Graham A

They flopped because there's no weekly TOTP to show them. iTunes buyers are too interested in the latest USA hits to buy Boyzone or Blunt. It's all a question of who the BBC can get for the money. Plus who's too busy when the show is recorded or doesn't want to do it. If TOTP was weekly it would have a backlog of material to show on the X-mas shows. More artists would probably be interested in doing the show, to promote their records. Both Blunt and Boyzone will have found memories of doing the show so will want to come on. But why should acts who never appeared before want to do the show? Just to sing something that has been a hit! Just for the money I suspect.

I think if your not really a radio listener and just watch a lot of TV, then you would be saying about a lot of those big hits featured on TOTP: "who are they and what are they singing". That's how badly chart music does on national TV these days.

The obvious answer is that the biggest dealer who was the main stockist for Brunswick would be ordering a lot of stock. The biggest dealer this would apply to is Woolworth's. As a matter of fact though my late uncle did buy some of the records featured in the book, he had kept them in the original sleeves and wrote the title on them, so I know that he bought them from the same store. That store wasn't Woolworth's but an Independent shop. The sleeve advertises the products sold, including all the major labels. So clearly there were stores that were supplied with a full range of various label products. I too have read that it was practice - for instance EMI records, could be only sold at places like HMV shops. Or if the shop wanted to stock EMI records they had to become a "dealer" for the label. And that the shop couldn't stock other labels. It's a bit like Car Dealers in that respect, you could only buy a Ford at a Ford Dealer. It also wasn't common practice to browse for records in a lot of shops. You had to ask for the record. So if you went into an HMV shop and asked for a song by Bing Crosby, the dealer could say we don't have it, but we do have the Frank Sinatra version. If you went in and ask for just the title you would get the EMI label version of the song, maybe which was most popular. But probably the version that the shop couldn't get shut off. One of the problems of using shipping figures is that it doesn't take into account the fact the public might be buying it faster than the record companies can ship it. On the other hand the public might ignore a record that is sat in boxes gathering dust on dealers shelves, which is top of the distribution list. With low sales figures of this time a number one record might shift 40,000 in total, in the shops, but seen as only reaching number 20 in this book. Whereas a number one record in the book might only reach number 10 in the Shop Chart, if one was available at the time. I think this might explain one of the reasons why too many copies sometimes go out to the stores using a Bing Crosby record as an example. Personally I would dispute that the Bing Crosby White Christmas was number one nearly every year after it's first release, in terms of actual sales by the shops themselves. I would put most of these figures in the book down to mangers ordering too many copies of the record for Christmas. If you look at the first chart of the year after Christmas, White Christmas drops out of the top 30 completely, as orders ceased.

It might interest members to note the reason that Colin Brown stopped these charts in 1952 was because of the emergence of Rock and Roll. Colin hated that style of music. Somebody also told me that Colin had said that NME chart (after his) was made up rubbish, compiled by the women in the office of NME. I have also found that some of the Brunswick records (who marked records A and B sides) in this book quote the B side and not the A. This might apply to other record labels, but since they often don't show which is the A side it will be harder to spot. If you look at the new entries in the book they also come at the start of each month. I have been told that it was the practice to release all records at the start of the month. However Record Information Services imply that it is not as simple as that. With actual release dates being very hard to pin down. I'm still not clear when the monthly release ended. I believe Record Retailer had weekly issues for records when it started in 1960. Certainly by 1962-63 weekly release sheets for Record Shops had replaced the monthly ones. However I find it hard to believe that by 1955, records including the new 45's, where only issued at the start of each month. Especially with the weekly charts becoming more popular than the Sheet Music Charts.

I watched the show and for the first half hour I thought that most of the acts were not good at singing live. The vocal performance was often muted and drowned out, by the music, especially when the act was talking in the verses. Fearn and Reggie are kid show presenters, because that's how the BBC see TOTP. However we need a chart show each week now, just to stop the ridicules following of what the USA wants to send our way via iTunes. With downloads making the charts responsive to TV airplay now, a proper music show (not necessarily TOTP) can place new acts in the charts. If these were UK acts not currently in the charts, that would certainly be a good thing don't you think?