I thought I’d start a new thread to discuss this. Is it me, or are the re-runs losing their shine. I’ve watched the first four 1976 episodes, and I have to say, they are nowhere near as good as I remember them. Is it my memory or was April 1976 just a really cheesy period of pop music? Are we suffering from the post-glam, pre-punk period? The other problem is that I seem to have seen the same acts more than once. Does it get better? Also, I remember a website where the contents of each show was listed. Can anybody remember the address? Thanks.

And everyone is sooo old. it is as if they are all begging for new-wave to come along and put it out of its misery.

and no , it does not get better, it never did, including the creepy hosts.

I've not been watching them; I loved some of the music of the era but felt most of the performers had little if any visual appeal (including myself).
Do let me know if they include my It Only Takes A Minute in the summer!

It appears the TOTP re-runs have been edited. A few tracks have been missed out.
fatherandy2.proboards.com/index.cgi?boar...lay&thread=67144

The editing of the 40-minute shows into a 30-minute slot has been very annoying for us TOTP fans, however the BBC have today confirmed that following numerous complaints they will be showing the *full* 40-minute shows as originally broadcast in the late-night repeat slots the show has.

This means that JK's performance of "It Only Takes A Minute" should get its airing after all, as it is extremely likely that it will be cut from the 7:30pm edition.

The shows that have been aired so far have been very repetitive: each of them finishing with Brotherhood Of Man at Number One - this Thursday it has its final week at the top - and also including numerous repeated studio performances and also Pan's People interpretations of steadily climbing hits, most of which somehow survived the savage edits the episodes have suffered. Abba's "Fernando" has already been aired three times, and will also enjoy a four-week run at Number One shortly! Elton & Kiki will also spend six weeks in a row, with "Dancing Queen" and Showaddywaddy to follow before the end of the year: a year of long spells at the summit!

If Joe Public are still tuning in (and I suspect they are not), there are unfortunately many episodes due to air later in the year where all of the tracks featured are not at all remembered apart from the Number One. 1976 is a very risky place to start showing these in order. If they had begun showing episodes from 30 years ago rather than 35, I'm sure the show would pull in more than a million viewers a week.

But having said that from a personal point of view, I'm enjoying seeing these episodes for the first time as I was only a toddler in 1976. I will enjoy them while they last - BBC Four are bound to pull the plug on this series due to the inevitable falling ratings, probalby before the full year they promised us initially has elapsed.

But good news about the promise to start showing the full episodes being shown in the early hours anyway.

Even without additional cuts, most shows seem to be cobbled together really bad. There is little continuity and no drama / excitement: Why did they show the complete Top 30 at the beginning (without song titles)? Why didn't they use a countdown-format (like in radio)?

The music isn't the main problem, it is the format itself: There are only a few possibilities to film these kind of staged performances (in a TV studio, week in, week out). TOTP did only work because the show provided (more or less) the only possibility to see musical acts.

Probably deliberately started in 1976 to conveniently avoid Gary Glitter.Start in 1976 when he was in decline and avoid tabloid hysteria.

I love(d) TOTP, but watching them 35 years later in sequence week-to-week is like watching old news reports - interesting enough in a way, but not actually worth the time sifting through the rubbish (though fine in isolation) to get to the real nuggets. If they insist on showing them in sequence, at least show them nightly to make things move along quicker, or go for a "This week in 19xx" format, changing the year every week to give it some variety - this approach seems designed to bore all but obsessive viewers into not bothering...

Metal Mickey wrote:
I love(d) TOTP, but watching them 35 years later in sequence week-to-week is like watching old news reports - interesting enough in a way, but not actually worth the time sifting through the rubbish (though fine in isolation) to get to the real nuggets. If they insist on showing them in sequence, at least show them nightly to make things move along quicker, or go for a "This week in 19xx" format, changing the year every week to give it some variety - this approach seems designed to bore all but obsessive viewers into not bothering...

I'm glad most people seem to be sharing my experience. MM seems to have the best solution, by switching the year around each week, so it's, say, 1976 one week, and 1979 the next and so on. I'm not sure of the formula, but isn't that what they do with Tony Blackburn's "Pick of the Pops" Saturday radio 2 show?

Yes - and that way manage to avoid ever featuring Gary Glitter or JK tracks!

JK2006 wrote:
Yes - and that way manage to avoid ever featuring Gary Glitter or JK tracks!

Another good reason!!! Only joking. It's a shame that we are deprived of hearing JK and GG tracks on TV or radio, regardless of what the performer has subsequently done, (or not), it doesn't mean what was judged as good music should suddenly be re-classified as not suitable to listen to or see.