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Post by Chris Barratt on Sept 24, 2014 17:55:15 GMT
I get it totally about preserving the episodes as broadcast etc etc and endorse and support that: from my pov, the DJ links always just got on my nerves; even as a child, the music was always the important thing. I agree with this. Ideally we could see whole episodes on mainstream TV, but in the current climate that is not possible and clips of performances from the JS shows with him judiciously excised are the best that can be hoped for. As and when the BBC make full episodes available online I think there should be no censorship - just a warning to those who might be offended. Stuff the tabloid "Beeb make money from perv Savile" rubbish. There are of plenty of TOTP clips featuring JS on YouTube and no-one is demanding they be taken down. Then again, maybe it's only a matter of time... This is the problem though - and the crux of my argument really - the BBC have indeed quarantined every programme they have with Jimmy Savile on - including the performances from the TOTP's which are no longer available to in-house researchers. Precedent set - are they going to do that to DLT on account of his one dubious conviction relating to 11 years after he presented TOTP? It would appear so. Where will it end? I've found something else out today relating to yesterday's verdict - that allegation was raised initially not by the complainant but the producer of The Mrs Merton Show - and he happens to be married to the QC heading the "BBC Enquiry into Imaginary Abuse" or whatever it's called... So someone effectively employed to call judgement on the BBC legacy was actually gunning for Dave to be convicted of something. It doesn't bode well.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2014 18:05:05 GMT
I agree that we don't do the same thing with books and films,withdrawing them because they were created by (alleged) sex-offenders. Yes, that's the point really. It's very selective and extreme. All whipped up by a press with their own agenda to boot. I'd also say it's disproportionate to what has actually happened.
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Post by Liam Joseph on Sept 25, 2014 7:25:46 GMT
This is the problem though - and the crux of my argument really - the BBC have indeed quarantined every programme they have with Jimmy Savile on - including the performances from the TOTP's which are no longer available to in-house researchers. Precedent set - are they going to do that to DLT on account of his one dubious conviction relating to 11 years after he presented TOTP? It would appear so. Where will it end? I've found something else out today relating to yesterday's verdict - that allegation was raised initially not by the complainant but the producer of The Mrs Merton Show - and he happens to be married to the QC heading the "BBC Enquiry into Imaginary Abuse" or whatever it's called... So someone effectively employed to call judgement on the BBC legacy was actually gunning for Dave to be convicted of something. It doesn't bode well. Well we all know that, as well as being rubbish at retaining historic TV, the BBC are increasingly terrified of offending anybody. If they now remove all trace of DLT on the strength of that one dubious conviction it will be thoroughly craven. I didn't know about the Mrs Merton producer reporting the case to his lawyer wife, or the ban on researchers viewing episodes (thanks for the heads up). Just looked it up: Dinah Rose QC, who is married to former Mrs Merton producer Peter Kessler, was appointed by the BBC in 2012 to head its internal inquiry into sexual bullying. I'm no fan of DLT (and his irritating persona has presumably done him no favours) but it all reeks of vested interests, agendas and show trials. "We didn't get Savile, but here's a head on a stick!" If every celeb who did something dodgy in the 60s and 70s is now hauled up before the beak, our already overcrowded prisons will be full of septuagenarian rock stars. And as the old saying goes: "No spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality".
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Post by Tony Walshaw on Sept 25, 2014 8:12:01 GMT
....it all reeks of vested interests, agendas and show trials. "We didn't get Savile, but here's a head on a stick!"
Yes, I think there is an element of this.
I am not saying that Rolf Harris is innocent. But he probably could have been dealt with in a Sunday tabloid expose - albeit being pre-voicemails it was probably difficult for them to find what they needed to know.
But did the 'establishment' do to Rolf Harris what they wished they had done to Savile?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2014 8:56:17 GMT
Having let things go on for years, "the authoriries" are going after the likes of Rolf, DLT etc with the zealotry of the recently converted.
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Post by John Green on Sept 26, 2014 18:26:20 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2014 9:53:46 GMT
And why not? He was instrumental in their early success.
He's done his sentence and served his time. There, apparently, remains some considerable doubt over the rectitude of at least 1 of his convictions.
