Top Of The Pops - The Story - Part 2 -through to the end and oversees

Eventually Thames & TVS began scheduling the series at 12.30am (00.30hrs), and very soon TOTP was a monopoly again. They were very fortunate as the series was very weak at the time - Peel had left and their only idea to counteract The Roxy (who used regular presenters) was getting Mike Smith & Gary Davies to do almost every show. The end of the year saw the BBC team up with ABC to launch an (thankfully short-lived) American version of the series, which led to a few programmes full of boring, mushe US-derived material.

On its 25th anniversary, it was time for another revamp, but the new set looked horrible and the old theme tune by Paul Hardcastle (The Wizard) remained, despite it already sounding old fashioned. New producer Paul Ciani decided to hire new presenters, so people like Andy Crane, Simon Parkin, Jenny Powell & Anthea Turner started turning up, much to everyone's bemusement. The design had started to look very tacky, and again the programme was becoming something of an embarrassment. By 1992, a current episode looked not dissimilar to a 1984 episode, which wasn't a good thing. Ciani abstained from the producer's chair due to illness and Stan Appel returned as a temporary replacement.

Later he began to run the entire Top 40 along the bottom of the screen under a video midway through the programme, but this led to a lack of structure to each show. Ciani never came back and Appel then took charge permanently - even though he was clearly too old to be doing so. It was decided to completely revamp the series, in an attempt to make it essential viewing, but what a way to do it...

With all this, TOTP ceased to become the place to find out what was popular.

Appel's second mistake was the creation of another rule - acts had to sing live on the programme . This was idiotic, and pandered to the "You can't hear the words" mentality that TOTP should not have been encouraging. Instead of celebrating pop music for what it was, it began to penalise it. Acts like Cathy Dennis & Dannii Minogue suffered under the new regime, being unable to perform to their full potential, and it wasn't as if people were buying their records because of their fantastic singing voices. Even more fatally this discriminated against dance acts that within a few months had become the major force in pop music. Acts like 2 Unlimited, Prodigy & Utah Saints had to sing live, which they clearly weren't supposed to do - therefore their performances on the programme sounded nothing like their records. It's instructive that the only praise for the new format in the Radio Times came from a 40-year old, exactly the wrong sort of audience that had a loyal audience of record buyers and there was the opportunity to perform for longer periods of time. The Roxy only offered 3 minutes of miming in front of an audience who hadn't turned off after Crossroads.

Eventually Thames & TVS began scheduling the series at 12.30am (00.30hrs), and very soon TOTP was a monopoly again. They were very fortunate as the series was very weak at the time - Peel had left and their only idea to counteract The Roxy (who used regular presenters) was getting Mike Smith & Gary Davies to do almost every show. The end of the year saw the BBC team up with ABC to launch an (thankfully short-lived) American version of the series, which led to a few programmes full of boring, mushe US-derived material.

This continued for a while, and even the return of Michael Hurll as a holiday relief in 1992 did little to brighten things up - in fact things got even worse, as Hurll selected a range of acts that could have meant little to the average teenager.

A letter to the Radio Times in 1993 commiserated the production team on the axing of the series - it hadn't been, but the papers began suggesting that the series was under threat. By the time it reached its 30th anniversary, despite getting anniversary programming on BBC1 the series was in serious doubt.

Ridiculously Stan Appel retired from the programme in January 1994 - it still seems incredible that the programme was produced by a man at the end of his BBC career, and even more so when you consider he was producing Every Second Counts at the same time. Possible his olny triumph in his second stint was the resurrection of Meat Loaf's career, but again, this is hardly what TOTP should be. Appel's replacement this time didn't come from the light entertainment department, thus breaking a tradition - instead it was former Radio 1 producer Ric Blaxill. Blaxhill's first changes on taking over were eminently sensible - he allowed bands to mime, and also started using Radio 1 DJs again.

Appel had dropped these in the re-launch. , instead using his own choice of unknown presenters, such as Mark Franklin & Tony Dortie - However they were all rubbish.

Blaxill soon started making further changes. He invited celebrities to introduce the programme in rotation to the DJs, and Angus Deayton & Andi Peters therefore made appearances in his first few months. The number on non-chart tracks remained , but at least they were now from acts who had appeal to a much younger audience. It was fortunate that Blaxill's tenure coincided with the rise in Britpop, and the gradual resurrection of the singles chart, after a few terrible years in the early 90s. Viewing figures began to rise again, and there was even a live edition in August, something they hadn't done for several years. In September TOTP2 was launched , though in a different format than it takes now. (The original format was better as it catered for a wider audience).

It compiled highlights of the previous weeks programme with some brief archive footage and new releases - attempting to create "a music magazine for the older record buyer".

