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Media
BBC admit global interest in Top Of The Pops
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 15 July 2009
A senior exec at the BBC’s commercial division, BBC Worldwide, has admitted that while the main bit of the Corporation has no current plans to resurrect legendary pop show Top Of The Pops, over and above occasional special editions, other broadcasters around the world are eager to licence the iconic telly franchise.
Local versions of the show previously aired in places like Holland, Belgium, Italy, France, New Zealand, Germany and the Middle East, and BBC Worldwide’s Salim Mukaddam has told Billboard he’s been approached from a number of international broadcasters about launching new editions of the pop telly shows, with one even proposing a TOTP channel.
He told the trade magazine: “There’s huge demand. We’re actually talking to some of the international producers and broadcasters who did some of the international versions about trying to do tailored versions for their territories”, but he admitted that global versions of the show are less attractive without a British version feeding it with London-filmed performances from current UK and US talent. He continued: “If the BBC brought it back we would be fully behind it commercialising it internationally, absolutely. If it came back [to BBC 1] tomorrow [international broadcasters] would take it”.
As previously reported, the dummies at the Beeb axed the show back in 2006 declaring the programme irrelevant in the internet age, while failing to recognise that declining ratings were down to poor scheduling, some terrible production decisions made by Andi “I really wanted to work on CD:UK’ Peters, and the fact that main host Fearne Cotton is the most talentless presenter in the history of British broadcasting. The format was fine, mismanagement the problem.
