If there were delays in the completion of The Story of 1990, they could have still shown Big Hits, and then started to show the regular episodes, with The Story of being shown at a later date.
I know that wouldn't have been ideal, but might have been better than what we have ended up with now.
Part of the problem is it's impossible to get a straight answer out of the BBC about what the plans are for 1990. Whoever's responsible for answering emails only knows what's in the published schedules, so they can't tell us anything we don't already know. All we know from a press release is that the Story of 1990 is coming, some time in late Summer or Autumn, but when is a mystery, "Autumn" could be any time though until November.
There's proms scheduled for BBC4 on the 4th and 11th of September (in fact there's two proms scheduled for the 11th, so no chance of TOTP possibly being squeezed in post-prom), so it probably won't be those weeks either, so we may well be talking the 18th September at the earliest.
Last edited by james-2001 on 15 August 2020 12:59am - 2 times in total
Different to the other 1988 mute link episode that surfaced. On that one the links were totally silent apart from the background music, and the chart countdowns still had the audio, whereas on this one you can still hear the studio background noise during the links (and can therefore still sort-of hear Simon and Bruno), and the chart countdowns are totally silent- not even the music.
That was the same on the other mute link 88 edition, no captions on there either. Expected of course seeing as the reason the mute link copies were made was in case they re-used performances in other episodes, and it's better if there's no big captions on the screen for that (as can be seen on several pre-87 editions where the captions get awkwardly covered up on repeat performances).
The June 89 edition we had on BBC4 with no song captions still had the end credits though, so maybe the end credits were being inserted somewhere else down the line than the capgen for the song captions by then?
Someone's uploaded the "return to TV Centre" edition on YouTube.
Reminds me just how terrible the Star Bar idea was.
Looks like it actually could be repeated if BBC4 gets to 2001. Though Popscene lists Jimmy Savile as a presenter, it seems his only appearance is as they walk past him during the opening link, could be easily edited out (or even just zoomed in, like Jonathan King on the closing link of the 1985 Christmas special, as he's on the extreme left of the frame).
Is this the only edition that Dermot O’Leary ever hosted?
From this episode, Theako, Ball and O'Leary were promoted as the new Pops team, but Zoe didn't introduce another episode and Dermot introduced one more, the following February.
I forgot about that mini-relaunch in between the 1998 and 2003 ones, the first 16:9 widescreen edition I think - it’s hard to tell from that VHS upload but I’m guessing there was a big picture quality upgrade too, as the 4:3 episodes in Elstree earlier that year look a bit ropey even for their time.
It’s been mentioned here before but that’s a temporary title sequence which takes the 4:3 titles from 1998 and adds a mirror effect to the sides to create a faux-widescreen effect. I think the new 16:9 titles (same logo but now with various 3D shapes flying around) arrived later that year?
Reminds me just how terrible the Star Bar idea was.
Completely agree with you- it was an unnecessary addition to the show and meant there was even less time available for the music. Does anyone remember how long the Star Bar lasted for? I know it had gone by the time of the 2003 revamp.