ON Fridays, at the relatively inauspicious hour of 11.15 p.m. on BBC 2, there is a new half hour BBC Northern Ireland music series called Beyond The Line.
Producer and anchorman is the award winning Radio Ulster presenter Mike Edgar. And it is no exaggeration to say that the very commissioning of the programmes, let alone the quality of the content and presentation, may come to represent a sea change in attitudes to contemporary music in Ireland in all sorts of quarters - the print and broadcast media, the often fraught relationships between Northern and Southern musicians and venues and not least of all the folks at home.
Edgar has quite simply seized the moment - generated by unprecedented Northern Irish pop successes over the past year - and on the back of his passion and professionalism, the BBC has taken a chance on the five part series: "I'll tell you this," says Edgar, "I'm really proud of the BBC for taking this decision. They're are not looking for ratings. I look at this as a classic example of public service broadcasting at its best, and I have to commend my bosses for that.
"In years gone by people might have said `Why put on local groups, we'll not get any ratings out of that - let's put the money into bringing Johnny Mathis over for a special or something like that. There have been television programmes in Ireland for years that have been guilty of ignoring first rate talent on their doorsteps and bringing in third rate English or American acts at great expense because some PR company, tells them they're going to be huge. It's all a lot of nonsense - I worked as a record plugger in London for two years, I should know!"
Edgar takes no prisoners, and not only do musicians North and South, famous and wanting to be, respect his integrity and seemingly boundless enthusiasm, but the industry knows he can be relied on not to, to coin a phrase, go over the line.
It is long standing rapport with established artists like Ash - on last night's programme, debuting a song so new it's untitled - and the Divine Comedy has guaranteed their availability, but the real breakthrough was his widely acclaimed handling of the Heineken Hot Press Awards show in January: "For me, presenting and producing. That show was very scary," he admits. "We had 300 musicians in a room who were all out to party, but they were also aware of what we were trying to do - which was (a) show the world there's a lot of talent here and (b) that there's an indigenous industry here that needs to be taken seriously. So everybody played their part and I honestly believe that a lot of people who watched that programme hadn't realised there was so much talent in: Ireland because we're conditioned to watch Top Of The Pops or Later With Jools and you could count the Irish bands on those programmes on one hand over the course of a year.
"I hope with Beyond The Line we can actually show the whole country more of that talent - and prove you can run a weekly series with three or four acts on each week, and with nobody miming, no videos, no wacky presenters and no fashion items."
Traditional music has been relatively well served by TV in recent years, but even an enthusiast like Edgar strains to recall the last decent contemporary music series - citing Seven Bands On The Up as a fairly low budget "summer filler" and dimly recalling BBC's Green Rock "whose first act was Horslips, and that should give you an idea how long ago that was!"
The man himself, though, has fond memories of appearing on The Old Grey Whistle Test with his old band Cruella De Ville and wants to recreate that late night, high cred ambience - even reviving terrifically kitsch 1970s editing techniques for his show - but with updated production values. "We've hired separate monitors and microphones for each act," he says. "That's where we've put the money, not into hospitality rooms, limos, hotels. How many programmes do you see with a band on a little pedestal in a corner? It doesn't do the band, the show or anybody any good.
"Our philosophy: here's top class sound gear, here's a great studio, here's eight to 10 minutes, get on with it and have a ball. And that's what it should be about. To be truthful I don't know if it will be a success, if people will watch it, but everybody involved in the music scene has been great about it. Everybody has a common goal: to make it work."
Beyond The Line is on BBC 2 on Fridays at 11.15 p.m.