Top of the Pops 'to return to the BBC'

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BBC executives have hinted that the show could be revived, with music industry insiders suggesting that it could be revamped for the YouTube generation with more populist acts and exclusive songs that viewers could share online.

Artists and record labels concerned about the lack of popular music on television have been lobbying for Top of the Pops to be brought back since it was dropped in March 2006 after 42 years.

Mark Cooper, head of music entertainment for BBC TV, said that he wanted the weekly show to return and that low ratings need not be a barrier.

"It's a Sleeping Beauty. One day it will come back, in the way that Top Gear and Dr Who came back," he told The Times.

"It's probably no longer the case that Top of the Pops can be revived on the basis of it being an entertainment programme – instead it may have to be judged as a public service."

The show could return to schedules within a year, it was claimed. The BBC is thought to be considering putting on a Christmas special, after rebuffing Simon Cowell's offer to buy the rights for a one-off Top of the Pops on ITV.

Singer Lemar recently raised the matter with Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, at a Downing Street breakfast, and Oasis frontman Noel Gallagher has also called for the show to return to screens.

"Because people don't have that shared experience of pop music, and it being their own... people start getting into weird s--- and knifing each other," he said last month.

Top of the Pops regularly pulled in audiences of 14 million in its heydey in the 1970s, but fell to little more than a million before it was axed.


Source: telegraph