The Hits will become 4Music in August

The Hits is to be renamed as 4Music and relaunched with more long-form shows from August 15.

The rebranded channel will feature Channel 4-led series such as The Sunday Night Project, Star Stories, Live From Abbey Road, 4Music Presents and Ibiza Rocks.

A statement said the changes would also bring Channel 4 presenters such as Alexa Chung, Nick Grimshaw, Miquita Oliver and Steve Jones to The Hits.

Channel 4 and Bauer Media, which co-own The Hits, introduced the 4Music name to the channel with a Sunday night block earlier this year.

David Young, programming director of The Hits operator Box Television, said: "We already have the number one music channel in the UK and now we're going to take all the best bits of our music video content and combine them with a refined schedule of quality long-form music and music-based entertainment programming."

Channel 4 head of music Neil McCallum added: "We're particularly excited about making our music programming even more accessible and looking forward to bringing new audiences to our diverse range of music entertainment shows and live events."

The relaunched channel will air coverage of the V Festival on its first weekend, August 16 and 17, and later in the summer cover Bestival, headlined by Amy Winehouse.