Pre-launch (1985–1986)

In 1985, a little over a year before the legislative elections, the Socialist Party feared failure and wanted to create a new space, outside of the institutional domain of public television, capable of reaching a large audience (contrary to the private subscription channel Canal+) and constitute a relay of opinion to its ideas if it was to return to the opposition.

On November 20, 1985, the government granted an 18-year concession to France Cinq, allowing them to operate the fifth national television network. This decision was criticized by the Minister of Culture and some of the President's advisers, who wanted to see cultural programming, and by the High Authority of Audiovisual Communication, which did not approve of the conditions but had no power to change them. At a press conference on November 22 1985, Jérome Seydoux and Silvio Berlusconi presented the focus and style of the programs that would be broadcast on the fifth television channel. In response to critics who accused them of wanting to create "Coca-Cola" TV, Berlusconi, who developed La Cinq's programming from his catalogues, replied that the channel would be "neither Coca-Cola TV, nor spaghetti TV, but rather Beaujolais TV, a Saturday champagne.^[1] He also promised to feature well-liked TV or film stars.

Determined to block this project, 60 senators had the Constitutional Council^[2] declare "The Eiffel Tower Amendment" (fr: amendement Tour Eiffel) unconstitutional on 13 December, 1985.^[3] This forced the government to draft a new bill, which was accepted by Parliament on December 21. On December 31, 1985, the France 5 company was incorporated in anonymous form with its registered office in Paris. On January 16,1986 the RTL Group (at the time the Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion (CLT)) unsuccessfully attempted to have the Council of State cancel the concession agreement; instead the government gave the RTL Group the right to use one of the two remaining free channels of the future TDF 1 satellite. On 20 January 1986 Silvio Berlusconi presented the programs of his future commercial channel, officially known as La Cinq, to journalists, industrialists and advertisers in order to convince them to buy advertising airtime to finance the channel. The next day, the police were forced to intervene in order to allow TDF technicians to come install La Cinq's transmitters at the top of the Eiffel Tower, after the City of Paris refused to do so for security reasons.^[4][5]

Launch (1986–early 1987)

After three months of animosity^[6] and a month of technical testing, La Cinq was finally able to start broadcasting on Thursday, February 20,1986 at 8:30 PM, airing an introductory broadcast entitled Voila la Cinq, which had been recorded in the Fininvest^[7] Group's Milan studio. Up until midnight, Christian Morin, Roger Zabel, Amanda Lear, Ėlisabeth Tordjman and Alain Gillot-Pétré hosted major French stars (Johnny Hallyday, Serge Gainsbourg, Mireille Mathieu, Charles Aznavour) as well as international stars like Ornella Muti, who had been invited by Silvio Berlusconi to support a show that would be able to compete with TF1 or Antenne 2.^{[8][9][10][11]} For the next few weeks, the programming consisted of game shows and variety shows like Pentathlon, C’est beau la vie, and Cherchez la femme, which had been adapted from successful shows on Silvio Berlusconi's Italian network, Canale 5, and had also been influenced by French magazines like Mode. The programs were repeated every four to five hours and had up to three commercial breaks per show. The first hosts had formerly been presenters on TF1 (Christian Morin), Antenne 2 (Alain Gillot-Pétré, Roger Zabel and Élisabeth Tordjman), or one of Berlusconi's Italian networks (Amanda Lear). A continuity announcer presented the programs.^[12]

Starting in February 1986, American TV series aired during daytime and late night programming. Most of these series were familiar to viewers, because they were broadcast on other French networks in the 1960s and 1970s: Diff'rent Strokes, Happy Days, Mission: Impossible, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Dukes of Hazzard and Wonder Woman.

After the launch, the network was invested into feature film production of native theatrical feature films.^[13]

Children's programming

La Cinq's children-oriented programming block, Youpi! L'école est finie ("Hooray! School's over!"), began broadcasting on March 2, 1987, and would last until the channel's dissolution. Broadcasting in the morning between 7 and 9 AM and in the evening between 5 and 6 PM, the block was notable for airing French-language dubs of numerous Japanese anime series, including:

In addition to the Japanese-based animated programs listed above, the channel also aired some animated programs from other sources, including Robotech, Clémentine, Snorks, Manu, Diplodos, Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars, and The Smurfs. Many of the Youpi! series were also aired in Italy as they had been licensed by Fininvest. The block helped popularise Japanese animation in France — it was sufficiently prominent in 1989 to be a target of criticism by then-representative Ségolène Royal.^[14] Many of the anime series that aired on La Cinq (notably Captain Tsubasa and Ai Shite Knight) would later air on TF1 as a part of the Club Dorothée block.

