Another into graveyard of dinosaurs: BBC terminates Top of the Pops after 42 years

I consider myself a vidiot. A video idiot. I love my TV. I also have loved music videos very specifically, long before they were called that, and started collecting music videos nearly a decade before MTV was launched. To me the marriage of pop music and TV was always exceptionally powerful video entertainment.

I was born in Finland and in my early teen years Finland's three radio stations broadcast only a couple of hours of pop/rock music per week. And back then when TV was aspiring to deliver high quality and culture, there of course was no pop or rock music on TV, of any kind in Finland.

So on my first visit to England in the summer of 1973 I felt like I had arrived in heaven. A 24 hour radio station playing pop music (BBC). To someone so accustomed to a scarsity of pop music on the airwaves, this alone would have made my England trip one of a lifetime.

Except that there was something even more amazing. Top of the Pops. I spent two weeks in England, and therefore I got to experience Top of the Pops twice. A whole TV show of pop music, the best-selling songs straight from the charts in England - with the actual stars, bands, artists, performing "live" (I was too young to understand what was lip-synching). T.Rex, The Sweet, Suzi Quattro, Slade, David Bowie..  I only knew of these bands from pushing precious coins into juke boxes in Finland and from pictures in the Finnish pop music monthly, Suosikki. Now they were not only playing on the radio every day all day - but I got to see all the biggest stars perform on TV.

For anyone of our readers in their 30s or 20s this may be very difficult to understand. You have grown up with music on radio and TV 24 hours a day anywhere everywhere. And on the net and on Napster and on iPods etc. But remember that the teenager in me had never seen any TV show that featured pop music.

I remember back then deciding that if one day in the future I could have the kind of job that would allow me to work and live in England (in London naturally), that would be heaven. From back then I knew I would seek an internationally appreciated job or career as this would be my best ticket to land a job in London..  Funny how things work out in the long run..

So for me Top of the Pops was the start of a love-affair of seeing my favourite artists perform. Eventually around 1974 in Finland we also got our own monthly pop music TV show (Iltatahti), and I would get to see (and collect onto videotape) those early precursors to what is music video today.

MTV came along in 1982 and I was also quite blessed to be studying in America from 1983, so I got to see the very early stages of MTV. By this time I was one of the very small minority who felt music video was an art form and totally valid entertainment. I often argued with my peers about music - claiming (as I still feel) that I prefer seeing a well made music video to seeing the band butchering the same song performing it live. We've written about MTV in the book and on this blogsite in various contexts, such as this celebration of MTV turning 24 last year. I often also use various innovations from MTV in my workshops and seminars. I love MTV (or to use their old slogan, I want my MTV). I track MTV closely and am happy that MTV now operates over 40 separate networks in several dozen countries/regions.

Incidentially once I moved to England in 2001, I got myself a set top box and accessed several 24 hour music video channels. Because of that, even thought I liked Top of the Pops from my youth, I never really tuned to that show on the BBC. Behaving in this way like those of Generation-C, I plan my usage of media, I don't let the media control me. So I am not a slave to when the BBC decides to broadcast its chart show. Oh, and obviously, Top of the Pops has the artists performing. I actually prefer to see the music video rather than a stage performance with some old-fashioned camera movements and flashing lights and dancers to try to build the emotion to the song.

Over the past five years I must have watched Top of the Pops perhaps a dozen times. But every day at home I have a music video channel as my background music, switching between that and CNN and BBC 24 hour news (I'm also a news junkie. Once a vidiot, always a vidiot)

So clearly I've had a long close relationship with enjoying music on TV. Today's (well, technically yesterday June 21 it was reported in the Financial Times) announcement that the BBC will discontinue running Top of the Pops took me totally by surprise. The BBC has been running this cultural icon and staple of the UK pop music scene continuously for 42 years. It is the longest running regularly scheduled music program on the planet. At its peak Top of the Pops reached a weekly audience of 19 million (and remember the UK has a population of 60 million). Today the viewership is down to 1 million.

I should have seen this coming. It was only in February of this year that we reported that another long-running youth/pop music icon of the UK scene - the magazine Smash Hits was being terminated.

And we gave the reasons - lack of readership. The target readers were now online and dividing their attention into anything from videogames to mobile phones. I should have seen this coming for TOTP.

On the one hand I've seen the proliferation of 24 hour music channels (MTV and its clones). And on the other hand after starging on the book project with Alan, over the past few years I've reported how all those traditional uni-directional media formats are suffering and now dying.

I should have seen this coming. Still I didn't. And it does make me sad in a small way. Top of the Pops was something quite spectacular. Many UK based artists who really made it huge worldwide, had their career take off through their first appearances on TOTP, from David Bowie and T.Rex to Queen to Duran Duran etc. I believe the Beatles took off just prior to the launch of Top of the Pops, but I've heard the Rolling Stones attribute their initial success much to their "bad boy" image of their appearances on Top of the Pops. That show made stars. And appearing on that show was a validation for any British band that they had finally made it.

Now that show will be cancelled. What does most sadden me about this, is that the BBC clearly is very close to popular culture. The BBC is also very active in the digital space, building communities, engaging with their viewers (and listeners and web surfers). This is a British cultural icon. Could the BBC not revive it and reformat the show to fit Generation-C. Its not that the BBC is ignorant of the megatrends that Alan and I discuss here daily. We've both met with many BBC executives in various occasions, and definitely we feel that the BBC is much more along the way than most broadcasters, in migrating their corporate future into the digital, connected and community age. They are well on the way to learning to engage.

Did Top of the Pops have to die? My heart pleads for it not to be. But also, my brain coldly reminds me that there are many programs I will "Tivo" ie set my PVR to record - and never was that Top of the Pops. If someone so much addicted to pop music on TV like myself is actively ignoring TOTP, then definitely its time had come. There are many websites I visit. I never even bothered to seek the site for TOTP. I watch music videos every day whether here in London or in some hotel in some foreign time zone. But I do not tune into TOTP.

Yes, this was a dinosaur. How many rock stars said to not trust people over the age of 30? Perhaps TOTP should have been kindly killed a decade ago, when it reached its 30s. Yes lets let it go in peace. But for that magical summer in 1973 when I SAW that sexy leather-clad Suzi Quattro belt out 48 Crash on Top of the Pops, I still get shivers in my spine recalling those moments. I did feel that I had been given a preview of heaven back then. Top of the Pops will always retain a top spot in memories of my youth.

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