I still miss 'TOTP'. As much as anything to see what's happening in the charts, in a nice concise "package" - as i really can't be bothered or have the time to sit and watch one of those music channels for hours on end.

 

 

I do miss TOTP to an extent- plus it would give a chance of promotion to acts that aren't just Simon Cowell approved, although it coming back would be a bit questionable- I'm not sure who would watch

It annoys me to this day the programme finished. Low music sales was blamed as one of the reasons in 2006, but then a few years later they hit record highs which continue to this day. If it was still on we'd be looking forward to performances from Wretch 32, LMFAO (imagine the whole audience shuffling) and they could even repeat Tracy Chapman from an old episode. The Christmas specials are a bit dire in comparison, especially when the winner of the X Factor can't even be bothered to show up to recording so they show the video instead.

 

It had been suffering since about the late 1980s though...it kept relaunching and relaunching but nothing seemed to work. I'm guessing the reason they didn't scrap it in about 1996 was because of the high single sales of the late 1990s, but then once CDUK and mp3s came in around the millennium its days were numbered. I'd be watching it every week without fail if it came back though - I was up to 2003!

The on-air on-sale policy adds to the case for bringing it back. A TOTP appearance could be one of the first opportunities to see a song on television - just like it was in the old days.

Just think of all the customs Lady Gaga could parade around with every TOTP performance.

 

Costumes? :lol:

I don't 'miss' the show, we have X Factor, the BRITS and BGT for people to perform live on - and they are much more entertaining (I am an X Factor fan and watch it religiously lol)

 

This comment made me cry. X Factor and BGT are the worst dirge going. You may as well say that you don't miss Top of the Pops because your local pub has a a karaoke night.

That's true. Good entertainment X Factor and BGT may be, but they are NOT music shows. While I do agree with everyone that said they miss the Chart Show (I cried after the final episode) a show like TOTP needs to be back on tv NOW. We need a show that doesn't diffferentiate between music genres or labels, and features performances of the biggest hits of the moment. God knows that Cowell's acts can't bet on successful careers these days anyway...

I don't 'miss' the show, we have X Factor, the BRITS and BGT for people to perform live on - and they are much more entertaining (I am an X Factor fan and watch it religiously lol)

 

 

This comment made me cry. X Factor and BGT are the worst dirge going. You may as well say that you don't miss Top of the Pops because your local pub has a a karaoke night.

 

agrees with Brotho

Edited April 21, 201114 yr by seanster

One of the biggest problems is the way new bosses come in and screw around with a winning format. Top of the Pops was largely the same from when it began until they got desperate - ok, with the 'best dancer' competition and dance troupes like Pan's People and Legs & Co coming and going - but it was a simple format. If you're in the chart then you're on.

 

Viewing figures dropped in the 90s as satellite TV took off - that's understandable, but new bosses seemed determined to stamp their mark on things and what did we get? A change to the format that worked. Suddenly acts were recording two songs on the day - one for their current single and one for the next one to be screened as a pre-release 'exclusive'. Then came the 'interview' segments. Then they started focusing exclusively on the higher reaches of the chart. These, coupled with that ridiculous move to Friday night are the reasons why it failed.

 

I'm afraid I do consider Jamie Theakston / Jayne Middlemiss / Gail Porter to be celebrity presenters because they were not DJs first and foremost and did not have a particularly strong connection to music - presenting the O-Zone was more about their delivery than their knowledge. Ok, Tony Blackburn hardly had a wide range of musical knowledge either but we did used to get the likes of John Peel, Janice Long and Kid Jenson presenting and that gave it a kind of authenticity.

 

As for the Chart Show, they ruined that too. It had a great format of a new video, chart news, some more new videos, a specialist chart, a retro vid, a hot one to watch and then the top 10 in the final third. But then they began to interview bands, still without a presenter, and then they tried to make it interactive with a crap video vote...and let's not forget those awful Tizer adverts. As far as I can tell, when figures dropped due to Satellite TV's rise everyone panicked and ruined the format for good.

