Mark Cooper

Mark has worked for the BBC since January 1990. He was the Head of Music at BBC Studios for 20 years until 2019 when he stepped down from the role. However he continues to work with the BBC as an Executive Producer on special projects. Mark led the team that has created some of the BBC's most popular music documentaries and shows. He is the founding producer of Later... With Jools Holland (1992) and the annual Hootenanny show working with Jools Holland and Director Janet Fraser Crook. He has led on BBC TV's coverage of the Glastonbury Music Festival since it began in 1997 overseeing its growth on the BBC's digital channels and developing it as the main televisual event it is today. Between 2013 and 2018 Mark oversaw the TV coverage of The Proms, curating both the David Bowie and Stax Proms and was executive producer on a number of classical and dance films from Pappano's Classical Voices (2015) to Good Swan, Bad Swan: Dancing Swan Lake (2014) with Tamara Rojo. Producing multiple hours of documentaries on some of the biggest names in music, he has also been responsible for series that explore musical origins like Reginald D Hunter's Songs of the South (2015) as well as leading the strands Britannia, which contains 25 films on the evolution of music genres in the UK, The Joy Of Abba, Easy Listening and Country and America - Rock & Roll, Blues and Tap. He's also executive produced countless special episodes of Top of the Pops (1964) including the "Story of..." episodes. Mark began his career as a music journalist with Q, No 1, Mojo, Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Record Mirror, where his first review was of the The Sex Pistols' last gig at Winterland, San Francisco in 1978. From print journalism, he moved into Public Relations and began working for Virgin and Polygram, before working on his first TV show, Wired (1988) for Initial and Channel 4 in 1988.