours. And Five now has a high profile brand ambassador as well as tent pole show in its day time schedule. When you think of Channel 4, you associate it with Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and Jon Snow. Prior to Kaplinsky, Five didn't have any recogniseable faces. It's a good move and the early audience figures seem to suggest it will pay off.

Kaplinsky certainly seems to be worth the big bucks Five are paying simply in terms of the number of headlines she has generated in media coverage alone. There are pages and pages of news about her on Google News and that is much cheaper than advertising (although Five has done some of this as well).

For a channel that needs to fight hard to compete with the BBC, ITV and C4 for viewers she seems like a smart buy.  

It does seem to be a good move so far but I can't see Five keeping that many viewers for long. Once the novelty wears off I think numbers will dwindle. Personally I find Kaplinsky quite irritating for no real reason apart from the fact her hair is so big and looks like it is just stuck there along with the copious amounts of make-up.

I think that's the Carol Vorderman factor at play there, Nikki. Both her and Kapalinsky are so ubiquitous with their face of the brands and celebrity dancing competitions it's like you can't switch your TV on without seeing either one of them sometimes.

The British public seem quite demanding of their newsreaders, and once you've thrown a bit of celebrity into the mix, people start getting mildly irritated. I totally accept Kaplinsky as a smart journalistic choice for Five, she has undoubted cred, but she's on so many other programmes it dilutes their investment somewhat.

 

I haven't been tempted to switch from C4 News so far. Am I missing anything?

 

What kind of debate is this!!

She's reading the news which counts, and making the sort of news which doesn't!

Isn't this a style vs substance debate? If it is, I think it's worth having

I love this topic -

Think of it this way: Imagine you're buying your first audio book. Do you go for the one read by Ian McKellen or the one read by me?

Therein lies your answer as to whether five can justify paying Kapinsky large money to deliver large audiences.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

 

It's not what you say but how you say it. Really? So that's the future of television news eh? Any old ill-informed tosh will do - as long as you have lovely coiffure and lovely dulcet tones. Actually, tell you what, it's the whole boring old 'news' bit that's holding the news back. So instead, let's just make the stories up. Let's get chimps to cut up newspapers. In the dark. Then we'll paste the bits together at random and stick it all on Natasha's autocue. And we'll call it 'Chimpy Wimpy Word Shower with Natasha Kaplinsky'. Brilliant. Ha ha. Accurate, incisive and compelling reportage? That's old hat didn't you know. Oh God...

I agree - but isn't it the case that television news (particularly when it's a terrestrial bulletin not a 24 hour service) is as much in the entertainment business as anything else? It doesn't feel right to me, but I sense that is why the 'smaller' news brands are concentrating on the style of their shows, rather than the actual news content. Sometimes TV news bulletins strike me as simply another take on a reality-show format, as opposed to a great showcase for top notch journalism.

 

Fair point Phillip. It may well be that smaller news brands are inclined or indeed feel compelled to value style more than substance. And similarly I appreciate there is a need to bring the news to life - without wilfully distorting content or indeed reducing stories to an absurd shorthand. That said, how did Channel 4 news start life? Was it not once a 'smaller news brand' compared to the traditional big two? Yet it appears to have - from the off - stayed true to a core ethos of high quality journalism (and hey, it even manages to entertain on the odd occasion). But still, different channels, different 'flavours' of news. So good luck to Five and Natasha. I personally think a million quid for reading the news/presenting/ being the consumer news interface/whatever her role may be, is a nonsense.

Yes - I guess it would be difficult to start a bulletin with the 'original' C4 ethos now as there are so many more 24 hour news options. But, I would love to see someone try. And succeed. When BBCs 3 and 4 introduced news bulletins, and tried very different ideas, they really did produce something insubstantial and unwatched.
The fact that C4 is there already similarly reduces 5's room for true innovation. But, imagine what 5 could do with £1m spent on content?

It's THE WAY that you say it