One thing that has surprised me watching the old TOTP programmes on BBC4 is that there weren't as tied to what was in the charts as has generally been assumed. They are playing a Gilbert O'Sullivan song atm which didn't even make the top 75. Each programme so far has included songs not in the chart although a lot of them did get there eventually.

At least BBC Four are repeating Top Of The Pops.

One thing that has surprised me watching the old TOTP programmes on BBC4 is that there weren't as tied to what was in the charts as has generally been assumed. They are playing a Gilbert O'Sullivan song atm which didn't even make the top 75. Each programme so far has included songs not in the chart although a lot of them did get there eventually.

 

That's true. I think a lot of people are looking at TOTP of that era through rose tinted glasses, the re-arrangements of songs are frequently awful, the choices of artists are very UK-centric and mostly forgotten and as you say there are records that were never even hits. Plus the presenters are cheesy, seem to know little about music, and the same Pans People performance has been shown 3 of the last 4 weeks! What was so different to the 90s TOTP?

Watching TOTP used to be more of a staple of my week but I never overly looked forward to it, it just happened to be on before Eastenders or whatever :lol:

 

CD:UK on the other hand I always did look forward to, and indeed used to plan my whole Saturday around. I'd not go out into town with friends until the afternoon as I first had to watch the chart rundown! And as Hits said, getting acts on pre-release was a big draw, I also remember the ATB performance. I recall being gobsmacked on that very same show when Vengaboys went in at #1 with Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom. I wasn't even aware of the song's existence at that moment in time! I remember they were counting 10-2 and by the time it got to #2 on the rundown I thought 'Britney only at #3, S Club 7 down to #2, who on EARTH is #1 :o'. Everything about CD:UK was just more interesting to me as a 12-15 year old than TOTP was - because by that point TOTP were showing acts who'd already been on CD:UK weeks earlier, and presenting a stale chart from 5 days ago.

 

I definitely think that there's a gap in the market for a music show now though, not even necessarily a chart show, just a prime time show - although they'd need to aim for at least one big star a week or nobody would watch.

I just generally miss a weekly music TV show, X Factor and BGT performances are all well and good but those live shows only run for a limited amount of time and only cater for the big name acts. Even XF is getting repetitive with Michael Buble and Take That making constant repeat appearances.

 

TOTP in the 90s was magic for me, Thursday nights and even Friday nights, although Thursday was better. The move to Friday was to make way for a new weekly episode of EastEnders IIRC. I used to look forward to it immensely. They played around with the format too much, the late 2003 revamp was the first nail in the coffin then the move to BBC2 on Sunday was the final straw - I even remember one episode where Fearne interviewed the cast of X Men... seriously, on a MUSIC show?!

 

They could bring it back easily and acts would flock to it, they used to get all the international big names back in the day because it was an institution and it was worth artists making the effort to go and perform. Nobody wants to fly over to the UK just to go on Daybreak or This Morning in front of less than a million viewers, I'm not saying TOTP would ever get XF type viewing figures these days but in its heyday it was viewed in the same regard. Acts used to dream about performing on TOTP and knew they'd made it when they did - now they all say that about XF. They'd just need to get the scheduling right (how about a Wednesday night, they could even base it around the official chart update and have Greg, Fearne etc. present?) and keep it simple and all about the music.

 

CD:UK was brilliant between 1998-2003, the Saturday chart was excellent in the early days especially when midweeks were a lot less easy to get access to. I was always excited at the Top 10 rundown and even discovered some songs through that which I'd never heard before. I remember The Offspring and Armand Van Helden being #1 in early '99 and I was utterly gobsmacked when they were announced as #1, never heard of them! CD:UK also used to invite acts on (again especially in the early days) who would eventually miss the Top 40, such as Babylon Zoo with "All The Money's Gone". It was a risk for them because they were more pre-release based than TOTP but it made it exciting and gave people a chance to experience music that wasn't just in the Top 10 and we'd heard a hundred times before.

