From next week BBC4 will start showing Top of the Pops. Starting in 1976, they will shoe the equivalent weeks episode form that year each week. I had just turned 6 and I'd imagine that this would be when it first came to my attention. Music shows were few and far between then and this would explain the popularity of the show back then.
Having just taken a glance at the charts for the first week of April 1976, it's looking like a mixed bag for the first episode. What I really want to see is Pans People performing to Jungle Rock by Hank Mizell, what I can be certain of is that Brotherhood of Man will be on as the number one and that Jimmy Saville will look like a right twat.

They should also do Whistle Test.

Absolutely fantastic that they're transmitting shows in their entirety, but... is it really best to do it sequentially? I mean, it will be fascinating to see the ebb and flow of singles in 'real time', as it were, and the completists can hardly complain; but a little more variety wouldn't have gone amiss. They should be putting them on five nights a week, or perhaps starting a run from 1976 at 7pm and one from 1986 at 7.30.

The reason they have chosen 1976 is because it is the first full year they have all the episodes for. It was not standard practice to save them somewhere before apparently.

Apparently quite a few 'lost' shows are still in existence in private libraries (in other words the people who retrieved the tapes from the skip round the back of BBC Centre).
The BBC believe the tapes - which they years previously thought were worthless - should be handed back free as it's still their property.
Unsurprisingly, the current owners think otherwise.

The BBC still own the performances, FWIW. So playing the tapes would be an infringement.

Aside from the content what does the law say about the ownership of the tapes just as a physical object?

I'm not sure but I think it's OK; A musician friend currently has a stand off with the BBC "I own the songs" vs "we own the performances".

This is terrific. I've got about 100 or so episodes of TOTP from the 1970s and 1980s (I read somewhere that there are only a couple of full episodes surviving from the 1960s), but they're not all terrific quality and it gives the completist in me a chance to properly geek out (a bit like my slowly forming Match Of The Day collection, I guess - I'm up to January 1967 and slowly filling up a lot of external HD space).

The ownership is a matter of whether they are broadcast publically or not, I would have thought. The collectors should probably at least pass copies over to the BBC, though, shouldn't they?

Looking forward to this myself even if 1976 is between the years I most appreciated TOTP...glam rock to punk..it was still essntial watching even if it was Showaddywaddywaddywaddy

Hang on, is somewhere showing early Match of the Days?

Sean of the Shed wrote:

And they did on tonight's episode. That must have been a deeply suppressed memory tucked right at the back of my mind. there they were, dressed up in safari suits like great white hunters, while a selection of people jigged about in animal outfits, like some prototype Flaming Lips performance.It's right here. Check out the elephant at 2:11, he's a natural mover.

DA, I'll drop you a line.

Done.

Has it started already? I thought it was due to start next week?

I'm definitely putting a series link on it though. It'll be interesting to see when the nostalgia starts to kick in. My earliest memories of TOTP are Mississippi by Pussy Cat, Money, Money, Money by Abba and Don't give up on us baby by David Soul. Checking their dates on Wikipedia, it looks like I started watching in October/November 1976.

Legs & Co dancing to Pretty Vacant was the highlight for me, in the absence of Dexy's performance of Jackie Wilson Said with the giant picture of Jocky Wilson in the background.

Yeah, it started last night, but it's repeated Sunday night/monday morning at 3.20.

Anything that has Sailor on it, is good enough for me.

Brilliant stuff, it's gotten me through my shiteshifts this weekend. At one point we were all up grooving like good 'uns when ABBA came on.

I enjoyed the documentary despite hearing for the hundredth time from people who were bored in 1976. It was terrible, the Brotherhood of Man were on.

Read a fucking book.