Interim/Temporary branding

I don't think those 3D titles premiered until the 2001 Christmas show- before then they kept the old 1998 4:3 titles, but "mirrored" them in the pillarboxes (I'm sure some people will remember them and know what I mean).

Though the 2003 revamp really was dire and I think helped kill the show. Tim Kash, the awful woman that did the chart rundown, nearly all the songs being pre-releases rather than already in the charts. Though Tim Kash was dumped after a year. Less than 2 years later it was shunted to BBC2 on Sunday evenings, then a year later killed off for good (well, apart from the Xmas and New Year shows, which are still running).

I remember watching the show around the Spring of 2003 before Andi Peters took over and then they also seemed to have a phase where over one performance they'd suddenly cut in a load of backstage crap, so you'd barely see any of the performance, god knows why they did that. Thinking of that the show was probably in its death knell even before Andi Peters.

Really? I definitely watched that hour long revamp show (in fact I remember reading about it on Ceefax) and I don't remember that! Though it's likely I watched that show and then probably still didn't watch it regularly afterwards, so who knows.

Yes, that was one of Cowey's main ideas, because you could see videos everywhere but not performances, which is fair enough I think. The other change under Cowey was that was lost the exclusives, so you could argue that it was the show at its essence because it only featured records in the charts, which is what people always demended.

However, that meant it seemed really out of date, because all the records had been on other shows for weeks, and it was also nearly a week after the chart was published - which became even more pronounced when CDUK began and they were using the following week's chart, less than 24 hours later. So there was value in the exclusives, because without them it was quite boring and out of date. Was OK in the past when records gradually climbed the charts, but certainly not at that time when everything came straight in.



He's right, you know - the revamped titles didn't appear until Christmas 2001, for the first few months they were just the old titles re-edited. Of course, Pops was one of the very last programmes, if not the last programme, on primetime BBC1 to still be in 4:3, a combination of using ancient facilities at Elstree and much of it being broadcast in other countries. It didn't move into widescreen until October 2001, over three years after much of the rest of BBC1. You'd think given that notice they might have had the titles ready.

There's this very short-lived look from HTV News West from 1996. Only lasted about 6 months as I recall...

The 2001 TOTP relaunch was a massive disappointment anyway. They relaunched with Zoe Ball, Jamie Theakson and Dermot O'Leary presenting. Zoe had been away for a few years, but I don't think after this show ever presented it again, which was odd, and Dermot only did a handful. Within weeks it was back to Gail Porter and the other randoms they'd had in the later Elstree years. Most of the new features disappeared, the Star Bar was barely used, as mentioned the titles hadn't even been updated.

And yes there were a few very odd changes made to the show in the first half of 2003 during the dying days of Cowey's era, seemingly more out of boredom than anything. This was soon after Cowey had made some comments in the press about the charts being terrible, and funnily enough he was shown the door soon after http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2248101.stm

I would say he's wrong when he said the singles chart was irrelevent when he said it in 2002 (to be honest it sounds more like he's moaning that "his" sort of music isn't in the charts, and today's music being awful is something every generation claims), though it certainly feels like it's become true since then- though maybe the lack of a major outlet for the charts like TOTP contributed towards that.

When reading the threads on DS about the TOTP repeats, it's funny that ever since it's began you have people insisting that the point thet BBC4 were showing at that point in time is when music was "at its peak" then it all "went downhill afterwards" (so when they started you had people claiming music was at its best in the late 70s and the 80s were crap- now it's people inisting the early 80s were best, and the late 80s and 90s were crap). As the repeats move on you have a new group of people making the same insistance about the episodes that are currently showing. Every generation claims their music was "the best" and everything after "was crap" (funnily enough the point people insist music "went bad" is usually when the person saying it was in their mid-late teens), it's never been true really (just that music moves on from what people grew up with), but it's funny to see several different groups of people insisting that they're right about their era- and I imagine it will keep going on if the BBC4 repeats run through the late 80s into the 90s.

Well, I seemingly have a very vague memory of this time (not helped by there not being much in terms of non-performance clips on YouTube) but I recall that the 2003 relaunch show was well received, lots of impressive performances including the Blazin Squad one, though I remember being very confused at them showing an Elton John concert performance after only a couple of in-studio performances. I've nothing against Elton John but he was hardly a contemporary artist, not exactly something I would have put in the very first show at least, he wasn't even in the studio.


I think after then is when the ratings continued to fall and Tim Kash was joined by Fearne and Reggie, before leaving altogether and suddenly reappearing on MTV News.

I think people forget now but TOTP moving to BBC Two was supposed to be a merger of TOTP and TOTP2, so you had older performance clips thrown in with the traditional TOTP2 commentary running on the bottom of the screen. I guess the idea was to make it more of a Sunday night family show. This was also the period where they had guest presenters each week joining either Fearne or Reggie, some of the more notable ones being Jeremy Clarkson, Peter Kay as Brian Potter, and the entire Chris Moyles breakfast show team.

I guess they put a lot of effort into the relaunch show... then things rapidly declined afterwards.

One thing I remember about the 2003 relaunch show was a phone-in competition asking the question "What was Robbie Williams' first number one single" followed by 3 options, all of which were wrong (clearly someone thought Angels had got to number one, but then never did the research to confirm it), before the question suddenly changed to "What was Robbie's first solo single" by the time they took the caller.

Funnily enough the first ever episode of CD:UK had a very similar thing with Michael Jackson- asking what his most recent number one was, but the actual correct answer, Blood On The Dancefloor, wasn't an option.

Even before CD:UK, you had The Chart Show, with its exclusives and an up-to-date chart. Though of course that was all videos rather than performances. Though I personally always prefered the Chart Show to TOTP and CD:UK.

Interesting TOTP stuff - sure this would make another thread of its own.



The Star Bar got a lot of internal use at the BBC, as I recall - launches and after-show parties. Was it used for other shows?

Temporary branding - the Thames 21st anniversary branding was an ingenious bridge between the skyline and the 1989 ITV package - seemed to be on for a good two or three months (think LWT's equivalent only lasted a couple of weekends)

I remember it popping up quite a lot (usually empty) TOTP Saturday, I think this was after it had pretty much vanished from the main show.

I dunno if he was shown the door, he'd done it for six years at that point which was about long enough, he probably decided it was time to go himself. The show was getting a bit stale at that point, but presumably much of that was down to it being sold around the world, so they couldn't change the set or anything without all the other versions having to change theirs. It was probably the longest the show had ever gone without a revamp, actually.



Yeah, they did things for Children in Need and so on from there. It was always a rubbish idea, though, most obviously because it was an actual working bar, so the acoustics were terrible and whenever they did anything in it they had to pass microphones around. It was if they'd forgotten it was supposed to be on television. And nothing ever happened in it, it was just watching people you don't know drinking.

Of course, it was based on something similar they'd done in Elstree where they took an unused studio and made it into a backstage area, where the guests would be sitting around. Which was slightly more tolerable in that in actually worked on TV.