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+--- Thread: Top of the Pops on BBC Four (/showthread.php?tid=103)
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - Colm - 24-01-2022
I can confirm, from being in the audience during the Cowey era, that's essentially how recording sessions went - usually lasting two to three hours to film everything required.
Pre-recorded VTs: around ten seconds of the intro/outro were played when recording presenter links, usually shown on the videowall(s) behind the presenter.
I can't recall retakes at the shows I attended being done just because Cowey felt like it.
At one session, there was a technical issue with either lights or cameras, which, while being rectified, saw the band who were on-stage then play a few other songs for the audience in the meantime.
At the other session, one act thought they'd finished in the studio - only to be called back on-set to stand on stage, as if they'd just finished their performance, so a link could be re-shot.
F-bombs were uttered by one member of the act as they re-entered TC3...
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - James2001 - 24-01-2022
During that 1994 episode you can see them after they've run the Let Loose performance recording shots of a woman looking through a door to insert into the Dinosaur Jr. performance which had happened around 10 minutes earlier. So by then they were even recording separate insert shots to insert into performances.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - mumu03 - 24-01-2022
I believe TOTP would occasionally do that as far back as 1988 - in addition to leftover outtakes of the opening Harry Enfield performance before the TX copy begins, the BBC VT file of 12/5/88 in circulation has an extended shot of the Tony Blackburn cutout seen during Star Turn on 45 Pints' appearance after the playout is over.
ISTR it was also one of the shows where BBC4 faded said playout so early that old off-airs were checked, and sure enough, we actually saw more of it on the original broadcast. Obviously won't be a problem with the repeats now, but it was odd when that started happening after a good while of it usually being ran to the end.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - James2001 - 25-01-2022
Impromptu appearance of Test Card F near the start of the studio tape of the 28/7/88 edition too! One link that has to be redone- three times- because of a woman screaming next to Nicky and drowning him out too (she'd been moved away by the third take!) and Yazz having to perform four times as a result- these studio tapes are fascinating.
Whereas some of the studio tapes go all the way through without any pauses or retakes at all (I wonder if that's why the studio tapes survive for some of them- no point creating a separate master when there's no need to do any editing?). Or there's a retake only after the very end of the episode.
I know we're discussing something most people on here can't see, though the link to the files was sent to me in confidence so I can't really share it publicly!
Also noticed on the 1994 one that it seems whenever they stop recording and start again, there's a digital "glitch", whereas when they're spooling through the inserts, it's clearly coming from an analogue format. So were they recording the studio output on a digital tape format, but still using analogue for the inserts?
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - mumu03 - 25-01-2022
Test Card F also makes an appearance on 18/7/85's studio tape, which has no intact retakes during the main show, but there are two pre-recorded performances after the playout has ended. The first is for Go West - 'Goodbye Girl' (shown a few weeks later on the 8/8/85 live edition) and the second is Steve Arrington - 'Dancin' in the Key of Life' (never broadcast on TOTP or any offshoots to the best of my knowledge, despite the full promo video featuring on that same edition instead of its actual performance!).
On the same topic of pre-records, a few of the studio tapes from 1989 seem to have theirs tagged on to the end. All are examples that were soon broadcast, however there are some retakes for good measure, and they do mean other extras have survived - if I'm not mistaken, the pre-show audience warmups that remain on 8/6/89's include mentions of Nicola Bryant being there. Though I'm not sure what she could have been around in TVC for at that time, it wouldn't be the first instance of her coming to a TOTP...
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - InsideUlster - 26-01-2022
Bad news is that YouTube terminated D Rigby O' Neill's account. It had some TOTP clips.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - James2001 - 26-01-2022
There's a couple of insert tapes on there too- one from the unaired 1980 "pilot", and one from the 25th anniversary show. Would be interesting to know how many of those survive too, though admittedly they aren't as interesting as the raw studio tapes seeing as everything in them should have ended up in the finished programme- bar a few seconds here and there anyway. On the 1980 insert reel, they have a Kate Bush performance that was taken from another programme, and at the end you do get about 20 seconds or so of the programme (whatever show it was!) with Kate sitting down with the presenters and other guests before it moves on to the next insert (a mute Leo Sayer performance! Which on the show itself was played on the screen behind the crew member pretending to be Leo). Strangely the Darts video, which was part of that episode, isn't on the insert tape.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - mumu03 - 26-01-2022
3/12/87's inserts tape also exists, and is in stereo, unlike the actual edition itself as far as I'm aware. Although it is very much possible that the show was simply mixed down to mono on its BBC4 or even original showing at the time, there's no real way of knowing - the VT file available appears to simply be an edit prepared for the 2019 repeat anyway (note the newer clock grafted on to the start + abrupt fadeout on the Maxi Priest playout performance, as opposed to it going on for much longer on the inserts tape).
Also after said Maxi Priest playout has ended, there is for some reason playbacks of a couple of appearances from much earlier on in the year; Robbie Nevil - 'C'est La Vie' (29/01/87, actually pre-recorded after his first performance two weeks before for 15/1/87) and Whitney Houston - 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' (21/5/87). Only possible rationale I can think of for these is that they were being considered for inclusion in preparations for the Christmas edition, though only Whitney Houston would end up repeated.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - James2001 - 26-01-2022
Just had a look at the 1987 one and interestingly there's an old fashioned mechanical VT clock going into the charts! Though an electronic one cuts in over the last couple of seconds.
