Smtv Live reunion

Interesting, as The Chart Show would presumably have continued in that situation. I always personally preferred that to CD:UK.

It's doubtful that The Chart Show would have continued had they commissioned another chart show.

Yeah, in their book they say that when they pitched it to Nigel Pickard, he said he was already looking for a replacement for The Chart Show, which presumably was declining, so as you say, they wouldn't have had two shows across the weekend doing the same kind of thing.

At the start, CDUK seemed a bit of a step down from The Chart Show because CDUK wasn't established yet so you went from guaranteed big hits to records at about number 36 in the charts as they couldn't entice on any big names, but that changed soon enough and at its peak it was absolutely thrashing Top of the Pops, if not in terms of the absolute numbers (as Pops was in primetime and this wasn't), but certainly in terms of credibility and who they could attract and its popularity with the young audience. Actually I do remember during the Rugby World Cup in 1999 they showed CDUK at 5.20 one week and I wondered if that was an experiment to see if it could work there full time, but no, presumably it was too valuable (to the industry, certainly) to move from the before-the-shops slot.

The first few episodes of CDUK weren't very good, they had a few extraneous features including a live link to a record shop, initially with Pete Mitchell and Geoff Lloyd, to see what the public were buying. Initially too Phil Swern was in the studio, styled as "Dr Pop", who would say things like "there are ten new entries in the chart this week!" But it turned out nobody gave a toss about any of that.

IIRC they mentioned in their first book they were offered the Big Breakfast in 97 after a successful guest presenting stint but turned it down because they didn't feel they were the right fit.

Here's part of an interview I did with Dean Wilkinson for Brekkie.com back in the day:



So it seems the success of Ant & Dec's stint led to the hiring of professional comedy writers on The Big Breakfast for the first time, which in turn led to the more comedy-driven Johnny & Denise era.

Interesting - Ant and Dec's 1997 stint was pretty much a different show to The Big Breakfast of the day and probably paved the way for The Bigger Breakfast.


CD:UK also had the advantage of introducing the Saturday Chart so appearing to be very current basically giving you tomorrow chart the morning after TOTP gave you last weeks chart. Plus they had performances for future releases too, who then wouldn't appear on TOTP until a few weeks later when the song charted.

That wasn't new to CD:UK, The Chart Show had been doing the same thing!

Wasn't really true about songs that hadn't charted not appearing on TOTP by 1998 either, by the time CD:UK was running, "Exclusives" and pre-releases were quite common on TOTP.

They also said they turned it down because they didn't want to get up early every day.



But not at the time CDUK was in its pomp, though, under Chris Cowey from 1997-2003 they'd stopped doing exclusives on a regular basis and about 95% of the time it was records that were already in the charts. Which just made it look even more out of date because in this era bands would do weeks of promo before the records were released, and after the first week they'd go down the chart, so they'd have performed it on every other show weeks before they did it on Pops. It's perhaps amazing how Pops still managed to lure on so many big names in this period as it was pretty useless as a promotional tool, the singles were already on their way down.

It is true The Chart Show also featured the new chart, although for much of its life Pops was on Thursdays, rather than less than 24 hours before it, and it was a bigger deal to have an act in the studio than it was to show the video. It certainly made CDUK look dead important when they had an act on and they could announce they were number one before it was officially confirmed.

Though CD:UK did have plenty of occasions where they announced a song as number 1, then it ended up not being so on the final charts the next day. I have the 20th December 2003 edition where Cat rather excitedly announces The Darkness as Christmas Number 1, then it ended up being Gary Jules instead. I seem to remember Ricky Martin was never Number 1 on the CD:UK Chart with Livin La Vida Loca either, even though he was there for 3 weeks on the official chart.

One thing about CD:UK though is the company that licences the archive has put LOADS of clips on YouTube of various interviews from during the shows life, so I guess at least we can say they aren't keeping the show's archive hidden.

Though one search on YouTube for CD:UK I did had a clip they'd uploaded of an interview with Ian Watkins (the lostprophets one, not H from Steps) near the top of the search results, clearly they've not got the MO about him.

The most infamous of course was Victoria Beckham/True Steppers/Dane Bowers' 'Out of Your Mind', which led early Saturday morning but was pipped to #1 by Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Spiller's 'Groovejet'.

And Victoria Beckham remains the only Spice Girl to have no solo number 1. If I'm not mistaken, her floundering record career and the amount of money pumped into it were responsible for bankrupting her record company.

CD:UK definitely had the better format than TOTP at the time. TOTP had too much of a reliance on performances which meant too much wasn't shown that really should have been because the acts couldn't or wouldn't appear in the studio and Chris Cowie all but refusedto show videos, and other stuff got shown repeatedly (quite often the same performances, not even new ones) when the could have shown something else instead (including former number 1s on the way down). One example I can think of is in early 1999 the same Whitney Houston performance being shown FIVE times, each at a lower chart position than the previous time it was shown (down to number 19 the last time it was shown). I know it was only the second time she'd appeared in the studio, and the first time for 12 years, but it really seems excessive to have shown it 5 times when there's something else they could have shown, even if it was a video, especially when it was down to number 19.

One of the major issues with the Cowie era really, the over the top rejection of videos and the repeated showings of the same songs and performances by the artists they could get into the studio in their place, even if they'd been shown several times before and were on the way down. I can understand prioritising performances over videos, but Cowey TOTP just took it to an extreme. It really seems strange to choose to show a 2 month old performance for the fifth time of a song that's about to fall out of the top 20 when there must have been several videos of higher placed and more recently charted songs they could have shown.

Plus CD:UK being an hour long gave them time for features, which always ate too much into TOTP's running time when they tried it. Plus TOTP always seemed to do those features really badly regardless when they tried it too- look at the last few months of Chris Cowey's run for example and the way they'd run dreadfully executed behind the scenes videos actually over the middle of performances.