There are launches, soft launches and deliberately comprehensive exercises in expectation-lowering. Tonight's launch of Channel 5's OK! TV fell into the last category. The show it replaced, the justifiably maligned Live From Studio Five, was an inept mishmash that seemed to prove conclusively Channel 5 could not be trusted with another daily light entertainment show.

To make matters worse, the original host chose to extract herself from the show last week: Denise van Outen – narrator of The Only Way Is Essex and star of the forgotten 1999 Abba tribute album ABBAmania – apparently decided that OK! TV would be an unconscionable blot on her CV. There may have been worse portents of quality than this, but not many.

The show itself exists to answer a question that nobody has ever asked: what would OK! magazine be like if it was a Channel 5 television programme scheduled against One Man and His Campervan?

It turns out that the answer is a remedial-level One Show or, to be more precise, Live From Studio Five. Yes, there are a few differences between the old show and the new – the set is a different colour, for one. But it even has the same host as its predecessor, Kate Walsh.

Walsh got the job only three days ago, but she did the best with what she was given. This is either because she's a consummate professional, or because she's basically hosting the exact same show as she was a fortnight ago. It's hard to tell.

Episode one was loaded with plenty of current affairs. This included the news that Helena Bonham Carter wore matching shoes to the Baftas and that Kate Middleton apparently might want to buy a new dress quite soon. Elsewhere Louis Walsh got to talk about his holiday (Miami, he read lots of books) and Jenson Button presented a report about Valentine's Day while doing a fairly convincing impression of a man awaiting the sweet release of death.

Obviously a teatime television show based on a celebrity magazine will never be Newsnight, but even judged against its peers, OK! TV is colossally vapid.

It is hard to know who it is aimed at. Actual people do not seem quite lowest common denominator enough. Animals? Sock puppets? Piles of dust? Either way, it doesn't bode well for Richard Desmond's next attempt to synergise his properties.

Things might improve with time. If they don't, Channel 5 should consider a name change for the show. It might be called OK! TV, but right now it barely qualifies as either.

• This article was amended on 16 February 2011. The original said OK! TV counted towards Channel 5's news quota. This is incorrect.