Sure, 2006 saw no ladies of pop royalty snog each other on stage. Nor were there any notable ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ live on American telly. But hell, there were some major talking points about music on TV.
First and definitely foremost, in Ireland we now have Channel 6, which hosts Pop Scene and Night Shift. Which is also confusingly on during the day – but no matter, because there is at last a regular outlet for Irish videos.
Other good things have been happening, too. Dane Fanning’s often excellent Last Broadcast barrels along, and there was an entertaining live special from The Electric Picnic, which really worked. In the UK, Top Of The Pops’ last-ever show was aired on July 30, after a 42-year run. No longer will we spend hungover Sundays plonked in front of the box watching pop acts become progressively more desperate and skirts get ever shorter, and putting up with the super-smiley host in order to watch the token indie band mime and perhaps do something ever so slightly subversive. Still, Jools Holland has been keeping the flag flying, as ever, for music with aspirations to real quality – and a damned good job he's doing too.
Meanwhile, ask our cousins across the Atlantic and they’ll tell you the way to discover new music is watch Grey’s Anatomy, which has succeeded The OC in launching Irish acts Stateside. This year, The Chalets (pictured), Foy Vance, Moloko, Fionn Regan, Vega 4 and Damien Rice all featured on the show’s soundtrack, and when ‘Chasing Cars’ by Snow Patrol helped round off Season Two, the band subsequently sold 700,000 tracks via iTunes.
If you need any more proof that the conventional music programme is threatened, just a click away is the Pandora's Box that is YouTube, which came to the fore this year. Containing everything from Oxegen clips to U2’s The Godfather parody, it may have changed the landscape of broadcasting already – but my prediction is that its impact will become fully apparent in 2007…