Little Bit of British Culture gone Forever

labrat

hot on the heels of love
Hazi Fantasi miming b*ttom sex to Shiny Shiny
Darryl Pandy sequinned up rolling on the floor (ushering in House) with Love Can't Turn Around
All About Eve fluffing it
Jah Wobble sitting on a chair (seemed revolutionary at the time) to P.I.L's Death Disco
Cockney Rejects "youthful exhuberance"


goodbye Top of the Pops..
 

Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
A sad example of what happens to a perfectly decent programme when idiots decide to fuck with the formula.

If TOTP had stayed with its original remit - to show what was selling in the charts that particular week, irrespective of genre or "coolness" - it would have remained a strong and successful programme.

Even when the focus of the singles chart changed from actual sales to major record company marketing priorities, they could have adapted with the changing market.

The end result was that the BBC's Cool Police thought they knew best, and people tuning into the show were bewildered and tuned straight out again because they had no specific idea of what it was supposed to be about - unlike programmes such as CD:UK which did stick to the chart, and you knew what you were getting when you watched it.
 

smn

Well-known member
808 State and The Stone Roses on in the same week, way back when I was still in school. A good memory that...
 

dHarry

Well-known member
The Jam, The Specials, The Beat, Soft Cell, Associates, Fun Boy 3, ABC, Blondie, Imagination, Smiths, New Order, Whistle, Killing Joke, The Cure, Siouxsie, Altern 8, 808 State, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays...

:D :(
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
The thing is its almost like they wanted to kill it, shifting it to a gash time slot on a Sunday night, giving it the worst possible presenters... even if they needed to radically change the format (and as Marcello says, that is not a given) the IP of the brand name "Top of the Pops" must be worthy of some serious effort. This is the BBC at their most pathetic and half-arsed.
 

mms

sometimes
me and my sister used to get especially dressed up in disco clothes for totp when we were little, infact the first time i saw my auntie she was on this programme in the crowd, she lived in london we lived in cornwall and she didn't come down often.

i think all the wrong decisions killed off the show, but then again music is everywhere, mtv, mobiles phones, computers its pretty much become this strange anomaly, but it's all its own doing.

What do you think the perogatives of up and coming bands will be now? you didn't get paid to do it, it costs bands a bit to appear live, while a t-mobile gig (basically an advertisment for their product) will earn a band £50,000 for nothing but playing live for a bit. ad companies are setting up fake bands to sell products, might even see myspace etc moving into digital releases etc.. esp as the rules are anything on myspace becomes property of myspace.
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
mms said:
me and my sister used to get especially dressed up in disco clothes for totp when we were little, infact the first time i saw my auntie she was on this programme in the crowd, she lived in london we lived in cornwall and she didn't come down often.

i think all the wrong decisions killed off the show, but then again music is everywhere, mtv, mobiles phones, computers its pretty much become this strange anomaly, but it's all its own doing.

What do you think the perogatives of up and coming bands will be now? you didn't get paid to do it, it costs bands a bit to appear live, while a t-mobile gig (basically an advertisment for their product) will earn a band £50,000 for nothing but playing live for a bit. ad companies are setting up fake bands to sell products, might even see myspace etc moving into digital releases etc.. esp as the rules are anything on myspace becomes property of myspace.

That stuff about myspace property rights has been refuted.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
I really think TOTP had become an exercise in nostalgia, and I think this thread demonstrates that. The 5-15 audience is amply satisfied by The Hits / TMF / MTV which more than delivers on the "what's selling now" proposition; TOTP is pretty much irrelevant. If I'd have been in the meeting, I'd have voted to kill it too - though I'd have argued for a TOTP-branded web channel.
 

bassnation

the abyss
2stepfan said:
I really think TOTP had become an exercise in nostalgia, and I think this thread demonstrates that. The 5-15 audience is amply satisfied by The Hits / TMF / MTV which more than delivers on the "what's selling now" proposition; TOTP is pretty much irrelevant. If I'd have been in the meeting, I'd have voted to kill it too - though I'd have argued for a TOTP-branded web channel.

but if thats the case, why do formats like cd-uk still get loads of viewers when essentially they are doing a straight run-down of the charts? surely your argument points to them messing with a perfectly good format as being the real reason for its downfall.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
bassnation said:
but if thats the case, why do formats like cd-uk still get loads of viewers when essentially they are doing a straight run-down of the charts?
You don't think CD:UK is under pressure as well? It still turns a profit in the Saturday morning slot and the tween / teen market is one of the few on offer at that time, but the shrinking audience and splintering media landscape that afflicts TOTP also affects CD:UK. It's all about multichannel to reach that audience now so expect something like a MySpace / CD:UK cross over show to hit us in the next 18 months.

Fuck, I should be dusting off the business plans from 1995...

bassnation said:
surely your argument points to them messing with a perfectly good format as being the real reason for its downfall.
I unfashionably believe that their format refreshment worked fairly well especially when you look at the dips and rises in the viewing figures. Good correlation with each refresh. But the changes in demography were relentless.
 

bassnation

the abyss
2stepfan said:
I unfashionably believe that their format refreshment worked fairly well especially when you look at the dips and rises in the viewing figures. Good correlation with each refresh. But the changes in demography were relentless.

ok fair enough. the few times i tuned in after the revamp, it made me feel like my dad. bemusement at the music and because they seemed to have roped in children to present it. i'll get back to me pipe and slippers.

it is sad though, a milestone in the world changing around us. just got to keep keeping on with however it develops.
 

Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
All we need now is to find that Russell T Davies figure who will triumphantly resuscitate the programme and make everybody want to watch it. Any volunteers?
 

bassnation

the abyss
Rachel Verinder said:
All we need now is to find that Russell T Davies figure who will triumphantly resuscitate the programme and make everybody want to watch it. Any volunteers?

not to take this discussion wildly off-topic but i feel russell t davies has fucked up the 2nd series - what the hell is the doctor doing snogging various people through history? its just not right.

granted, davies was scathing about old skool fans "percieving the doctors asexuality as a reflection of themselves" but as far as i'm concerned its turning into a fucking soap, which is just silly. its no longer required viewing of a saturday night.

in addition, the format of hour long stories in one episode seems suited to attention deficit disorder sufferers - and that takes us right back to the multi-channel bite-sized culture with an attention span of a gnat. i watched genesis of the daleks on dvd recently and it was a pleasure to view a long drawn-out well construcuted story that actually engages your brain.

cheers

"disgusted" of tonbridge wells
 
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Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
The major two problems with the current Doctor Who series:

(a) in terms of structure, as Bassnation pointed out, it is turning into Quantum Leap.
(b) I cannot stand David Tennant.
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
i blame that bastard Tim Cash. Surely the most useless presenter in the history of British TV.
 

stelfox

Beast of Burden
That's been a key problem for TOTP, the recruitment of these kind of weird young TV people, like Fearne Cotton, Tim Kash etc. It was better when they used Radio 1 DJs who had some kind of connection to music. I did like Reggie a lot, though.
 
bassnation said:
ok fair enough. the few times i tuned in after the revamp, it made me feel like my dad. bemusement at the music and because they seemed to have roped in children to present it. i'll get back to me pipe and slippers.

My dad always watched TOTP, so did my mum. it was something the whole family watched together on a Thursday night, followed by Tomorrow's World and all that. we all had opinions. we were all interested in pop music, and TOTP was the only place you could see the groups perform each week. we even had discussions about who was our favourite member of Legs & co. Then, every friday morning there would be big discussions/arguments in school about what we liked and hated etc.

now i'm a dad and have never watched TOTP in the last 10 years (at least). neither does my wife, neither do my kids. none of us give a fuck about it and i wont miss it, other than the memories of what it was when i was younger. what went wrong? dunno. pop music doesn't mean anything anymore. neither do the people who make it, or the people who present it. its unreal in the worst possible way.

basically, i can't bring myself to care about the death of TOTP. It (and that which it promotes) have been dead to me for years.
 
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mms

sometimes
Nick Gutterbreakz said:
My dad always watched TOTP, so did my mum. it was something the whole family watched together on a Thursday night, followed by Tomorrow's World and all that. we all had opinions. we were all interested in pop music, and TOTP was the only place you could see the groups perform each week. we even had discussions about who was our favourite member of Legs & co. Then, every friday morning there would be big discussions/arguments in school about what we liked and hated etc.

now i'm a dad and have never watched TOTP in the last 10 years (at least). neither does my wife, neither do my kids. none of us give a fuck about it and i wont miss it, other than the memories of what it was when i was younger. what went wrong? dunno. pop music doesn't mean anything anymore. neither do the people who make it, or the people who present it. its unreal in the worst possible way.

basically, i can't bring myself to care about the death of TOTP. It (and that which it promotes) have been dead to me for years.

funny that - me as well, totp followed by tomorrows world, inexplicably linked and utterly hopeful, technology for a brighter future.
it's strange when i look back at things like early house and hip hop, the first things that come into my mind are the debates within the family about music featured on totp, whether early chicago stuff in the charts constituted music etc, who me and my dad fancied etc, my sisters obsession with the terminally crap 5 star.
There was definitley something very central to music that perhaps isn't here anymore, even kids pop shows in the mornings mention things like download sales, what label the band are signed to etc, there is an obsession with data around the music much more than the music , probably due to the huge changes in the industry in the last 10 years or so .

how can you cancel a programme called tomorrows world,what replaced it ? Watchdog?
 
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wonk_vitesse

radio eros
Nick Gutterbreakz said:
now i'm a dad and have never watched TOTP in the last 10 years (at least). neither does my wife, neither do my kids. none of us give a fuck about it and i wont miss it, other than the memories of what it was when i was younger. what went wrong? dunno. pop music doesn't mean anything anymore. neither do the people who make it, or the people who present it. its unreal in the worst possible way.

basically, i can't bring myself to care about the death of TOTP. It (and that which it promotes) have been dead to me for years.

interesting point, umm, is there anything to salvage from TOTP's demise? i don't really care either but the thought of the BBC only having Jools' show as a music slot is depressing. Watching the Yeah Yeah Yeah's play on TOTP a few mths back was a zillion times more exciting than Jools' dead show.
 
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