Ben Frow to step back from 5 next summer after 14 years in charge
Ben Frow will step back from the day-to-day running of British network 5 in summer 2027 after 14 years in charge.
Deadline revealed the plan in an exclusive published on 14 October. Frow is chief content officer at Paramount UK, the executive in charge of commissioning, meaning choosing which programmes are ordered, renewed or ended. His departure ends one of the longest spells at the top of a UK television network.
He will leave the daily job next summer but remain employed by Skydance until the end of 2027. That timetable gives the owner several months to manage the handover after he steps back. 5 sits inside the Skydance empire headed by David Ellison.
Frow joined the network in 2012, when it was still called Channel 5 and owned by businessman Richard Desmond. Fourteen years later, he is the network's longest-serving content chief. The period covers a change of owner, a change of name and a large expansion of streaming.
The network was known as Channel 5 until March 2025, when it rebranded to 5. The shorter name now covers the broadcast channel. It remains a UK-wide network, the fifth terrestrial service that viewers find in the same part of the listings they have always used.
In August 2025, Frow spoke about the channel's future at the Edinburgh TV Festival, the annual industry gathering where British broadcasters discuss plans for the year ahead. He told delegates that 5 would not be sold, Deadline reported at the time. That comment was made more than a year before this departure plan was reported.
What makes this stand out is the human scale behind a scheduling job. A content chief signs off writers' rooms that work for months and production teams that grow around a returning series. Orders keep people employed. Renewals keep stories going. Cancellations, meaning a decision not to order more episodes, stop them.
A 14-year run means many of those decisions were made by the same person. For viewers, the change will not be visible until next summer. For the staff who make and schedule the programmes, the countdown to a new boss has started.
