TOTP, wherefore art thou?
By Fran Ashcroft
Over the holidays I watched the Top Of the Pops Xmas special, featuring no.1s from 2009. I thought I should as I honestly couldn’t tell you any records that reached the top spot last year. When you consider that as a producer it might be handy to be up to speed with that, all I can say is that it’s become increasingly meaningless to me since the show was canceled a couple of years ago, and I expect it’s just as irrelevant to its erstwhile audience.
Why? Not so much down to free downloadable music or any of those Home Taping Is Killing Music arguments – but because of the waning importance of pop music in our culture. From the early 60s to late 90s, in the UK, music was foremost in the media. Everyone knew the latest pop stars, hit records – and trends and fashion followed the lead of the music industry.
Since then however we’ve been subjected to relentless Americanisation, which brought films – sorry, Movies – to the promotional spotlight; loads of TV advertising of the latest releases, plenty of media coverage of the top grossing films and Hollywood shenanigins.
What was the prime audience for music sales was spending its dosh on cinema tickets and popcorn – not CDs. Add to that the cult of celebrity – especially reality TV, and the only musical artists who garner enough of the limelight to reach the greater public are the use-once-and-throw-away X Factor winners, or an occasional pop star who behaves extremely badly. In the face of all that, we really needed a show like TOTP to provide some kind of window on the music world. But now we don’t have anything.
TV as a whole seems to have abandoned music programmes completely now (including MTV, ironically). Other than the sponsored Hits style digital channels and one or two lame attempts at ‘Youth programming’ by the BBC, which made Blue Peter look hip. Without a focal point, music is bound to struggle; and TOTP provided that, if nothing else.
I miss it.
One Response to “TOTP, wherefore art thou?”
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Interesting article, Fran – I agree to an extent. I’m old enough to remember TOTP in its real heyday in the 60s and it was certainly an unmissable experience then because the music scene itself was driven by the people who made the music. A similar thing happened in the 80s with the explosion of new technology and the indie label phenomenon. However, it was often the case that an artist could only be successful by appearing on TOTP/Radio 1, so inevitably success came down to contacts/nepotism/who you know etc. and TOTP was a central part of the music business money-go-round.