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Post by Dave Woods on Sept 28, 2014 11:16:03 GMT
The BBC is a powerful media organization and it is responsible to all of us. That means it isn't free to offend in the way that newspapers are, or indeed as you or I are. And equally it cannot possibly please everyone with any single decision that it makes. It just won't do to say that people have an off switch. When the Andrew Sachs affair blew up, people derided those who were offended despite not having heard the broadcast. But that's not the point is it? People are offended because the BBC - their BBC - broadcast something that they strongly believed it shouldn't. That seems entirely legitimate to me. Broadcasting offensive material is offensive. The BBC could open up Radio Racist to cater for the under-served bigot market; I wouldn't listen but that wouldn't stop me questioning exactly what I'm paying my licence fee for.
Of course, there are degrees of offensiveness. But personally, towards the top end of the scale is probably where I would place knowingly broadcasting - in the name of entertainment - a man clowning around for all the world as if he weren't the perpetrator of many, many sex crimes. Of course Savile is a difficult case because he never was and never will be convicted. But that doesn't mean that there aren't any victims. It's easy for an individual make that claim. It's easy for an individual to dismiss the alleged victims as liars. It's easy for an individual to play down the seriousness of the alleged crimes - to say he was just a bit free with his hands (as if that means something). The BBC can't do that. Personally I don't know what the truth of the situation is. It seems to me that the only people who could know the truth would be those who know that Savile did sexually abuse people - no one can know for an absolute fact that he didn't. So I don't want the BBC to do what some individuals are free to do. I want the BBC to act responsibly.
DLT is a slightly different case. The sentence being suspended doesn't help, but hopefully when it's ended the BBC will start showing his episodes again. I can't see why it wouldn't - unless his behaviour in them looks questionable. Which, to be honest, it always did - at least to the viewers in our house. Though it wasn't exclusively his behaviour.
If Hitler had presented a weekly pop music show on the BBC in the mid-thirties then I daresay we'd see bits of it - in documentaries about Hitler and the Holocaust. But I don't think the BBC would simply broadcast those complete shows for us to enjoy, just like we'd have enjoyed them in the thirties, before all that nasty business that came along later. Especially not if there was the slightest suggestion that the BBC had turned a blind eye or in some other way been complicit in what Hitler subsequently did. Because in that case, to show those programmes without filling in all the necessary historical context would appear to be pretending that nothing had happened - that there was no case for the BBC to answer. Pretending that nothing has happened is re-writing history. Skipping the odd episode of TOTP isn't re-writing history. Because this isn't history. The BBC broadcasts TOTP2 and old episodes of TOTP in the name of nostalgia and entertainment. Of course any old clip is a historical document of a kind. But TOTP was never a complete history of anything - it was always highly selective. Editing clips together to make TOTP2 isn't re-writing history; it's putting together an entertainment show that isn't full of The Dooleys and Racey. And similarly, not showing episodes presented by JS isn't re-writing history; it's avoiding causing offence in what is little more than an entertainment strand. No one complains about the fundamental basis for TOTP2; why does anyone see the failure to broadcast every single episode of TOTP as a re-write of history? If this were supposed to be an attempt to tell the full history of... well, as I say it couldn't be anyway... but if it were, then silently leaving out chunks would be a dereliction of duty. As it isn't, it's not.
I will say though that I'd rather they skipped the Mixtures track altogether rather than filling in the Savile appearance with a crowd shot, or whatever. But as I say, we'd all draw our lines differently - and the BBC can draw only one.
There's an elephant in the room whenever we're watching TOTP clips. (As far as the casual sexism of some of the presenters goes, there always was in our house.) The elephant is part of history. Trying to downplay the seriousness of the elephant or to pretend that it isn't there - that's re-writing history in my eyes. But that doesn't mean we have to be confronted with it when all we want to do is enjoy some music. I agree with Chris that throwing a blanket over parts of the archive is an overreaction. But this is surely simply a flawed bureaucratic response to the problem. The intent here is not that of the Stasi.
The easiest thing the BBC could have done would have been simply to have stopped showing TOTP altogether. What we have instead is a compromise. You're free to question the need for any compromise at all, but it seems obvious to me.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2014 17:36:07 GMT
It's good to see that Racey and The Dooleys are still considered part of the definition of offensively inane pap: the bland leading the bland.
