Media Headliner: Five's 'iron lady' unveils her vision of the future.(Channel 5 Broadcasting Ltd's Lisa Opie )

Bubbly, but single-minded, five's Lisa Opie is determined to get the station punching above its weight, Alasdair Reid writes.

If we didn't know any better, we might find it easy to assume Lisa Opie has a ruthless streak that verges on megalomania. She joined five almost a year ago - and she'd hardly been in the broadcaster's Covent Garden offices more than a few minutes before the body count began to rise.

The defenestrations (metaphorically speaking) have continued at a steady pace ever since, and October's events are arguably the most significant yet. At the start of the month, five's executive director of marketing, Jane Scott, left without another job to go to. Last week, Opie announced she was to manage the marketing function, adding this to her continuing programming responsibilities.

A number of rather mischievous observers were moved to speculate over who might be next. Just how twitchy should Opie's boss, five's chief executive, Jane Lighting, be feeling right now?

Not at all is the simple answer. Lighting and Opie, insiders say, if not quite joined at the hip are firm friends, long-standing colleagues going back to their Flextech days (Opie became the director of programming in 1998, Lighting became the managing director and her boss in 1999, moving to five in 2003), and close allies.

And it's Lighting who is undoubtedly steering this latest restructure, because it closely mirrors the way things were structured when they worked together at Flextech.

As Opie herself comments: 'In a crowded marketplace, you need to be clear about your proposition and your brand, and that's not just about your advertising and your idents, it's also about your programmes and your whole on-air identity, too. Bringing the two together is the logical thing to do.'