Thursday, December 21, 2017

Stocking Filler 1

Yes, I've succumbed. But I've held off longer than most bits of BBC News. Here's a short-ish series of space-filling posts, suggesting gifts for my favourite people.

Charlotte Moore - a nicely-wrapped and brilliant 16-34 impresario.

It's been a good year in general for the BBC's Uber TV Controller - but there's little movement on the 16-34 audience front. Popular music remains a problem. BBC Music's current strategy seems to be 'tent-pole' events, buoyed by the huge audience for the One Love concert back in June. But the one-singer one-show specials, which started with Adele back in 2015, have run their course. U2's special, at 9pm on BBC1 on Tuesday, was watched by an average of just 1.42m - a 7.4% share.

The show, featuring a stadium band confined in the 5,000 sq ft of Abbey Road 1 (owned by U2's record company), also had too much talking, and searching questions from hostess Cat Deeley ("Do you pack your own suitcases ?").

The other big investment, hoping that the magic of James Corden's production company can breathe life into the corpse of Top of the Pops, continues in the New Year, with a second run of Sounds Like Friday Night, despite first series audiences averaging below 2m.

The problem is that there is little to welcome under-30s to BBC1 and BBC2 at the start of the evening. On BBC1 and 2 between 5pm and 7pm, one of the four hours is filled with news, and, most evenings, another hour and a bit is filled with Pointless/Eggheads. Popular culture is tangentially reflected, in the annual run of Strictly Takes Tow, featuring craze dances from the 50s like the Cha-Cha-Cha and Rumba.  The One Show is simply not cool, a day-glo version of the old Tonight, with obvious and painful plug interviews.

This is the space where, at the birth of modern pop, BBC and ITV ran shows like 6.5 Special, Ready Steady Go, The Beat Room, and later How It Is, DEF II, The Tube and more. Way back, Crackerjack had guest bands every Friday night, and Peter Glaze and Leslie Crowther mangling current pop hits. This ought to be the play space for a new show-runner, desperately needed on Charlotte's team.




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