Top of the Pops

Those episodes coming from that very strange short lived era in the lead up to the 1991 revamp where they slightly altered the opening titles by having numbers flying across them, they did the entire 40-2 countdown over a video and they put the presenters out of the way of the audience on gantries and balconies for some reason.

Yes, although to be a DREADFUL pedant, Pops was on Friday that week because of Hospital Watch at 7pm every night. As you say, when BBC1 went officially stereo, the Radio 1 simulcast ended, although I remember when the revamp happened a few weeks later, there were loads of complaints about it in Smash Hits and someone wrote "Why have Radio 1 stopped broadcasting it? Do they think the new show is crap?"

Although the Beeb officially launched stereo on 31st August 1991, I think they only chose that day because it was when pretty much all the transmitters were in stereo and pretty much all of the programmes were and they'd been broadcasting in stereo for the previous few years. That was different from C4 who promoted their stereo output from the late eighties even though you could only get it from the Crystal Palace and Emley Moor transmitters, and similarly the various ITV regions promoted it when it reached them.

Oddly when they stopped broadcasting Pops on Radio 1, it was replaced by an extra half an hour of Jakki Brambles and they branded that bit as Brambles' Breakers, which does just sound like an audio version of Top of the Pops - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/radio1/england/1991-11-28#at-18.00. It always seemed a weird slot, Jakki Brambles' - ninety minutes from Monday to Wednesday and an hour on Thursdays.



Yes, although it does seem to go in cycles how they do the links - at the moment in 1986 we're not seeing the hosts with the audience much and they do most of the links from empty stages or alone on the gantry. It seems like Stanley Appel wasn't a fan of putting them within the audience very much. But as you say, in that period they were almost always on their own, I remember one episode where Nicky Campbell did most of the links in front of a CSO backdrop (he was in the studio, though). Quite an interesting period, that, a weird transitional phase.

By August 1991 the BBC had about 10 key sites (and their relays) in NICAM, covering about 60% of the population. It took another 12 years to roll out to all remaining sites. Some BBC sites actually had DTT before NICAM on BBC 1/2

Aug 31 1991 was chosen because it was The Last Night of The Proms

As you say the IBA launched NICAM on ITV and C4 in 1989, in response to industry disappointment that the Beeb had stalled on their plans to provide an official NICAM service.

Roll out was must faster, by Aug 1991 I think they had NICAM available from at least one Tx in every ITV region (I'm not sure about Durris for Grampian). They, and later the ITC/NTL ensured every Tx was equipped for NICAM in time for Jan 1993 and the new ITV licence period.

There was quite a good (now archived) thread on the early days of NICAM rollout in the tech forum last year, which touches on the TOTP broadcasts from the late 80s/early 90s. Indeed it even references finding out next year (as was then) on BBC Four what would happen.

The thread also shows which transmitters were NICAM equipped on both ITV and the BBC by 1990/1991.

https://www.tvforum.co.uk/mediatech/early-days-nicam-stereo-42930/

Thanks for that, it also incudes a link to a BBC document I tried to find today, but I found and posted it in that thread back then !

The Story of/Big Hits 1987 are indeed on the 4th January according to the Radio Times.

Thanks for this, although it wasn't actually the Last Night of the Proms that day, but there was a suitably grand musical event to launch it - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbctwo/england/1991-08-31#at-18.00

And it was the first day of the autumn season, back when that was a big thing.

The point I was trying to make is that by the time the Beeb "officially" launched stereo they'd been broadcasting most programmes in it for a while. Certainly if you look at the BBC1 schedule for that day, all the high profile new shows are in stereo - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1991-08-31 - and as you say it was available from the main transmitters. This was in contrast to C4 launching it when they only had a handful of shows using it and it wasn't widely available - in the 1989 Christmas TV Times there are programmes on C4 billed as "Digital Stereo Sound (London/Yorkshire only)".

I note that after that one episode that was in stereo, the following episodes have all been in mono so far.

Clearly the first one was just an experiment, or the ones made after weren't made in a stereo equipped studio (as it moved between studios 3, 4, 6 and 8 from week to week).

There's a BBC archive copy of the Mike Smith 4/12/86 edition floating around and that edition's clearly in stereo too- quite obvious at the end of the 40-11 chart countdown when the sound of the audience & Mike Smith only comes from the left speaker for a few seconds. During that, some voice comes out of the right channel saying something too, hard to tell what it says though and god knows where it's coming from, possibly the gallery!

Edit, just watched further and for a few seconds after the breakers, Mike's voice wasn't synced between the two channels. I'm uploading my copy of it, so when it's done I'll link here so people can see. I'm wondering how all this was handled on broadcst, maybe they only put the left channel to air to avoid these strange artifacts?

I've uploaded it here: https://we.tl/t-h7KZGoZGxv (big file, over 900MB)

The post-chart link starts about 13:00, the echoey post-breakers link at around 18:20, and there's another echoey link after the number 1 at 26:15

As I said, not sure what's going on with the sound mixing there, it's very strange. The only way any of it could have been avoided on broadcast would be by only putting the left channel to air, as it's the right channel that has all the oddities.

Strange to hear Madonna's "True Blue" as backing track during the DJ links (tonight's edition) considering it was out of the chart already (63).