Worth Watching: "Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen" and "Florence + the Machine at the Proms"

It's your Worth Watching briefing.

Welcome to Worth Watching.

In a sign of how much viewing habits are changing, Channel 4 this week announced a new gameshow (with an £100,000 cash prize) … that won’t air on television.

Instead, £20k Play will air on their YouTube channel (and on the Channel 4 website), as part of their Channel 4.0 youth strand.

It makes sense for broadcasters to be following where their audiences are, with CBBC increasing the number of shows in recent years that aren’t even shown on their linear channel. A challenge is whether they are able to do this fast enough, as live television viewing by younger viewers continues to decline.

I wrote about this recently for Broadcast Magazine.

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Last week, this newsletter mentioned what broadcasters have planned for the US Election. We have finally had details of what ITV have in the works.

• Tom Bradby will be anchor and will host from Washington DC (in 2020, I mistakingly tweeted that Tom Brady would host, which raised eyebrows).

• US correspondent Robert Moore will be covering his sixth US election, with Anushka Asthana analysing the data as soon as they come in.

• Like Channel 4, ITV will be picking up CNN coverage throughout the night.

• Also a sentence that a decade ago I would have never believed: "Sarah Palin will stay with ITV as anticipation builds into the morning."

The BBC this week announced more details of their coverage too…

• Caitríona Perry and Sumi Somaskanda, who host the Washington DC based anchors on the BBC News Channel, will be the main anchors.

• Clive Myrie will host News at Ten from Washington that night and then will present coverage of the first few hours.

• Christian Fraser will be crunching the data, Marianna Spring will be looking at social media, whilst Sarah Smith and Gary O’Donoghue will be with the Presidential candidates.

• Radio 4 and 5Live will form joint overnight radio coverage, hosted by Nuala McGovern and Ros Atkins.

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FIVE SHOWS WORTH WATCHING THIS WEEK

Florence + The Machines at the Proms (BBC iPlayer) - Any music sounds better with an orchestra, but Florence + The Machine with an 80 piece orchestra is another level. Honestly. Recorded at the BBC Proms earlier this year, this 90 minute special features memorable performances of ‘Dog Days are Over’ and ‘You’ve Got The Love’.

If you look closely, you’ll see Anna Lapwood, the often viral TikTok organ player. And yes, this is probably the most 2024 sentence I could have written.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (Disney+, out today) - Sticking with music, Disney+ have a new documentary on The Boss and his band.

Not only does the film delve into the band’s enduring staying power (they have been together since 1972, and many of the band members are now in their seventies), it also looks at how they prepare for life on the road. I enjoyed learning the details of how they prepare, such as learning that after weeks in the studio, they relocate to rehearse in an empty stadium, just to work out the staging and the pacing of their performance.

It is a doc for the fans, but it is well crafted, and Bruce’s charisma lifts the film from being just a typical music documentary.

I was at a screening of this film with my Dad last Friday, with Bruce Springsteen in the audience. As a kid, we both listened to Springsteen’s albums on loop every family holiday, driving down the South Coast (regularly stuck in traffic.) Being there felt like a full circle moment.

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