One or two SAW tracks were okay but it was when they started to dominate the whole chart, radio play and generally be EVERYWHERE back in the day. I had been quite a fan of the Hi-NRG beat in the early 80s when I used to go to a lot of gay clubs but Peter Waterman exploited it and I can hardly stand it now.
One or two SAW tracks were okay but it was when they started to dominate the whole chart, radio play and generally be EVERYWHERE back in the day. I had been quite a fan of the Hi-NRG beat in the early 80s when I used to go to a lot of gay clubs but Peter Waterman exploited it and I can hardly stand it now.
What happened to pop music in the 80s was all about what the 80s themselves were about: money.
SAW proved that you could make big bucks without any need for skilled musicians or even trained singers. That wasn't in itself new in pop music - but advances in technology made it possible on a scale never previously attempted. So, although the major record companies hated SAW's success, they were insanely jealous of their profit margins - so much so that when it became apparent in the 90s that it was cheaper to churn out manufactured pop acts than to invest in genuine artists whose careers might or might not endure (BritPop vs. the Spice Girls), the accountants, by then running the show, went for the first option. Add Simon Cowell, and you have a recipe for musical disaster.
The Kenny Everett hosted Top Of The Pops from 1973 was viewed by 576,000 back in October but the last 1977 edition of Top Of The Pops to make the top 10 of the most viewed programmes on BBC4 was the TOTP edition broadcast on 08/08/12 which was watched by 239,000. That same week the repeat of Top Of The Pops: The Story Of 1976 was watched by more viewers - 317,000. The last weekly TOTP to make the top 10 before the edition on 08/08 was back in April (408,000). So it is true that viewing figures for the weekly Top Of The Pops repeats are down from the previous year when Top Of the Pops 1976 would regularly make the top 10.
Part of the problem with the viewing figures are the randomness of the screenings, ie it has to share its slot with The Sky At Night, I'm never quite sure when it is/isn't on, thankfully a PVR does that for me. It was also moved from Thursday's to Wednesday's during the Proms.
With the advent of the JS and to a lesser degree the DLT debacles, the screenings will have to be even more random if the episodes are to be kept in line with the time of year, making scheduling even more difficult. Sadly all these reasons give the BBC even more reason to cancel the repeats certainly in the short term. Of course if they hold off too long the interest will have waned anyway, we won't be able to stay up past 7.30 in our 80's!
Would go a bit further, the latter part of 1986 the decline had well and truly kicked in.
1986 seems to be a pivotal year . Its interesting to note that bands that had made that period so special such as Wham, The Police, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Dexy's, Madness, The Damned, Eurythymics, Big Country, ELO,Culture Club, Human League and dare I say it Buck's Fizz all enjoyed their final or last big hit in 1986, and I'm sure there are others.
OK some did manage a comeback single a decade or so on, but in reality the charts have never been the same post 1986, SAW, House and Rap have a lot to answer for!
Of that list,only the Durans and Human League have never broken up then reformed
The Kenny Everett hosted Top Of The Pops from 1973 was viewed by 576,000 back in October but the last 1977 edition of Top Of The Pops to make the top 10 of the most viewed programmes on BBC4 was the TOTP edition broadcast on 08/08/12 which was watched by 239,000. That same week the repeat of Top Of The Pops: The Story Of 1976 was watched by more viewers - 317,000. The last weekly TOTP to make the top 10 before the edition on 08/08 was back in April (408,000). So it is true that viewing figures for the weekly Top Of The Pops repeats are down from the previous year when Top Of the Pops 1976 would regularly make the top 10.
While all this may be true, Richard Klein is being disingenuous when he cites the ratings as a reason to axe TOTP. BBC Four isn't supposed to pull in huge numbers of viewers. It's a niche channel aimed at niche audiences. It's also supposed to exploit the BBC's archives - so the TOTP repeats are well within its remit.
The truth of the matter is that Klein is clearly not a fan of the shows - otherwise why would he sanction the ridiculous Sky At Night scheduling that's plagued them ever since they started. He will also be keen to impress his own bosses somehow and, as the BBC's response to the Saville debacle has essentially been to do whatever the Daily Heil dictates, he will toe the line.
It's therefore vital that we make our voices heard - after all, we pay the Licence Fee ... whereas the Daily Heil does not.
