... this could actually happen since Radio 2 have already banned his music.
No-one has “banned” his music. All you’ve got right now is a load of press articles lazily pointing to a paywalled Times article that vaguely comments on Radio 2 not playing any Jackson tracks in the past week. That is all.
The announcement from the BBC regarding the Michael Jackson ban so far only covers Radio 2, but I wouldn't be surprised if ends up extending to Top of the Pops repeats.
This will have a knock-on effect on Top of the Pops repeats, given he released an album in 1987 with a number of singles released in 1987 and 1988, and one in 1989, the first of which was in July 1987.
There hasn't been an official announcement about banning his music has there? The Sunday Times has reported on them not playing his music on Radio 2 since last week but the BBC haven't said anything publicly about it other than "we consider each piece of music on its merits and decisions on what we play on different networks are always made with relevant audiences and context in mind".
Yeah, I checked the BBC News website, nothing on there. If it was official, there'd be an article about it.
Checking the list of performances for the remaining 1987 editions, Michael Jackson's videos mainly appear on Mike Smith editions, meaning those particular programmes wouldn't have been shown on BBC Four anyway. The only 1987 edition which would need to be edited is when MJ appears as a breaker on 3/12/87. That should be doable.
He did get to number 1 for two weeks in August 1987 with I Just Can't Stop Loving You. However, as no video was made for the song, it did not actually feature on TOTP at all, other than being mentioned in the chart rundown. This would mark the first time since Frankie's "Relax" in 1984 that the number 1 single was not shown.
... this could actually happen since Radio 2 have already banned his music.
No-one has “banned” his music. All you’ve got right now is a load of press articles lazily pointing to a paywalled Times article that vaguely comments on Radio 2 not playing any Jackson tracks in the past week. That is all.
It's not like the tabloids to make baseless stories based on nothing, is it?
This was a live episode, and you can see the playout ends not long after the credits have finished rolling, unlike with the pre-recorded ones where it goes on for another 1-2 minutes, if this is standard for live episodes it explains why we never seemed to get long playouts on BBC4 showings of originally live episodes.
Also shortly after the video cuts out you can hear someone (presumably the floor manager) telling the audience they're off air and to go home.
“If you didn’t record it, you’ve missed it” - he wasn’t wrong, not even on BBC4 32 years later!
Stereo experiments aside, they thankfully didn't affect the spate of live vocal performances in three consecutive TOTP 1987 shows:
Tom Jones first..
...then the much-acclaimed on social media performance by Whitney Houston
...while the broadcast-live Smithy show mentioned above has Johnny Logan, to paraphrase MS, "singing live for the first time since winning Eurovision"
Since the orchestra days and up until "Year Zero", I don't think we get such a sequence of consecutive TOTPs with a live vocal performance.
Of course, one performance falls victim to sound issues on a live edition from 1988... which results in a further live vocal performance the week after.
Yes, technically just before “Year Zero”, there were five live performances over three weeks - Sabrina Johnston twice, Rozalla twice, and Simply Red.
Tonight on BBC4 is that unusual TOTP from election day 87 where they were shoved into a cut down set in the TV Theatre without an audience and was nearly all videos.
Tonight on BBC4 is that unusual TOTP from election day 87 where they were shoved into a cut down set in the TV Theatre without an audience and was nearly all videos.
Interesting graphic cock up on tonight's episode during one of the links on tonight's episode, where the Bruce Willis end caption and the start of the animation for the Beastie Boys caption appears on screen over Simon Bates (around 8:05 on the iPlayer):
Interestingly it shows that the capgen animates the chart number & artist name the same way it does with the song title, just it's never (usually) shown on screen.
Interesting graphic cock up on tonight's episode during one of the links on tonight's episode, where the Bruce Willis end caption and the start of the animation for the Beastie Boys caption appears on screen over Simon Bates (around 8:05 on the iPlayer):
Interestingly it shows that the capgen animates the chart number & artist name the same way it does with the song title, just it's never (usually) shown on screen.
Blimey. When Bruce Willis puts his specs on, he's a dead ringer for Simon Bates!!
I don't think even the John Farnham performance was live, there's no sign of Peter or Simon at the side of the stage at the beginning and end of the performance, and no sign of the flashing lights from the performance during the links. On such a small cut-down set (which seems to just consist of the TOTP logo on one side, the video screen on the other and a few of the neon boxes and a tiny stage in between), you wouldn't fail to see either if John was actually performing live. Unless there was another TOTP logo set up on the other side of the theatre, but I think they only had the one even when they were on the full set.
Tom Jones first..