 

I always loved the fact it was live and more unpredictable, like the time Kele Le Roc performed "My Love" and someone dived on stage with a huge banner knocking her mic stand over, Louis Walsh and Mel C's argument, Pete Waterman getting wound up about the death of pop music, Bob Geldof swearing... the death of CD:UK was in 2004 when they started focusing on the same acts too often with Westlife, Busted and McFly absolute overkill. Then Cat left, they shipped in lots of useless Z-List presenters (even BB's Anthony Hutton co-presented in 2005) and then came the awful revamp, Myleene and Lauren were OK but that Johnny guy was awful and the MiTracks countdown was the most ill-advised thing ever taking the whole show away from the official chart rendering it basically useless. I'm disappointed ITV killed it off in such a way and turned Saturday mornings into nothing but news, cookery shows and Formula 1.

 

I guess we have multi-channels and YouTube to blame for all of this really <_<

I agree CD:UK was all right until the revamp.

Would love to see TOTP back! And a Wednesday night show based on the update is a smashing idea! By the way last years Xmas Totp was filmed a few weeks before xmas, at which point they didn't even know who had won X Factor, so couldn't name/film the xmas #1, even less film a performance.

 

I do have to admit that I converted to CD:uk from TOTP about 98-02/3ish, partly cos cd:uk seemed to allow sexier performances than TOTP (I was teenage then Ok.. :rolleyes: ) and partly cos I loved the pop that was on it. I was very interested in the CD:uk chart too but because it often got the no1 'wrong' compared to the real chart the next day (I now know about the different cut-off date and close sales but was mystified at the time).

 

I really hope that the BBC4 repeats are a test of the TOTP brand to see if people still want it (albeit testing absolutely the wrong age group in a way but hey ho), and I can't help but be underwhelmed by several of the performances and songs so far. That Harpo was really funny though, where did he go to?

The 70s repeats are OK, I'm discovering new music through them but the feel of the show is very pedestrian and formal. Not the TOTP I knew and loved.

 

I know what you mean about CD:UK, I remember 911 with "More Than A Woman", Five with "If Ya Gettin' Down" and Steps with "Love's Got A Hold On My Heart" all performing as the Saturday Chart #1 but being beaten by the Sunday. So was the Saturday Chart was based on sales up to the close of business on Friday or simply based on the actual industry midweeks and branded as a Saturday Chart for transmitting purposes?

I know what you mean about CD:UK, I remember 911 with "More Than A Woman", Five with "If Ya Gettin' Down" and Steps with "Love's Got A Hold On My Heart" all performing as the Saturday Chart #1 but being beaten by the Sunday. So was the Saturday Chart was based on sales up to the close of business on Friday or simply based on the actual industry midweeks and branded as a Saturday Chart for transmitting purposes?

 

They used the midweek chart data from up until Friday night. In those cases where the CD:UK Saturday Chart #1 wasn't no. 1 on the Sunday, that really was all down to the Saturday sales.

 

I do have to admit that I converted to CD:uk from TOTP about 98-02/3ish, partly cos cd:uk seemed to allow sexier performances than TOTP (I was teenage then Ok.. :rolleyes: ) and partly cos I loved the pop that was on it.

 

Yes. I agree 100% and the best example I can think of was when Shakira released 'Whenever Wherever'. CD:UK would quite happily broadcast Shakira shaking her booty at 12:00pm on a Saturday afternoon yet TOTP reduced themselves to just showing Shakira performing the same song from the chest upwards at 19:45pm on a Friday evening. Mind boggling. :lol:

The 70s repeats are OK, I'm discovering new music through them but the feel of the show is very pedestrian and formal. Not the TOTP I knew and loved.

 

I know what you mean about CD:UK, I remember 911 with "More Than A Woman", Five with "If Ya Gettin' Down" and Steps with "Love's Got A Hold On My Heart" all performing as the Saturday Chart #1 but being beaten by the Sunday. So was the Saturday Chart was based on sales up to the close of business on Friday or simply based on the actual industry midweeks and branded as a Saturday Chart for transmitting purposes?

What new songs have you discovered? I was a teenager at the time these shows were first shown so it's all nostalgia for me. I'm just interested to know what unfamiliar songs are making an impact with viewers too young to have seen the programmes at the time.

I would have loved the TOTP repeats to start with 1980 onwards-now THAT was the true era of pop music!!!!