Bib...this is so true. This takes me back to the mid 80's when Michael Grade was Controller of BBC1. He disliked Dr. Who and cancelled it for 18 months then replaced Colin Baker in the role for Sylvester McCoy :eek:
When Jonathon Powell took over from Grade, he scheduled Dr. Who against Coronation Street resulting in a ratings drop to around 4 million...Excellent excuse to cancel Dr. Who in 1989.
ITV did a similar thing with "The Bill". Change the format, the theme, get rid of familiar characters, put it on at 9pm once a week....watch the ratings plummet and say "Cancelled because no-one watches anymore".
I think this is going to happen with TOTP's on BBC4.
The BBC have found themselves in such a difficult situation after the Savile controversy. And now with allegations against DLT, I think they'll look for any excuse to call an end to TOTP's re-runs.
And it will be interesting to see what they replace it with! As has been mentioned earlier, I bet any replacement gets the same (or even less) viewers than TOTP's.
"We Are The Champions" really should have been a No.1!
We are not far away from the chart of three 'number ones' - i.e. We are the Champions and Rockin All Over The World could both have been number ones if released earlier in the year. As it was they were both shut out by Abba and then Wings.
The only thing i didn't like was the backing music to David Bowie's Heroes, it sound awful to me.
Yes it was pretty limp compared to the utter strangeness of the recorded version. Which could be a reason why it wasn't a bigger hit at the time; I'm a massive Bowie fan but I remember how left-field it sounded in 1977 and I'm sure it was just too weird for a mainstream audience.
It's revered status nowadays is probably due to the public 'catching up' with what was once considered avant-garde.
The show and the audience is being treated really shabbily. Even before all the Savile/DLT nonsense as others have said, the scheduling of "The Sky At Night" randomly every 3 or 4 weeks didn't do it any favours either.
And there is an awful lot of revisionist history in the right wing press regarding Savile and TOTP. Ok, he presented the first episode and came up with the name but his association beyond that in the show's heyday of the late 70s and 80s was minimal. My memory of Savile presenting TOTP is that he was an annoying old fool, desperate to make it all about him, not the artists performing.
GB is a strange country, I'm pretty sure we're the only one where radio DJs became national superstars just for introducing a few records.
Howard Stern is a national superstar in the United States.
We are not far away from the chart of three 'number ones' - i.e. We are the Champions and Rockin All Over The World could both have been number ones if released earlier in the year. As it was they were both shut out by Abba and then Wings.
'Rockin' All Over The World' did reach number 1 in both the NME and Melody Maker charts for the week ending 26 November 1977 while on the official BMRB chart it remained at number 3 behind Abba at number 1 and Queen at number 2. Both Abba and Status Quo had sold just under 700,000 copies of their respective singles by the end of the year, Abba ending up one place higher, at number 16, than Quo on the year end chart. Sales must have been very close that week between all three singles.
Currently watching Ultimate Number 1s at the BBC, not a bad show so far. Kicked off with Del Shannon's 'Runaway' taken from The Rolf Harris Show. T Rex ''Metal Guru' was good to see of TOTP 1972. Shame there are not more shows in the archive from the early 70s with glam rock in its heyday! I wish we could just access the BBCs archive as and when we wanted to and then if they didn't want to repeat something we could make the choice if we wanted to view it or not. I'm sure one day this will be a possibility.
And there is an awful lot of revisionist history in the right wing press regarding Savile and TOTP. Ok, he presented the first episode and came up with the name but his association beyond that in the show's heyday of the late 70s and 80s was minimal.
BIB - I believe the programme's high point was in the early to mid 70s when viewing figures regularly reached 16 million. My understanding is the audience steadily declined from 1976 onwards. I have no idea what it was in the late 70s and 1980s but by the early 90s it had fallen to 5 million; by 2004 it had plummeted to below 3 million and by the time TOTP was axed in 2006 less than a million people were tuning in to the Sunday evening show.
I once read that the audience was still about 12 million in either the late 70s or very early 80s and didn't fall below 10 million until about the mid 80s. Although the long term trend was towards declining audiences, it seems that in the late 80s the audience began to decline quite rapidly.
The Kenny Everett hosted Top Of The Pops from 1973 was viewed by 576,000 back in October... The last weekly TOTP to make the top 10 before the edition on 08/08 was back in April (408,000).
