Music on television just does not work. If you ask around in TV circles, this is what people say. It is more than five years since Top of the Pops, CD:UK and Popworld all disappeared, two-and-a-half years since the BBC axed youth strand Switch, and six months since T4 shut its doors. Simon Cowell, no stranger to getting ideas away, said in 2011 that a Top of the Pops-style show restricted to the UK was simply "not cost effective", adding ominously that "to do it properly it would need to be bigger than one country". His plans for such a show were, he said, "for a year down the line" – two years on, there is nothing. Last year, confirming that he would not be bringing Top of the Pops back to BBC3, station controller Zai Bennett told the Edinburgh international television festival that "our audience don't consume music like that any more", adding: "Music [on television] gets niche very quickly."

In the hands of the BBC, this certainly seems to be the case. There is Later ... With Jools Holland – brilliantly eclectic, say its cheerleaders, although this claim falters when you compare its weekly guestlist to what is happening in the Top 10. At the other extreme, Friday Download is so reliant on teenpop that, while watching it, one briefly feels not just as if punk never happened, but as if guitars themselves had never been invented. And unfortunately for the show, tucked away on CBBC, it doesn't pack the ratings punch to regularly secure big-name artists such as One Direction.

Elsewhere on TV there is plentiful festival coverage, countless lowest-common-denominator video channels, a fair number of TV talent shows and an abundance of cult programming on Sky Arts and BBC4. That seems like a lot of music, but if you narrow this down to original programming that reflects or influences the Top 10 single and album charts, and features acts performing their own songs properly rather than in a "stripped-down setting", there is almost nothing.

Bastille, who scored a No 1 album earlier this year, built up an obsessive fanbase through touring and nurturing fans online, but frontman Dan Smith recalls that while his first TV exposure was on last year's BBC3 Reading festival coverage (only an acoustic set, and only useful if you are the sort of band that plays festivals), their two most important early TV appearances were on Soccer AM and Saturday Kitchen. "It seems bizarre that the main platforms for up-and-coming bands are a football show and a cookery show," he says. "It's quite a sad indictment that there's a show for cooking and a show for football, but not one for music."

The fact is that if you are not big enough for The X Factor but are too big for a typical introducing slot – if you are part of pop's squeezed middle – it is hard to get in front of people. "The statistics prove that artists need to be in front of Joe Bloggs in the street, not just music obsessives who watch Jools Holland or search out music on the internet," says one record-label plugger, whose job is to find performance slots for the label's artists. Online documentaries commissioned by the likes of Vice are unarguably excellent, but they are not much use when, say, Paloma Faith has a new single out. "I always think of my friends," the plugger explains. "They buy a lot of music but they aren't looking for it – basically, it has to hit them in the face."

Channel 4 certainly seems to disagree with the "music doesn't work" mantra. The station recently took the unusual step of revealing a portion of its commissioning process, announcing that two different shortlisted pilots for a new, regular music show would both be broadcast.

The first, a rowdy, LOL-based and Rizzle Kicks-fronted show called Smells Like Friday Night, was aired with little fanfare last month at 11.35pm; there were some flashes of potential but it was, in most respects, quite poor. The second pilot, a watchable, but frankly bizarre affair called That Music Show, fronted by Nick Grimshaw, airs next week. It is part panel show, part pop quiz, which panders to multiple demographics with a "battle of the years" format that pits 1995 stars Heather Small and Rick Witter against 2005 notables such as Sharleen Spiteri and Maggot from Goldie Lookin Chain. There are also performances from Primal Scream and a trained ferret.

Neither of these Channel 4 pilots, you will note, are straight music shows: they are using music as an excuse to support what Channel 4 clearly hopes will be a new The Word, or a new TFI Friday. "Music commissioning at Channel 4 was merged with a newly created department called Formats," says one development executive. "And this tells you a lot about how Channel 4 sees the future of music on the channel as being very format driven – not straight back-to-back performances."

