Top of the Pops on BBC Four

[James2001]

It's actually a different Iron Maiden video to the one I've seen elsewhere used on this TOTP, which has clips from some old black & white horror film mixed in with the performance clips.

[Hellwyn Ballard]

The seemingly eternal struggle by TOTP to incorporate the BBC logo in the copyright strapline was still ongoing, even in 1991.

"Oh, sod it, just do Option-G to bring up that C in a circle, then type BBC in caps"

[James2001]

On the 10/1/91 edition they played the middle portion of the Grease Megamix which they for some reason cut out of the previous screening.

Funny editing in the Grease Megamix itself to remove sh*t and t*t from Greased Lightning by dubbing in a line from later in the song instead (so we hear that line twice), though that's an edit in the track itself rather than something TOTP did. The line they replaced it with has "pussy wagon" in though which is hardly entirely clean itself.

According to Wikipedia, the BBC banned the Iron Maiden track, from the radio at least. Was there really a good reason for that? They had no issues playing a lengthy exerpt from it twice on TOTP.

[James2001]

The seemingly eternal struggle by TOTP to incorporate the BBC logo in the copyright strapline was still ongoing, even in 1991.

"Oh, sod it, just do Option-G to bring up that C in a circle, then type BBC in caps"

The thing with copyright dates in the 1984-91 era on TOTP is a bit odd. When they first started using electronically generated credits, for the first few months we had BBC and the copyright date in the same font as the rest of the credits, presumably because they didn't have the BBC logo or the font for the date itself in electronic form. They started having the proper BBC logo from later in the year, but they didn't have the proper font for the copyright date itself until July 1987. Then from the start of 1989 they went back to having the copyright date in the same font as the credits, the first show of 1990 then had the new BBC logo and font for the copyright date, the second show of 1990 went back to the 1989 way of doing things, the third show of 1990 had the new logo but used the font for the credits for the copyright date, then the original Cypher run was "© BBCTV 1990" (again, presumably they didn't have the BBC logo or the copyright font in the Cypher). When they stopped using the cypher graphics, we had the proper BBC copyright strap for the rest of the year, then when Cypher returns we have "© BBC TV MCMXCI", though they do start using the proper copyright strap a few weeks into 1991. I don't think TOTP strays from the standard copyright straps after that- though there's the botched BBC logo in the 1998 titles!

Of course BBC copyright straps from the late 80s/early 90s are odd themselves, with the old BBC logo and style remaining in use even after the new logo was introduced, with only a couple of examples of the new BBC logo being used pre-1990 (Bob Says Opportunity Knocks is the only example I've seen using the new logo and copyright font in 1988 and 89, though there are some other 88/89 shows using the new logo but with other fonts for the dates, particularly ones made by Pebble Mill), and while most shows switched to the new style from the start of 1990, the old style copyright strap still popped up in places as late as 1993. Compare that to the pretty much overnight change in 1997.

[RR]

According to Wikipedia, the BBC banned the Iron Maiden track, from the radio at least. Was there really a good reason for that? They had no issues playing a lengthy exerpt from it twice on TOTP.

The quote re a "ban" actually comes from an article on the BBC website:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/qjqv/

However, not sure if it was banned, the would be no need, as the BBC wouldn't play heavy metal anyway outside of the specific rock shows plus the chart run down as far as I recall.

[James2001]

So by "banned", they just mean "not on their regular playlist"... which isn't the same thing.

[Colm]

The BBC 'lozenges' contemporary to the mid-80s were included as characters on the Linotype Audio Pi typeface, released in 1984 and featuring, mainly, German TV station logos:

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/audio-pi/

Given the character set includes the ARD Das Erste ident unveiled that October, it was most likely not available when TOTP started using an Aston 3 system to generate captions two episodes into 1984 - hence tricky to make the 'BBC' logo without altering the hardware to insert physically a special character.

I'm sure over the blue board it was explained there was a compatibility issue with fonts on the Cypher kit, as they used higher-quality typefaces as found on, and compatible with, Quantel equipment rather than Aston machines.

It'd be nice to get industry insight on how the 1990/1991 graphics were composed: were the sunbursts and other shapes, as used to accompany chart positions on performance captions/chart rundowns, typeface characters, or bitmaps - and was it possible to have used a BBC logo bitmap/other image format in the end credits?

A further question I have: did compatibility issues get resolved by the time we reach Year Zero?

Captions from October 1991 certainly have hallmarks of being created on Cypher - text character/component animation having a similar slick(er) movement to the Jan-Sep '91 style; use of fonts also found on Quantel Paintbox (Fritz Quadrata the main one).

I'm sure the BBC logo ended up appearing on the end credits eventually, and after September 1992, I definitely recall the larger BBC logo animating into shot.

[James2001]

I read an article from an internal BBC magazine from 1991 about the move of TOTP to Elstree, and it did say they were using a Cypher machine. The same article also described how they were having to rearrange the stage set-ups due to the last minute decision to enforce live vocals.

[James2001]

Here's the ITV Chart Show edition from the same day as this Friday's first TOTP (as it was delayed until Saturday because of the gulf war):

https://we.tl/t-XFYLSEHQGz

Really does show how out of date TOTP must have seemed- you had The Chart Show showing a brand new chart, then the TOTP which was broadcast several hours later was still using the previous weeks' chart.

And yes, I spent far too much time re-inserting the ITV logo into the opening titles and break captions that were removed when The Vault repeated this episode.

[Colm]

BBC logo and dateline in Futura Bold Condensed Italic now present on the 'electronic caption'-generated end credits as of 24/1/1991.

[bbpro]

Anyone know why the last episode (25/01/1991) was shorter in duration?
Simon Mayo at the beginning of the episode referenced the shorter duration but no explanation as to why?

[JAS84]

Because it was pre-empted, I assume for Gulf War related news coverage. Genome says it should've been on for half an hour at 7pm on 24/01/1991. It must've been postponed and aired the next day in a shorter timeslot.
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bb...1991-01-24
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bb...1991-01-25

[James2001]

I imagine Simon didn't need to say why it was shorter, as I doubt anyone at the time would have missed the wall to all Gulf War coverage it was being shortened and postponed for. It's not like he'd have been giving any thought to repeats 30 years later!

[Robert Williams]

Anyone know why the last episode (25/01/1991) was shorter in duration?
Simon Mayo at the beginning of the episode referenced the shorter duration but no explanation as to why?

Because it was pre-empted, I assume for Gulf War related news coverage. Genome says it should've been on for half an hour at 7pm on 24/01/1991. It must've been postponed and aired the next day in a shorter timeslot.
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bb...1991-01-24
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bb...1991-01-25

It did air on the correct day, 24th January, but, as mentioned, was shortened to make way for additional news coverage. Note that the BBC programme page https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wfdq gives the original timeslot as 19:05.

[bbpro]

Thanks for the explanation, I would have only been 6 years old at the time of the original airing so didn’t think about the Gulf war connection.

It makes complete sense for Simon not having to refer to explaining the shorter duration under these circumstances.