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Top Of The Pops 1980, very few episodes!
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When BBC 4 gets round to this in 3 years time if it's still around, there will be nothing to show as it was cancelled, the programme was forced off the air for several weeks by industrial action by the Musicians' Union in the summer of 1980. I remember it going off around the end of April and did not return until September that year. I was only 17 and I missed it sorely as there were no other place to see my favourite acts!
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It wasn't off for 5 months, but from what I've discovered 10 episodes which is about half that time. It's an educated guess from what I've been able to trawl up, but I'd say the missing ones are Thursdays 29th May to 31st July 1980 editions, meaning it came back on 7th August 1980 for the first time since 22nd May 1980.
If anyone can confirm this for sure then it would be helpful, but I think it is almost correct. It was all down to musicians and the TOTP orchestra nonsense. Why they ever bothered with it beats me, as they clearly made some songs sound atrocious and could have affected their later chart performance by what I have heard on the 1977 editions recently!
Funny, you are quite right! Songs about Suicide and Crying were reaching the top at the time. :eek:
Therefore if TOTP had this great sales influence on the music buying public at the time, then it's absence should have caused a significant sales dip in singles sales throughout the summer of 1980. I bet no such thing actually happened, and that the shows vanishing off the screens for 10 weeks had zero affect on any actual record buying habits.
I wonder if there is any proof either way? Very interesting.
Thanks for the Up Heads.
DS people are so considerate.
I dunno if it's actualy officially down anywhere but I have read before that Cryin' by Don Mclean was at the time one of the lowest selling, if not the lowest selling, number ones in the history of the chart, thanks to it not being on Top of the Pops.
The last Pops before the strike was on 29th May, that's actually on YouTube and it would have been Kid Jensen's last Pops as he announces at the end that tomorrow is his final Radio 1 show before he left to go to America. But of course he returned to Radio 1 and Top of the Pops a year or so later. While it was off air, they did film a pilot for a revamped show, which exists in the archive, presented by Peter Powell but with members of the crew standing in for all the bands. But they did use that new format when the show returned on 7th August, which is also when Michael Hurll took over as producer and he revamped it into the show it became for the rest of the eighties.
Of course the strike wasn't just about the Top of the Pops Orchestra but all music on the BBC, the Beeb were trying to close some of their orchestras but made a bit of a hash of it and the Musician's Union went on strike so there were no shows on the Beeb that could include live music and the first few weeks of the Proms had to be cancelled. In addition there were a couple of episodes of Saturday Night at the Mill, filmed of course in the Pebble Mill foyer, where musicians turned up outside the studio and played very loudly in protest.
You should've been out seeing the real thing at 17, whatever your musical tastes.
Yet the real crime is how the BBC wiped nearly all the sixties shows and the bulk of those from the glam rock era.
Sometimes though it takes many years to pass before you realise the interest or significance of things. Plus in the case of the BBC I think there were cost considerations of all those recordings.
Myself, at a domestic level, as a 12 to 16 year old, I made loads of early to mid 80's tapes of music and shows on audio cassette, and deeply regret that I wiped over them to use again, and happen to know that I lost some really great stuff that would have been worth keeping in the long term. But cost was a consideration for me too, as I simply could not afford to endlessly buy new blank tapes at the time.
Also I am reminded of people who re-bought all their vinyl records to CD and then binned the vinyl. Criminally insane, and most now know it.
Is it really 2 and a half years since I posted this, I even forgot I had this account via Facebook e-mail address.
Anyway, I look forward to TOTP 80 in a couple of weeks.
Really?.:D
No need to bump this old thread Nosmo (which I'd entirely forgotten I had written on within a few days of joining DS) because I began the "Top Of The Pops 1980 - BBC4" thread last week which will be the main thread forum for the show over the coming year they show 1980. ;-)
So old is this thread that even the Savile episodes were still being shown in summer 2012, which had we known what we now know there would have been even fewer than you thought on top of that strike.
The number of available TOTP episodes during 1980, omitting Savile and DLT and taking the strike into consideration appears to still leave a respectable 34, so not too bad in the circumstances, the equivalent of 8 and a half months.
So therefor it will end in May and return by late August, an ideal summer break:)
I've always wondered about that too, I'd argue that in an era when Radio 1 had 25 million listeners its influence would have been far greater than that of TOTP, and the biggest influence would be whether or not Radio 1 placed a song on heavy rotation on its playlist thus massively increasing its exposure to the public?
I've been following excellent threads on the Haven forum that list every top 10 of the 80s (currently up to 1984) along with what's claimed to be as best guess as possible at sales figures for each single. The summaries of the charts often mention what singles had the boost of a TOTP appearance. FWIW, having a look at the summer periods from 1980, 81, 82, 83, sales in the summer were generally low, but no worse in TOTPless 1980 than in 1982 and 1983. Sales in summer 1981 were higher., which I think is down to the amount of quality singles around.
So many people big up sales after a TOTP performance, or radio play. One of the worst I heard involved Clive Dunn's Grandad from Christmas 1970 / New Year 1971 when in a documentary Ed Stewart stated that within 4 days of its first play on his show it had shifted a million copies. Abject nonsense. You only have to see the chart at the time to know that never happened.
I like the sound of this Haven forum you mention Clare. Would you be kind enough to give some more details so I could check it out myself, either on the open forum or if you prefer in a PM. Thanks!
i thought the union strick was just in 1979 i didn't think they had another one a year later?
That was the all out strike with nothing whatsoever broadcast on the channel for that whole duration.