Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BBC festival plugs Glastonbury gap...
THE BBC aims to fill the gap when Glastonbury takes a break next year with a one-off giant festival that will air across TV and radio.
The Biggest Weekend will take in four sites in four nations over four days, with more than 175,000 tickets available to the public.
It is understood BBC bosses have already begun talks with big-name acts to headline. They will come from many different genres to appeal to a wide section of music fans.
The shows will take place in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland across the May bank holiday weekend.
Bob Shennan, director of BBC Radio and Music tells Square Eyes: “BBC Music has a strong history of bringing the nation together for some special moments and this is the biggest single music event ever attempted by the
BBC. We will be celebrating diversity of music from four different corners of Britain, bringing the best UK music to the world and the best global music to the UK.”
The BBC will also be keen to make the event inclusive to many different types of people, in contrast with the traditionally left-leaning Glasto crowd which hailed Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on stage this summer.
And there are good reasons for the BBC to try such a giant music festival and broadcast it across its platforms.
The corporation normally spends heavily on TV and radio coverage of Glastonbury and it gets a big response. This year it achieved record viewing figures on TV and online. Almost 21 million people watched the TV coverage for at least three minutes, an increase of 12% on 2016.
BBC Two’s Sunday evening programme, which featured Ed Sheeran’s headline set, achieved a record average audience for a Glastonbury programme of 2.9 million and had a record one-minute peak of 4.1 million viewers. Its 6pm programme with Barry Gibb had a peak audience of 3.7 million.
And many millions more watched coverage on iplayer throughout the weekend and after the event.
Glastonbury is taking a year off so that the farm, the village and the festival team get a 12-month break, and to prevent excessive damage to the site at Worthy Farm.