It may be purely coincidental but I find it interesting that the percentage drop in the number of viewers between Kenny Everett's 1973 TOTP and the best audience figure for TOTP 1977 quoted above (a fall of 29%) closely mirrors the overall percentage drop in viewing figures between the mid-seventies shows (16 million) and the suggested figure in your most recent post for the late seventies shows (12 million) i.e. a 25% reduction.
Breaking news: NASA have sensationally revealed that the Carpenters' World Contact Day anthem has worked! They received a message from aliens last month which read: "Greetings Earth people, we can hear you. This one's rubbish, when are Quo on?"
I wonder when bbc four will make a decision i expect we will hear something soon Christmas programmes are confirmed on bbc press office next week so they should know now if 78 shows will be on or not
Breaking news: NASA have sensationally revealed that the Carpenters' World Contact Day anthem has worked! They received a message from aliens last month which read: "Greetings Earth people, we can hear you. This one's rubbish, when are Quo on?"
Calling Occupants [ awful vido ] , The Carps at their crankiest, but it's a great tune and Karen's voice is superb as usual.
Hour 2 of today's POTP from 25/11/78 proves why it has to stay on the air.
the TOTP episode for this week in 1978 was the second episode hosted by Mike Read
(24) MUSIQUE – In The Bush (and charts)
(64) RACEY – Lay Your Love On Me
(2) OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN – Hopelessly Devoted To You (video)
(30) DOLLAR – Shooting Star ®
(29) SYLVESTER – Dance (Disco Heat) (danced to by Legs & Co)
(28) ELKIE BROOKS – Don’t Cry Out Loud ®
(4) ROD STEWART – Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? (video)
(NEW) EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER – All I Want Is You
(25) SARAH BRIGHTMAN & HOT GOSSIP – I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper
(19) X-RAY SPEX – Germ Free Adolescence ®
(NEW) DAVID ESSEX – Goodbye First Love
(1) THE BOOMTOWN RATS – Rat Trap ®
(23) CHIC – Le Freak (and credits)
It's a great episode as i have a poor UK gold recording of it,but it would be a shame if this and the rest of 1978's shows never saw the light of day again
The Kenny Everett hosted Top Of The Pops from 1973 was viewed by 576,000 back in October but the last 1977 edition of Top Of The Pops to make the top 10 of the most viewed programmes on BBC4 was the TOTP edition broadcast on 08/08/12 which was watched by 239,000. That same week the repeat of Top Of The Pops: The Story Of 1976 was watched by more viewers - 317,000. The last weekly TOTP to make the top 10 before the edition on 08/08 was back in April (408,000). So it is true that viewing figures for the weekly Top Of The Pops repeats are down from the previous year when Top Of the Pops 1976 would regularly make the top 10.
But arguably its the very fact that they started in mid-1976 that was the problem because they immediately hit a very lame period in later 1976/early 1977 which probably turned off a lot of casual viewers. If they'd started in mid-1977 instead it would have immediately hit the line of classic performances we're seeing now.
I think that BBC4 need to give the show another push by running trails that highlight the classic performances that are in the current editions. The very success of the Kenny Everett edition shows what is possible with the right publicity.
Comments
What happened to pop music in the 80s was all about what the 80s themselves were about: money.
SAW proved that you could make big bucks without any need for skilled musicians or even trained singers. That wasn't in itself new in pop music - but advances in technology made it possible on a scale never previously attempted. So, although the major record companies hated SAW's success, they were insanely jealous of their profit margins - so much so that when it became apparent in the 90s that it was cheaper to churn out manufactured pop acts than to invest in genuine artists whose careers might or might not endure (BritPop vs. the Spice Girls), the accountants, by then running the show, went for the first option. Add Simon Cowell, and you have a recipe for musical disaster.
Part of the problem with the viewing figures are the randomness of the screenings, ie it has to share its slot with The Sky At Night, I'm never quite sure when it is/isn't on, thankfully a PVR does that for me. It was also moved from Thursday's to Wednesday's during the Proms.
With the advent of the JS and to a lesser degree the DLT debacles, the screenings will have to be even more random if the episodes are to be kept in line with the time of year, making scheduling even more difficult. Sadly all these reasons give the BBC even more reason to cancel the repeats certainly in the short term. Of course if they hold off too long the interest will have waned anyway, we won't be able to stay up past 7.30 in our 80's!
