YNOT EUROPE – A British entrepreneur who made his fortune in skin mags and adult premium television channels has bought UK free-TV operation Channel Five from RTL Group, a division of Germany’s Bertelsmann. The deal reportedly is worth 125 million euros (US$162 million).

Richard Desmond’s Northern & Shell owns Express Newspapers (Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star), OK! and New! magazines, and Portland TV, which is the parent company of adult pay-TV channels Television X, Red Hot TV and others. In 2009 Desmond was ranked 44th on the Sunday Times’ list of the wealthiest people in Britain, with a net worth estimated at £950 million.

According to the Guardian newspaper, British regulators are not worried Desmond may turn Five into another adult extravaganza because British laws preclude cross-promotion of media and because Five’s broadcasting license is specific about the materials the operation may offer. The license is equally clear in requiring the channel to produce and air a certain amount of public-service programming, particularly informational and educational shows, and those are the materials that have kept Five’s operating costs in the red for the past several years. Advertisers — from the same pool that sustain the government-supported BBC, plus ITV and Channel Four — have been growing scarcer for Five, the mainstays of which to date have been reruns of American series like “CSI” and “Grey’s Anatomy.”

According to the Guardian, there is some concern Desmond may wish to pull the same turnaround strategy he employed with OK!. After cutting the magazine’s expenses to the bone, Desmond ran the publication at a loss for six years while transforming it into a profitable celebrity gossip rag. Reportedly regulators do not wish to see Desmond turn Five into a veritable sea of televised celebrity tabloid fodder, although undoubtedly that would be a profitable move.

According to The New York Times, Five’s share of the British audience currently hovers at around five percent.