Fuller plans Now Music TV series

Fuller's 19 Entertainment represents Will Young and the Beckhams

American Idol creator Simon Fuller is planning to make a TV show based on the popular Now That's What I Call Music compilation albums.

Fuller, who started out managing Annie Lennox and the Spice Girls, owns the global TV rights to the music brand.

"This show will be nothing like American Idol," he said. "It will be a new take on music programming."

It is expected that the programme will create its own "interactive" chart and promote unsigned or up-and-coming acts.

"A lot of people are buying Now as their guide to what is happening in the music world over the last few months," Bob Mercer, CEO of the brand, told Billboard magazine.

"The intent is to take that brand and that trust in that brand and establish it as a TV show with the same elements."

He suggested the show would feature performances by artists whose songs appeared on the compilations, whether through concert footage or in-studio appearances.

'No Idol link'

The Now albums are released three times a year in the UK

"We'll probably form our own pop chart so the public can be involved," he added.

Viewers will also be able to upload their own videos to the show's website, in an attempt to find the "next Now artist".

However, Fuller maintained the show "definitely won't be a spinoff" of American Idol.

The programme, which is still in the early planning stages, has yet to receive a title.

It is not yet known whether it would be shown in the UK, which has been bereft of a mainstream chart show since the demise of Top of the Pops and CD:UK in 2006.

The Now series, which collects together 40 or so of the most recent chart hits, was born in the UK in 1983.

It now has spin-offs in more than 20 countries, including Mexico, New Zealand, Argentina and the Czech Republic.

The most recent UK album - Now 71 - features numbers ones from Katy Perry, Girls Aloud and Coldplay.