Cowey, who was a recent judge on ITV reality show 'Soapstar Superstar' as well as running 'TOTP' ffrom 1997 to 2003, admitted in The Guardian today that he is developing a rival for the corporation's long-standing show 'Top of the Pops'.
"Music television has become one of those things that is easy to make badly. I want to do for music television what the Premier League did for football," he said.
Cowey also accused the BBC of neglecting its music show, which in July was switched from Friday night on BBC One to Sunday nights on BBC Two, resulting in more than a million viewers, or half of its audience, abandoning the show.
Since its BBC Two debut in July, 'Top of the Pops' ratings plummeted to an all-time low of 1.1m viewers, down from 2.4m on BBC One a month earlier.
Cowey said: "They seem determined to treat music as an offshoot of light entertainment rather than a genre in its own right."
Corporation bosses made the decision to move the show from its primetime Friday night slot last November, after ratings slipped to an average of 2.4m.
In its heyday in the 1970s, 'Top of the Pops' attracted audiences of more than 10m, hitting a peak of 19m viewers for a Thursday night show in 1979.
The new ITV music offering is likely to be a mix between ITV Saturday morning show 'CD:UK' and BBC Two's 'Later with Jools Holland', which is pitched at an older audience.
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