BBC's 'Top of the Pops' Cancelled After 42 Years

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has announced that after four decades, they will be canceling their major music chart show, Top of the Pops. The show has suffered ratings losses in the past few years due to what the BBC calls a "rapidly changing musical landscape."

Top of the Pops, the BBC's music charts show, kicked off its 42 year run with the Rolling Stones' "I Wanna Be Your Man" back on January 1st, 1964. However, as satellite TV, the Internet and cell phones have encroached on the market, Top of the Pops just couldn't compete. As The Mercury News quoted BBC director of television Jana Barrett as saying, "We're very proud of a show which has survived 42 years in the U.K. and gone on to become a worldwide brand, but the time has come to bring the show to its natural conclusion."

The show, which started off in an unused church on Dickenson Road in Longsight, Manchester, will complete its run having aired more than 2200 episodes. Top of the Pops enjoyed its best levels of success in the 1970s, when an average of 15 million viewers would watch the show. However, despite constant changes attempting to keep the show appearing modern and original, viewership would never reach those levels again, and, at the time of cancellation, would have barely more than a million viewers. As Entertainmentwise reports, "Some believe that the rot started to set in in 1996 when it was moved from a Thursday night to a Friday. It was then relaunched again in 2003 before moving to Sunday evenings on BBC2."

Sir Jimmy Savile, the original host of Top of the Pops and BBC Radio 1 DJ, doesn't seem shocked by the news of the cancellation. The Sun quoted the former icon as saying "Back then you had to wait until Thursday night to get your fix - and you don't need to do that anymore." However, Savile still seemed rather happy with the whole experience. "Top Of The Pops has been over-run by videos of music on TV. But every time I see these video shows I can feel proud about what I started."

Audiences began to move away from the show after its 1000th episode back in 1983. Viewers slowly, but surely, began to turn away to other sources for their music news. In 2003, the BBC considered ending Top of the Pops, but decided in favor of overhauling the show in an attempt to make it more modern and with the times. However, as the idea failed and numbers dwindled even further, the show was moved from BBC1 on Fridays to BBC2 on Sundays, which seemed to mark the end of the era. The Sun quoted Mike Read, Top of the Pops host in the 80s, as concluding, "It was a situation that was obviously coming. The show could have done with creative thinking. They needed to woo people back."

With the final installment of Top of the Pops airing on July 30th, the show will keep its legacy alive. As the CBC reports, "TOTP2, a spinoff show, will continue to be seen irregularly on BBC." As well, The Sun reports that " The BBC will still air TOTP archives plus some new footage." Despite all this, Sunday, July 30, will indeed see the end of a long and memorable era.

[Additional Sources: BBC, The Mercury News, Entertainmentwise, The Sun, CBC, ]