As Richard and Judy prepare to heave their sofa from Channel 4 over to cable mainstay UK TV (and no doubt a massively reduced number of viewers to buy all those Book Club tomes), Sir Terry of Wogan is possibly being groomed to gamely step into the fray.
The veteran broadcaster it seems has been recording a trial of a new general knowledge game show that could be a contender to occupy the 5pm Monday to Friday slot on C4 once Mr and Mrs Finnegan-Madely get the removal men in. There’s also the notion that a format could be found for ever popular Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond to pilot in the same slot.
But, but, but… My bottom lip is wobbling alarmingly at the notion of Sir Terry popping up on the airwaves of a channel that isn’t the BBC. It just isn’t right, I tell you. Wogan is as much a part of the fabric of the BBC as the ravens are at the Tower of London. I have horrible visions of Television Centre crumbling to the ground as soon as he steps out of the building and jumps into a cab over to Channel 4.
Yes, I know Sir Terry has ventured beyond the walls of the Reithian fortress in the past, most recently with Five’s short-lived Terry and Gaby, but that wasn’t exactly a huge success, was it? Although I am sure he’ll want to forget his own BBC daytime venture of many a moon ago, Wogan’s Web, which should have been elevated to cult status by now.
Wogan is still one of my own personal broadcasting Gods, but dipping a toe into the waters of Channel 4 daytime, Noel Edmonds stylee, is frankly below him. I know change is good, but really now, this is too much.
For Channel 4 however, this key 5pm weekday slot has become a thorny problem, with Richard and Judy losing viewers at a rate of knots, probably not helped by the recent phone line scandals (which, we appreciate, was not down to the presenters). And I don’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings, but if the broadcaster is lining up Richard Hammond to have a go too, they might want to learn the lesson from his previous foray into the daytime arena at ITV. The appropriately monikered 5 O’clock Show hardly set the world alight during its brief residency. Popular he might be mucking about with cars, but that doesn’t automatically translate into ratings gold elsewhere.
From what I saw of it, Wogan's Channel 5 show was great.
But his recent UKTV shows have only served as a reminder of how useless he really is as a TV presenter: nothing worth saying and taking forever to not say it. I don't even like him on Eurovision!