I uploaded the 1980 "pilot" ones, as the whole thing is so unusual I thought it was worth letting other people on here see it:
https://we.tl/t-h7a1ZDhOsx
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - James2001 - 27-01-2022
Also noticed the insert tape for 22/1/76 survives, but the episode itself doesn't (at least not in broadcast format, though David Hamilton's own N1500 recording does, he's helped fill a fair few gaps in the archives thanks to recording and keeping his episodes). Though all the inserts tape has, apart from the photos used for the chart countdown are two repeated performances from two weeks earlier (an episode which survives) and the Bohemian Rhapsody video, so there's nothing there that doesn't exist in broadcast quality elsewhere.
I know there was a 1977 DLT episode where the studio tape survives but the completed episode doesn't, and BBC4 edited it down into an episode- only DLT was arrested on the day it was due to be shown, so it never was. They did similar with the 1973 Kenny Everett episode they showed as part of a theme night. A shame the studio tape doesn't seem to survive for the 1985 episode that went walkies, even if it was only the mute links version.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - mumu03 - 27-01-2022
Re: the missing 1985 edition, one odd thing that I don't ever remember being explained was the appearance of 'Between The Wars' on a TOTP2 from 2002. It's very much possible that clip was indeed taken from a mute links studio tape, however if one did still exist you'd think it would have been instead of an admittedly decent off-air recording in the 'Story of' documentary for that year too...
FWIW, pretty much all of the live mute link editions, including those which were restored by BBC4 with audio from an off-air source, exist - their VT files also surfaced alongside the rest a while back.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - James2001 - 27-01-2022
I seem to remember reading someone found a copy of said TOTP2 and found out the Billy Bragg performance was from elsewhere, not TOTP.
There's also a live edition from 1983 where for some reason the end is missing and only exists as an off air VHS. As the episode was presented by Mike Smith so wasn't going to be shown on BBC4 anyway, this wasn't something that was picked up on until later (IIRC when clips of the Style Council performance from that episode popped up in a documentry a couple of years back).
What happened there I don't know, possibly someone accidently stopped recording or the VTR recording the show had a fault during the programme? Though as a mute link copy should have been made alongside, you'd hope that would at least have been kept if that was the case so that the whole thing would have survived in broadcast quality at least visually.
All of the post-77 editions with some sort of archive issue were live editions, with the exception of said 1985 edition, so are basically issues with live episodes not being recorded properly (the June 89 edition which is missing the original captions seems to be the final one). What happened to the 1985 one, I don't know- I did read somewhere that it's because the master 1" tape went missing en route to a facilities house to be digitised in the early 90s, though I don't know how true that is.
Annoying how we never got that June 1988 edition on BBC4 even though the as broadcast version does exist, and was even used for the Eurythmics performance in Big Hits 88 which surely someone at BBC4 should have picked up on (ironically they'd have been better off using the mute one for Big Hits 88 as it would have avoided the zooming in to cut off the caption). Possibly someone knew there was an episode which only existed as mute links, but got confused as to which edition it was after coming across the mute copy of 23/6/88.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - mumu03 - 27-01-2022
I can't recall reading the same myself, but it coming from another programme would make sense. Popscene's oft-cited episode guide - based on what was there when Infax was available to the public - is known to feature some errors, though many of the most noticeable examples (usually a few missing Breaker clips/wrongly marked repeat performances) have since been corrected.
I have also seen the full unedited VT of that 1983 edition when it was made available, and most of the Style Council performance is actually still there; the tape picture is first to go in its final 30 seconds, with the audio not far behind. That documentary on the band could have just used what was salvageable of it and most would be none the wiser still (!).
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - James2001 - 28-01-2022
Admittedly it does seem strange that the master tape of an episode as late as 1985 could go missing, but these things do happen. Apparently UK Gold were scheduled to show that episode at one point in the mid-90s but it was replaced with another at the last minute, so it must have been missing then.
It can happen though- we've lost two episode of EastEnders from the current run of Drama because they'd supposedly gone missing (plus skipped several others that do exist for various reasons- many of which didn't seem to make sense). One from 1986 and one from 1989- both of which had been repeated by UK Gold in both 1993/94 and 1997/98, so must have gone missing post-1998, however unlikely it seems that episodes of such a major show would go missing that late, particularly when there surely must have been multiple copies of both episodes in existance at some point (what happened to UK Gold's copies for example? Especially when even now UKTV still use some masters that date back to the 90s with the old break captions burnt in). The BFI do list them holding a 1" tape (possibly the original master tape?) of the latter episode though even if the BBC themselves somehow don't seem to have a copy. And there's 4 episodes of Corrie from 83/84 that seem to only exist as timecoded VHSs.
Top of the Pops on BBC Four - HEW2343 - 29-01-2022
26/3/92 with Trading Places competition link
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/9e1ae8c367f026f1f9f64c91ec3135d620220129061021/2260b2