The first regular music show on BBC TV in over a decade will start from next month, hosted by Radio 1 DJ and podcaster Greg James and BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter Ashley Charles (a.k.a. A.Dot).
Sounds Like Friday Night will become the British broadcaster’s first primetime music programme since Top of the Pops officially ended on 30 July 2006. BBC said the show will feature “the hottest bands and artists in the world”, alongside interviews and sketches, with a special guest in the studio every week.
Top of the Pops ran for 42 years, first airing on New Year’s Day 1964, but was cancelled after average viewing figures fell to below 1.5million.
BBC said Sounds Like Friday Night has been in development since 2014 and will be produced by Fulwell 73, the company behind James Corden’s success in the US with Carpool Karaoke.
Unlike Top of the Pops, which was cancelled whilst video streaming service YouTube was in its infancy, the BBC’s new programme will be competing against online streaming services for viewing figures, as well as the same competition from mainstream music channels such as MTV that led to the show’s cancellation. YouTube claims to have over 400 hours of content uploaded every minute and popular US music video streaming service Vevo has 14.6million subscribers.
Later… With Jools Holland will celebrate 25 years on BBC Two this year, but pubic broadcaster Channel 4’s last regular music and chat show, T4’s Popworld, presented by Miquita Oliver and Simon Amstell before Alex Zane and Alexa Chung took over, lasted just seven years with its last episode airing in July 2007.