Context is everything and as documents of social and media history (THIS is what was considered socially acceptable; THAT is what was considered appropriate behaviour by an organisation that yet banned Judge Dread's Big Seven, The Sex Pistols God Save The Queen and Je T'Aime, Mois No Plus, but not DLT or JS's wandering on screen hands) all episodes of TOTP, complete with DJ links should be available to researchers or other interested parties.
The important thing is the music, and while we, being more than just average viewers of this stuff might roll our eyes about it, the reason most people watch TOTP2 is to see old performances that they remember or whatever. When I saw Lay Down by The Strawbs at the time it was originally shown, I wasn't interested in the links; when I saw its reshowing on TOTP2, the link, academically, would have been interesting, but I just grokked over seeing that Strawbs clip again.
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Post by Liam Joseph on Oct 8, 2014 15:48:40 GMT
Well there you go then....
Travis dropped from Top of the Pops repeats Dave Lee Travis Archive editions of Top of the Pops featuring Dave Lee Travis will be mothballed
The BBC will not show repeats of Top of the Pops featuring former Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis, who was found guilty of indecent assault last month.
The BBC pulled episodes hosted by Travis from its schedule of weekly repeats on BBC Four following the broadcaster's arrest in November 2012.
On Wednesday, a spokeswoman confirmed "the BBC will not show Top of the Pops repeats fronted by Dave Lee Travis".
Travis was given a three-month suspended sentence last month.
The spokeswoman added: "We will consider any other archive appearances on a case by case basis."
It follows the BBC's decision to allow Jonathan King to appear in a BBC Two documentary about Genesis last week.
King was convicted of child sex offences in 2001. He was sentenced for seven years and released from prison in 2005.
The BBC said his inclusion in the film, Genesis Together and Apart, reflected the "significant role" King played in the history of Genesis, whom he discovered.
His appearance has led to 20 complaints to the BBC, while broadcasting regulator Ofcom is assessing three complaints.
Edited out
In September, Travis was convicted of indecently assaulting a researcher working on TV's Mrs Merton Show in 1995. He was acquitted of 14 further charges during a trial and a later retrial.
The 69-year-old, who was tried under his real name David Griffin, appeared on Radio 1 for more than 25 years until 1993 and was a regular host of Top of the Pops.
Last year, the BBC apologised for airing an excerpt from a 1971 edition of Top of the Pops in which disgraced DJ Jimmy Savile was briefly shown.
Programmes featuring Savile were supposed to have been pulled following revelations of his history of abuse, while archive footage showing convicted sex offender Gary Glitter has also been removed from editions of the show.
King's appearance in a 2011 re-run of Top of the Tops was edited out, prompting him to complain to the BBC.
He called it a "Stalinist revision of history" and was assured by the then BBC director general Mark Thompson that this would not happen again.
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Post by Chris Barratt on Oct 8, 2014 16:55:20 GMT
Those involved in this witch hunt always intended to do this - just ask Dinah Hall QC. However, the BBC are going to get a shock if they think they can censor an online archive like this.
Oh, and they've just kissed goodbye to my license fee. If they'd rather spunk money on the wilful murder of classic pop songs under the auspices of 'charity' and consider my requirements 'niche' and that I don't matter they won't get any of it. As far as I can I see, all the decent TV has already been made (and thus funded)
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Post by Richard Marple on Oct 8, 2014 23:01:52 GMT
That's just what the tabloids want you to do.
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Post by caroline mcdave on Jun 9, 2015 17:11:34 GMT
Just thought i mention this that there was a new TOTP2 episode on bbc1 30th May 2015,just before the FA Cup final,it was only football songs from the past in the studio and promos mostly terrible but the Quo one is not bad,its still on bbci player and its not a repeat,looks quite good all shiny and new,maybe they might be bringing it back...
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Post by David Saunders on Jun 10, 2015 10:16:03 GMT
Just thought i mention this that there was a new TOTP2 episode on bbc1 30th May 2015,just before the FA Cup final,it was only football songs from the past in the studio and promos mostly terrible but the Quo one is not bad,its still on bbci player and its not a repeat,looks quite good all shiny and new,maybe they might be bringing it back... Thanks for the heads up, Caroline.
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