(24-04-2022, 10:21 PM)VMPhil Wrote: [ -> ]I can easily understand why they haven't done that. They're mainly supposed to be fun, entertaining, nostalgic look backs at the music of that particular year and how Top of the Pops covered it. Extra insight into the behind the scenes of the show is always welcome but understandably not the main focus, and probably of limited interest to viewers beyond us lot.
Yes, I would agree with that - it reminds me of when I Love The Seventies was on and some people were slagging it off for being lightweight, and the producer said you could do a series with a more critical or hard-hitting focus, but not on a Saturday night. Certainly the tone of the show is celebratory and, as you say, I'm happy with what we do get about the production of the show. The only time I thought they really missed out on something was in 1987 when they showed clips from The Roxy and mentioned that it existed in passing, but didn't do anything about it being Pops' most serious competition yet, which might have been an interesting thing to talk about. Be interesting to see if they mention CDUK in later episodes.
But yeah, the minutiae of BBC1 scheduling in the nineties is not really what I expect from these shows. I know we didn't get masses but I was interested in Blaxill's comment about how they deliberately timed the archive slot, for the few months they ran that, during the ad break in Corrie to try and lure in viewers flicking around.
As I've said before, the move in 1996 was quite interesting because the initial slot on a Friday between June and September was 7pm when it was only opposite ITV quizzes which would, on paper, seem a better slot than opposite Emmerdale, which had gone from pensioner fodder to supersoap, and so it seems like it was a genuine attempt to find a better slot for it where it might have thrived. But it was only when they didn't do the business in that slot that they moved it to the opposite-Corrie death slot in September. I was hugely surprised at the time, because as the clip of Mark Owen illustrated, it was always billed as being on Fridays just for the summer and I was staggered to open the Radio Times in the first week of September and see Watchdog on Thursdays at seven instead.
Of course the original slot was 7.25 because it followed the 25 minute Muppets Tonight, and I remember the week that finished, the next week page in the Radio Times featured The Simpsons, and I assumed it would also go in that slot, but it didn't, and the Muppets (who I don't think had done very well anyway) were replaced by Big Break and Pops moved to 7.30. It wasn't a totally dreadful slot and certainly at the end of the nineties it followed on quite nicely from the teen slot on BBC2 - we'd watch The Simpsons and Robot Wars and then turn over at 7.30 for Pops and that all flowed very nicely. But a few years later that BBC2 slot had petered out and Pops was getting some woefully unsuiitable lead-ins like Open All Hours repeats.
It just shows how younger viewers could once watch the BBC from getting in from school right up until TOTP ended. They can still do of course but nothing that is aimed towards them.
(24-04-2022, 10:21 PM)VMPhil Wrote: [ -> ] (24-04-2022, 07:17 PM)mumu03 Wrote: [ -> ]And judging by their previous coverage of 'Year Zero' and the move to Fridays, they won't offer any particularly critical or alternative perspectives on the Cowey era either. Kind of amazing when you consider that both wiped millions of viewers off of the programme's figures.
I can easily understand why they haven't done that. They're mainly supposed to be fun, entertaining, nostalgic look backs at the music of that particular year and how Top of the Pops covered it. Extra insight into the behind the scenes of the show is always welcome but understandably not the main focus, and probably of limited interest to viewers beyond us lot.
There was some criticism of the very early Story of documentaries which very much had a vibe of "the show is really boring, but hold on because the 80s are coming" which did beg the question why are they repeating it at all, or expecting us to watch it after giving it that write up. And every era of TOTP is someone's favourite because they were young and it was their first, which for me is Year Zero. I'm not fond of the Cowey era for most of the reasons everyone always says, but there will be people born 5 years after I was who absolutely loved it.
Looks like they're interviewing Chris Cowie in that as well. A shame we never got Stan Appel in his years as producer (though he did appear in the 76 and 77 Story Ofs).
The Sonny & Cher clip on the 12/11/92 edition had the caption from Sounds of The 60s- clearly they just took the footage straight from that show rather than going back to the source. That's quite a notable performance from a technical point on view in terms of the fact that what survives switches from video to a telerecording part way through- presumably the complete performance doesn't exist on either format, which is why they have to stitch the two together.
I'm sure I do remember reading though that some of the tapes that were used for Sounds of the 60s "went missing" after the show was made- so what's in the episodes is all that survives- which is disgraceful for the early 90s (but we do know about Adam Lee's 1993 archive purge). I don't think the Sonny and Cher footage is amongst it though- I think it was a tape with Frank Zappa on that went walkies post-1991.
