As the final edition of the once great Top Of The Pops has now been seen in the UK I am amazed at the  clips used, this should have been perhaps the best ever TOTP.

TWO weeks BEFORE the official BBC anouncement I started an online petition to have the archive opened to the music fans of the UK, or for the record companies to use this footage officially on DVD releases of their artists. You can view the petition here http://www.petitiononline.com/gjbslade/

Other details can be found on my TOTP blog here http://gaztotp.blogspot.com/

Instead, what UK music fans got was the same old boring clips used time and time again as used on TOTP2 Sounds of the 60's70's & 80's Boxpops and several others.

The BBC & TOTP Production & Research Team have produced the worst lament to any show that has ended that I care to remember.

I was incensed that we were seeing the same archive footage over and over again on the normal edition of TOTP, not forgetting the TOTP2 archive show was getting more viewers than the normal TOTP so much so the BBC in their wisdom decided to drop TOTP2 in 2004 in favour of the combination of the two shows.

 
Now that the show has come to an end I can speak out, there IS a large percentage of archive footage/TOTP promos especially filmed for the programme that has never been reshown since first tx,    this is not limited to the BBC either, since the various archive databases under the Creative Archive Licence and Freedom of Information Act have been online including BBC'S Infax ITN Archive and the BFI I have carried out extensive research of pop music from the 60's & 70's TV performances & Promo Videos that lie in the archives. There are also surviving clips and complete editions of TOTP that exist outside of the BBC mainly 60's & 70's (everything from mid 1976 has been kept) so why did the BBC not even bother finding this amazing video? I found it easy enough

Surely if the researchers had done their job better then this final show would not be receiving the bad press from both the media and the fans. TOTP of recent years had primarily been aimed at the teenage market so is it any wonder the viewing figures slipped, the BBC blame MTV ipods downloads ect ect, but what caused the show to fail was the BBC's decision to chop and change the format, the time, the day and the channel. It was the BBC who failed.