Certainly, the still-quite-vocal "Bring Back TOTP" brigade are on to a loser if they think a straightforward chart show has a role on television in 2013. The narrative a chart countdown once provided has less impact in the era of a constantly updating iTunes Top 200 and, for most viewers, Top of the Pops itself is a dated and tarnished brand. But a successful new music show would still have to strike the right balance between format and content.

"A straight-up 'Jools Holland for young people' probably won't work," says Radio 1's Greg James, who last year hosted the pilot of a BBC show called The Hit Machine, and next week will pilot another potential music format for the BBC. "Equally, it can't just descend into a terrible version of Celebrity Juice with Biffy Clyro getting their chests waxed as the wacky host farts in the drummer's face to try to put him off. If it's too niche, people will be scared by it, but if it's too 'Oh hi, Little Mix, I love your nails' then it loses credibility."

It may seem absurd to launch a music show for people who aren't music obsessives, but when CD:UK relaunched in 2005 it modelled itself on Top Gear, a motoring show that had successfully repositioned itself as something that would be entertaining even if you didn't know anything about cars. CD:UK effectively became Pop Gear. It didn't quite work at the time, but might it work in 2013?

One common argument is that in the internet age, music fans don't need TV, but it is curious that nobody is calling for the abolition of all TV news programming simply because it is possible, if one desires, to type "Syria latest" into Google. It is also noteworthy that SB.TV, the wildly successful urban music site that delivers huge quantities of quality video, recently introduced scheduled programming. Sense of event – and the sense of shared experience – is still a massive pull, and having a phone in your hand makes some televisual experiences more compelling.

"The importance of scheduling is about creating spaces to which individuals feel they can belong and have ownership over," says SB.TV founder Jamal Edwards. "For young people, events give a sense of urgency and purpose, but what is important to me is that you feel like you own the event rather than it being a passive experience. Scheduling for me is about creating an ecosystem in which people can explore their individuality."

Edwards, too, has been talking with various commissioners about bringing his vision to TV; more than once, though, he has been told that music is too niche. He is unimpressed with this evaluation. "I don't believe you can define culture from behind a desk – it is disrespectful and shortsighted," he says. "It's sad really because what [commissioners] define as niche is what I would say is culturally relevant; niche is the new pop culture and the sooner commissioners realise that, the sooner we will have some quality back on our screens."

Edwards's ideas are great but they are not, perhaps, the mainstream chart-based show that will rescue Paloma Faith from omelette hell. Nonetheless, Edwards, too, recalls CD:UK fondly. "It filled a void, and it was a desirable destination. I think TV shows are like people – it's about being a good person not a perfect person. People love to love you for your imperfections. Commissioners are trying to make perfect shows, it is not possible. Man, I miss CD:UK."

Compared with the sort of tricky evening slot that eventually decimated Top of the Pops, CD:UK's original 11.30am Saturday timeslot was perfect: the show's core audience didn't have to compete with their parents wanting to watch Corrie, but nor were they out doing what young people do at night. Instead, they were slumped in front of the TV recovering from the previous night's young people's doings. And despite relatively modest ratings, A-list megastars still wanted to appear, because they knew – in the words of our TV plugger friend – that they would hit their target audience in the face.

Channel 4's commitment to making something work is encouraging. But even if That Music Show – the better of the two pilots – does make it to a full series, its late-night timeslot and backward-looking bookings mean it is not as inclusive or useful as a full music show could and should be. It may be naive to think something like CD:UK could once again make Saturday morning music TV relevant, and there are harsh modern realities to be negotiated: some channels require a high-profile technology partner to fund a show in its entirety before they will consider giving it airtime, for example, and a music show is expensive to make – certainly more expensive than the Murder, She Wrote reruns and the low-budget farming show currently filling ITV's Saturday mornings.

Still, James is not alone when he insists that music on TV has a future. "'People don't watch music TV' is just something TV executives say to defend the fact that they can't be arsed to commission anything, or are too scared to launch something that turns out to be a turkey," he says. "'People don't watch shit TV' is what they mean. If you make something good, people will watch it. Make something good."