Top of the Pops

I believe Smith put out an injunction against his episodes, didn't he? That's why they can't be shown, even in death.

Not sure it's a formal injunction through a court, just a refusal to provide permission. How binding that is it's debatable but the BBC are choosing to honour his wishes.

The injunction's a rumour that's been going around, but nobody knows how true it is.

Yes I’ve read this was the case. Janice Long said someone, perhaps one of the start of year documentaries, that they would record the countdowns as soon as they arrive, and it was a bit nerve wracking to do such a read through so early on. It has also been noted Steve Wright rarely does them as he was doing his afternoon show on R1 so wasn’t around early enough. Maybe they didn’t have time to do them again in the example above.

I asked this on the other place a few weeks ago (and got no answer) but it's probably more appropriate here anyway.

According to someone on missing-episodes, there's a couple of editions of TOTP recorded in the early 90's (possibly co-productions with NHK? - forum doesn't make that clear), that used the D2 quadra format, so are actually at 1250 line resolution as a test of analogue HD.

I have a couple of questions

1. Did this actually happen? (If so, what year would this be?)
2. If so, do they still exist?
3. If they do exist, should we make a big fuss if we get that far in the run, to see if we can get the BBC to air them in the original HD quality, considering BBC Four HD exists?

here's the missing-episodes thread
http://missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/6581

Supposedly an episode of Noel's House Party was recorded in the same format, side-by-side with normal cameras so he would have been looking off to the side on the HD version all the time.

There's very little info on if they still exist. Besides, I've read that the budget for the TOTP repeats is minuscule, so I doubt they'd be able to do what you're suggesting.

Well hopefully if they did still exist, I hope those masters were used when they were transferring all the tapes to a digital format a few years ago. Then it really shouldn't be an issue of budget for BBC Four if they get to that point, just a bit of research of what format the digital file originally came from and to pick the correct one to go to air.

Yes, that image is actually of the last of Jordan's six appearances (we'll see four) in February 1986. In fact the picture illustrates one thing that's worth looking out for in the next few weeks, as some time soon the neon logo obviously gets damaged because the bar of the T goes skee-wiff. Let's see if we can spot when it happens.

Jordan started on Radio 1 in the summer of 1985, filling in for virtually every DJ, and in the autumn, I think the week of this Pops, he got a regular Sunday afternoon show, plus he also presented on Friday afternoons, as this was the era where Steve Wright had Fridays off as he also did a show on Sunday, so for a couple of years his slot on Fridays was filled by new DJs for a couple of months at a time, some of whom went on to do big things at Radio 1, like Gary Davies, and some who didn't, like Jordan.

Jordan left in the spring of 1986, the same time Simon Mayo arrived, and he went back to ILR where he'd come from. I think he was controller of Radio City for a while, because he popped up in the papers about fifteen years ago when he "fired" Billy Butler for playing non-playlisted Cliff Richard records, and then immediately "hired" him again.

I don't remember him at all either, anyway seems he is still on the radio, he has a show on a little station on Merseyside

http://www.sandgrounderradio.co.uk/on-air/paul-jordan/