Of that list,only the Durans and Human League have never broken up then reformed
I guess so, but neither still had the same line up at the end of the 80's that they had during their most commercial period.
I hadn't realised the ratings had fallen so much!
Bib...this is so true. This takes me back to the mid 80's when Michael Grade was Controller of BBC1. He disliked Dr. Who and cancelled it for 18 months then replaced Colin Baker in the role for Sylvester McCoy :eek:
When Jonathon Powell took over from Grade, he scheduled Dr. Who against Coronation Street resulting in a ratings drop to around 4 million...Excellent excuse to cancel Dr. Who in 1989.
ITV did a similar thing with "The Bill". Change the format, the theme, get rid of familiar characters, put it on at 9pm once a week....watch the ratings plummet and say "Cancelled because no-one watches anymore".
I think this is going to happen with TOTP's on BBC4.
The BBC have found themselves in such a difficult situation after the Savile controversy. And now with allegations against DLT, I think they'll look for any excuse to call an end to TOTP's re-runs.
And it will be interesting to see what they replace it with! As has been mentioned earlier, I bet any replacement gets the same (or even less) viewers than TOTP's.
We are not far away from the chart of three 'number ones' - i.e. We are the Champions and Rockin All Over The World could both have been number ones if released earlier in the year. As it was they were both shut out by Abba and then Wings.
Yes it was pretty limp compared to the utter strangeness of the recorded version. Which could be a reason why it wasn't a bigger hit at the time; I'm a massive Bowie fan but I remember how left-field it sounded in 1977 and I'm sure it was just too weird for a mainstream audience.
It's revered status nowadays is probably due to the public 'catching up' with what was once considered avant-garde.
Howard Stern is a national superstar in the United States.
Howard Stern is an anomaly. There's always one....:yawn:
Maybe I'll start a thread about it
BIB - I believe the programme's high point was in the early to mid 70s when viewing figures regularly reached 16 million. My understanding is the audience steadily declined from 1976 onwards. I have no idea what it was in the late 70s and 1980s but by the early 90s it had fallen to 5 million; by 2004 it had plummeted to below 3 million and by the time TOTP was axed in 2006 less than a million people were tuning in to the Sunday evening show.
It may be purely coincidental but I find it interesting that the percentage drop in the number of viewers between Kenny Everett's 1973 TOTP and the best audience figure for TOTP 1977 quoted above (a fall of 29%) closely mirrors the overall percentage drop in viewing figures between the mid-seventies shows (16 million) and the suggested figure in your most recent post for the late seventies shows (12 million) i.e. a 25% reduction.
"Greetings Earth people, we can hear you. This one's rubbish, when are Quo on?"
Calling Occupants [ awful vido ] , The Carps at their crankiest, but it's a great tune and Karen's voice is superb as usual.
Yes but you could see she was suffering from anorexia then.
(24) MUSIQUE – In The Bush (and charts)
(64) RACEY – Lay Your Love On Me
(2) OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN – Hopelessly Devoted To You (video)
(30) DOLLAR – Shooting Star ®
(29) SYLVESTER – Dance (Disco Heat) (danced to by Legs & Co)
(28) ELKIE BROOKS – Don’t Cry Out Loud ®
(4) ROD STEWART – Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? (video)
(NEW) EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER – All I Want Is You
(25) SARAH BRIGHTMAN & HOT GOSSIP – I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper
(19) X-RAY SPEX – Germ Free Adolescence ®
(NEW) DAVID ESSEX – Goodbye First Love
(1) THE BOOMTOWN RATS – Rat Trap ®
(23) CHIC – Le Freak (and credits)
It's a great episode as i have a poor UK gold recording of it,but it would be a shame if this and the rest of 1978's shows never saw the light of day again
But arguably its the very fact that they started in mid-1976 that was the problem because they immediately hit a very lame period in later 1976/early 1977 which probably turned off a lot of casual viewers. If they'd started in mid-1977 instead it would have immediately hit the line of classic performances we're seeing now.
I think that BBC4 need to give the show another push by running trails that highlight the classic performances that are in the current editions. The very success of the Kenny Everett edition shows what is possible with the right publicity.