In fact, so successful was Blaxhill's first year that in February 1995 the Radio Times devoted 2 pages to him and how he made TOTP great again. This coincided with the spinoff magazine from the programme, which at the start attempted to appeal "not to the teenybopper market" but to music fans. For The BBC this was a treat, it coincided with the Chris Evans inspired revival of Radio 1s fortunes, and so the corporation was able to court a much more attractive audience. However, it seems that Blaxill began to believe his own publicity somewhat - he began selecting bands for exclusives that the general public seemed to have little interest in such as Elastica, Menswear (for their first, limited release single) and most notoriously Bis. Records going down the charts started to be played for the first time.

Later William Phillips, writing in Broadcast Magazine, was deriding him for "marginalising the wrong kind of viewer", as viewing figures dipped again.

Thursday 6 Jun 1997 saw Nicky Campbell announce that we were watching "the last Thursday TOTP for a while" - the series was moved to Friday, ostensibly to avoid a clash with sporting events over the summer, and the BBC told us it would return to Thursdays in the autumn. However, other factors seemed to be at work - over the summer the only sporting events on a Thursday were one football match and 2 weeks of the Olympics. The Olympics however, were also on a Friday, and the show was moved over to BBC2 for those 2 weeks. It became obvious that this schedule change was to test the water for a permanent move.

His replacement from March was Mark Wells, an established light entertainment producer - this was a bit of a throwback to the early days. Despite only being in charge for 3 months, changes were made - exclusives became less frequent, the programme concentrating on the chart more and the personality presenter took a back seat. More presenters came from Radio 1 (including on 2 occasions Mark & Lard) and others were your basic telegenic babe, a la Dannii Minogue, Jayne Middlemiss & Sarah Cawood who did several shows in this period. Of most interest is a edition in May when for the first time ever, every act performed in the studio - the first for many, many years without a video. Even during the Blaxill era there was at least one video, normally for technical reasons - the show was recorded in one go, so a video allowed for a break, as the chart could be run over it.

However, this era began to utilise recording in batches more - acts would perform in the studio whenever they were available, and the performance wouild be recorded and slotted in if & when the single made the charts.

A permanent new producer arrived in 1997 - Chris Cowey was a former producer of Channel 4's "White Room" and had many years experience as a music producer at Tyne Tees (he'd worked on The Tube). This seemed high-faluting for TOTP, coming from "serious" music programmes rather than light entertainment. However, Cowey had a successful first period in charge. He seemed to learn from Hurll's model, so acts performed on large stages, with the audience in vision, and the programme looked visually more exciting. More creativity was apparent in set design and in the presentation of the acts - often short inserts were filmed earlier and incorporated into the performance. After experimenting with presenters (people such as Sarah Cawood and Denise Van Outen turning up for one-off shows), he began to settle on a regular team, which became Jo Whiley, Jayne Middlemiss and Zoe Ball. The programme became more stable, and viewing figures increased.

And this is almost where we leave it - unfortunately the series couldn't improve on these developments, and there's an air of tiredness about the programme again. The set hasn't changed for nearly three years, and so many performance are now recorded in advance that the programme often resembles a clip show. Some tracks are now flogged to death, while others are totally ignored - Cowey "banned" videos, insisting that bands turned up, but this has lead to some ridiculous situations, with Funkstar Deluxe not appearing on the programme last year despite being at number three.

Worse still, a scheduling change to Top Of The Pops 2 brought it into a much more user-friendly Wednesday evening slot (from Saturdays) and a massively increased audience. The new format utilises archive material and selected performances from Top Of The Pops to appeal to a much wider age range. Recently, an edition of Top Of The Pops 2 got more viewers than that week's Top Of The Pops. With Pops now moving to BBC2 on numerous occasions, will we see the loss of a regular prime-time pop show? The format has just been sold to America again, which was a mistake last time - will it happen again?

A new-look - including a fresh logo, title sequence and signature music - was launched on Friday 1 May 1998. The changes include a brand-new version of 'Whole Lotta Love'. The famous theme tune has been completely re-worked by Bad Man Bad. The show, now broadcast on BBC-1 at 7.30 pm each Friday night, is hosted by a regular team of presenters, including Jamie Theakston, Jayne Middlemiss and Gail Porter.

Whatever the changes, however, the essence of the show - that precious format - remains untouched.

The show has become so popular that it is now shown in over 80 countries worldwide, most with their own shows and artists. Some such as Germany have slightly different shows with added content such as Top News all about what the top artists of the day are doing and also a competition. Most again such as the shows in Germany and Holland they are longer than in the UK, their shows are 1 hour long , whereas in the UK they are only 30 minutes.

In 2003 a new producer came in after Chris Cowey left. The new producer Andi Peters. He came from children's television and turned out to be the show's worst ever producer. The acts and music genre on the show became more & more to his own personal taste. In part, due to this fact the ratings sunk lower & lower and with a new presenter Tim Kash who also turned out to be the worst presenter in the the show's history, rating fell to rock bottom. The BBC tried to revive it somewhat by switching it to BBC on Sundays and linking with TOTP2. From here on the show was dead in the UK.

R.I.P. - TOP OF THE POPS