Decline (late 1987–1990)

Beginning in 1987, La Cinq ran into serious financial problems that would later be escalated by the privatisation of TF1 in the late 1980s and the early 1990s recession. Robert Hersant took over the channel in February 1987 and would remain the channel's president until September 1990, when Fininvest sold the channel to Hachette. In 1989, the channel's audience share peaked at 13.0%.

Hachette's La Cinq (1990–1991)

Under the weight of the debts accumulated since 1987 caused by the failure of a large portion of the programs created, Robert Hersant criticized Berlusconi for selling American series that were too expensive. The latter disapproved of the great importance that Hersant gives to information, deeming it costly and unprofitable. Hersant, after a legal battle, realized that La Cinq's debt burden was threatening to crush his media group; he then ceded his share in La Cinq to the Hachette group, then directed by Jean-Luc Lagardère, an unsuccessful candidate for the acquisition of TF1 in 1987 and who dreamt of acquiring a national television channel. Thanks to a capital increase, Hachette increased its stake in la Cinq from 22 to 25% while Hersant reduced it from 25 to 10%. On October 23, 1990, the Superior Audiovisual Council granted the channel to Hachette, which promised to “save La Cinq”.

When Yves Sabouret and Hachette took over control of La Cinq in the fall of 1990, the channel's audience share had declined to 11.7%. On April 2, 1991, the channel's second and final logo was introduced. Instead of trying to reduce the channel's budget deficit, Hachette commissioned an abundance of newer television series, including American import Twin Peaks and the game show Que le meilleur gagne. The continued commission and production of newer programmes by La Cinq increased the channel's budget deficit significantly; by mid-1991, the channel's deficit amounted to 3.5 billion francs. As a result, Berlusconi sold the rights of several of the children's programmes to AB Productions; those programmes were subsequently moved to TF1 before the end of the year.

1991 began with the Gulf War, allowing its newscasts to reach more than 9% of market share.

Hachette began changing everything, starting with the identity of the channel. Jean-Luc Lagardère gave a blank check to his program director, Pascal Josèphe, whom he had just hired from Antenne 2, to launch new programs concocted by Hachette, which was hoped to make La Cinq a large family generalist channel capable of competing against TF1. In fact, the channel was also obliged to produce new programs because the stock of American series was becoming scarce. From April 1991, Pascal Josèphe put the prime time access schedule on the air which he intended for Antenne 2 and which he revised.

Instead of trying to reduce costs and make up for the existing deficit, Hachette was increasing expenses (rebranding network identity, repairing all the premises, creating too many programs), and La Cinq had completely changed. Pascal Josèphe wished to focus on family and female audiences. Guillaume Durand was replaced at 8 PM in order to open up to the audience. The slots devoted to news were diminished; Patrice Duhamel also gave instructions to journalists to reduce coverage on international subjects and reports in favor of national subjects.

As a result, 22 new programmes were put on the air in April 1991, but they all stopped after a few weeks or months, without succeeding in significantly increasing its market share with the exception of motorsports, with 40% of market share, for Formula 1 snatched from TF1, the Paris-Dakar, the Grand Prix de Pau, the Walt Disney movie slots on Tuesday evenings, Twin Peaks and the news, which were successful. La Cinq only experienced success in urban areas.

Not only did its new programmes fail to attract new viewers, but these upheavals confused some of the faithful audience, to the point that the channel announced a rerun of Kojak to save the prime time access slot.

The audience remained stable, and the channel remained the third national channel in terms of rating; however, considering the new transmitters that relayed La Cinq's signal, the audience was reduced at this time. It was, in this case, around 11 to 14%. In addition, Lagardère did not succeed in relaxing the constraints imposed by the government and regulations, so it remained at the mercy of political power.

Notable former on-air staff

• Jean-Claude Bourret (main anchor; 1987–1992)
• Marie-Laure Augry (1991–1992; later worked at TF1 and France 3)
• Guillaume Durand (1987–1991; later worked at Europe 1)
• Béatrice Schönberg (1991–1992; later worked at France 2)