I don't know if anyone else agrees, but the 90s Story ofs feel a lot more rushed than the earlier ones. I imagine that's what happens when you're making 8 of them in a short space of time, rather than only making 1 or 2 a year- so they have a lot less time to do the research, find interviewees etc.
(08-05-2022, 10:54 AM)James2001 Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know if anyone else agrees, but the 90s Story ofs feel a lot more rushed than the earlier ones. I imagine that's what happens when you're making 8 of them in a short space of time, rather than only making 1 or 2 a year- so they have a lot less time to do the research, find interviewees etc.
Yes agreed. Not the quality production we have got used to. Still much better than most talking heads programmes but not to the standard we are used to
Not one of the great Christmas shows last night, but Tony and Mark were on camera more in that show than they have been for the last three months of shows put together. Our Christmas treat was a now rare sighting of the 360 degree spin of the credits.
The picture quality on the two performances from Philadelphia was pretty poor, glitchy and low-res - I liked someone on Twitter saying it looked like it was broadcast via a video sender in the next room, happy memories of using one of those. The charisma fair burst off the screen from Boyz II Men, especially their intro. They really are the most boring band who ever existed.
Forgot to say, the baffling bit the other week was when they announced Diana Ross was coming up live via satellite, but then later said she wasn't because of "technical problems in Connecticut", a lucky escape you'd have to say. I know the show was recorded as-live but I don't know why you wouldn't go back and re-record the opening link to take that bit out. I initially thought it had been mentioned in the previous episode but it wasn't, so why mention it?
Anyone else notice the satellite performance by Rod Stewart was done on the same set as the eventual video (shown as a breaker on a later edition). Sort of makes the satellite performance feel less unique!
Some bizarre editing on Big Hits 1998 in order to cram as many tracks in as possible.
The Mousse T 'Horny '98' performance went from live vocals during the verses, and a cleaner sound quality, to splicing a different and tinny-sounding mix of the track over the chorus to give the impression the chorus was mimed.
And I wasn't as engaged with The Story of... as previous editions - but that's probably me being subjective.
I wonder why they've used the correct theme tune for Big Hits 1998 but persisted with the 1991 theme tune for 1996 and 1997? (1995 you could just about get away with!). Was the Vince Clarke theme just too short? Certainly seems weird seeing it and the 1991 titles juxtaposed against all the mid-90s stuff when in recent years it's always matched the one used by the programme at the time.
I wonder what's going to the repeats once BBC Four becomes online-only in 2025.
Not the most on topic post, but just seen the opening of the Spiceworld movie today, and interesting to see the movie opens with a TOTP performance, then you see them leaving the studio to what looks like corridors at TV Centre (certainly not Elstree anyway), followed by some scenes of them greeting screaming fans- also outside the front of TV Centre. Though rather strangely they never show the front of TC1 (seems strange to film at TVC and never show the most recognisable part, you almost wonder if they may as well have just those scenes at Elstree seeing as they'd already been there for the TOTP studio scenes), though you can see the side of Stage 5 (and you can see signs that say "Stage 6" when they're in the building, pre-Gill Sans, must have been newly built at the time it was filmed and those signs must have been very short lived).
Also on a TV pres note, you can see some of the fans wanting autographs waving some Channel 5 launch material with the 5 coloured stripes- again something which would have only recently launched at the time it was filmed.
That whole sequence is the best bit of Spiceworld, it's a terrible film. When we were at university we got it out on video and about a dozen of us started watching it, but after half an hour pretty much everyone had abandoned it and we asked the one person who was happy to watch it to the end to take the tape into their own room and watch it there as it was annoying us so much we couldn't even be in the same room as it.
This is a bit of a dull observation, but last week's was sadly the last one with the spinning credits, which is a bit of a shame, I used to like how the "Charts prepared for the BBC and Music Week by Gallup" used to fly off the screen at the same time as the twiddly bits in the theme tune. Next week the credits rotate up from the bottom of the screen and the whole sequence is a bit shorter with a rather obvious edit in the theme. At least I'll lose the worry of whether Stan Appel's credit will make it up before the theme finishes.
Although Tony said it was "live from Elstree" at the start, it wasn't. Wonder what they did with that enormous picture of Lulu and Bobby Womack after the show.
I guess it was live at the time it was recorded, so technically correct
The bit with Elton John in that Spiceworld sequence is incredibly short, apparently because there was originally jokes about Ginni Versace and Princess Diana in it. Who then both died shortly after it was filmed.