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New 'Top of the Pops'-style BBC music show (July 2017)

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NG
noggin Founding member
Odd it's been given a full commission without a pilot (either broadcast or non)

You'd have thought with so much riding on having a popular music programme back in the BBC they would have wanted to see how it would look on screen, rather than the pitch document.

No name, no host(s)
Hope it not been greenlit based Carpool Karaoke - the breakthrough segment from The Late Late Show and the BBC are putting a lot of faith on Fulwell 73 on coming up with ideas like that for this music show.


Six ep commission is effectively an on-air pilot surely?
LS
Lou Scannon
If this is a success what will happen to the annual Christmas/New Year editions of Top of the Pops? Will they continue them for traditions sake or replace them with Sounds Like Christmas Day


I personally hope something more like the latter option will be seen as the way forward.

The expression/phrase "Top of the Pops" sounds excruciatingly dated, this side of... say... the 31st of December 1969! Groovy baby, peace man, etc etc.

Describing chart music as e.g. "(the) Pops" really dates the decade/era that the programme first started. If the programme had not originally been conceived until many years later, then there's no way in hell that a title like "Top of the Pops" would ever have been pitched.

For the current generation of younger age groups at whom much chart pop music is arguably primarily aimed (who have no living memory of TOTP as a weekly series), the phrase "Top of the Pops" is massively out of step with the kind of lingo that they relate to.

Perhaps the half-hearted dabbling with abbreviating it to "TOTP" circa the 1990s was precisely in an effort to sort-of get away from the passe-sounding name, whilst avoiding totally renaming what was after all still part of the original ongoing run?

As any new TOTP-alike show is separated from that original run by a fair chunk of years, there's no reason on Earth why it should feel any need to reuse that title. If the original programme's title had been something "timeless" enough to still sound "relevant" to e.g. 13-25 year olds (or whatever) now, it would be a different story.
rdobbie and toby lerone 2016 gave kudos
SP
Steve in Pudsey
I think you'd have a point if they hadn't kept the brand alive with Christmas shows and BBC Four repeats - it trends on Twitter every week so it's in the conciousness of that younger audience.

If they were proposing to bring back Whistle Test that might be a harder sell.
AN
Andrew Founding member
If this is a success what will happen to the annual Christmas/New Year editions of Top of the Pops? Will they continue them for traditions sake or replace them with Sounds Like Christmas Day

They only keep it running because it's such a tradition there would be uproar if they did anything different.

The show is just there every Christmas and New Year, it's stuck in a time warp in terms of look, in terms of presenters, it never gets promoted or mentioned in any Christmas highlights.
JO
Jon
So if this is basically the same show I could this happening.
JO
Jon
I think you'd have a point if they hadn't kept the brand alive with Christmas shows and BBC Four repeats - it trends on Twitter every week so it's in the conciousness of that younger audience.

I doubt it’s the under 25s tweeting about it though.

To any of us who grew up with it I don’t think Top of the Pops ever sounded dated as name but that’s just because you always knew it. Whereas Pick of the Pops for example does sound dated as a name. So think brining back the brand as a youth show is a non starter.

I do think like Grandstand it was such an iconic brand it shouldn’t have been got rid of and be made to work in some capacity.

Come to think of it you probably wouldn’t even brand a radio station as Radio 1 these days. Radio as a prefix is very dated now.
Last edited by Jon on 22 September 2017 8:26pm - 2 times in total
JO
Jon
If they were proposing to bring back Whistle Test that might be a harder sell.

That would probably work well as a name for some kind of alternative music show.
BH
BillyH Founding member
I told a work colleague in their early 20s that I was in the audience of it last year, and they replied "What's Top of the Pops?".

More likely to remember CD:UK as a nostalgia thing from their youth, although that title's dated just as much.
LL
Larry the Loafer
I'm pretty sure their age was insignificant and they were actually just stupid.
MI
Mintbro
My younger sister is 23 and she remembers totp, she'd only of been 12 when it finished. There's programmes that were on tv that finished when I was young that I fully remember, Live and Kicking finished when I was 13 and Noel's House Party finished when I was 11.
WH
Whataday Founding member
So everyone's forgotten that Top Of The Pops Magazine is still thriving then?
MY
MY83
Magazine? Thriving?
Steve in Pudsey, Brekkie and Lou Scannon gave kudos

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