Britpop On TV

The success of Britpop benefitted not only from the shake-up at Radio 1, but also from the arrival of several TV programmes, and the emergence in Britain of satellite TV in the early 90s.

I've already mentioned 'Britpop Now' and 'TFI Friday', but the most important music show in Britain was, of course, 'Top of the Pops' [TOTP]. TOTP was obviously based around what was successful in the charts in the time, meaning that it only reflected Britpop as it became more successful. That said, in 1997, when Chris Cowey took over as producer of the show, he instigated a live performance policy for artists appearing in the studio. In 1994, the BBC also launched 'Top of the Pops 2' [TOTP2], which, as an archive show, allowed (in theory) more space for newer artists on the main TOTP.

A major addition to music TV in Britain was 'Later... with Jools Holland', which began in 1992. It's clear looking through the list of episodes that from Series 4 in late 1994 up until about the end of Series 8 in late 1996, there was at least one "Britpop" artist on just about every episode.

Channel 4 responded with their own short-lived live music TV show, 'The White Room', which ran for 3 series throughout 1995 and 1996. This show was even more Britpop-heavy than Jools Holland's, though is perhaps best remembered for Iggy Pop performing 'Lust For Life' in see-through trousers. Host Mark Radcliffe introduces Iggy by asking "Will he get his knob out?" Producer Chris Cowey then moved to TOTP in 1997.

BBC also had music magazine show 'The O-Zone', which had been running since 1989 (and ran until 2000). In 1995 however, the show got re-launched with Jamie Theakston and Jayne Middlemiss as hosts. The show was primarily pop-based, though it did feature Britpop bands much more from 1995 onwards.

In 1992, Sky acquired the rights to show the new Premier League football. This lead to a massive increase in Britain to the number of people getting satellite TV, which in turn lead to increased viewers for MTV and VH-1, the two available music channels at the time. I can certainly remember Britpop videos being played extensively at the time, especially Oasis and Blur. I do not need to see the video for 'Wonderwall' or 'Don't Look Back In Anger' ever again.

All of these things happening definitely contributed to the public awareness and success of Britpop. Some were already there of course, and some were created or changed to reflect the success of and public interest in Britpop. And if you compare this time with the lack of music programming on terrestrial TV today (only Jools Holland and the odd show on Channel 4 remain), it is an indicator that a movement like Britpop could possibly never happen again in Britain, which is kind of sad.

BBC Radio 1

One of the main reason's for Britpop happening was because of, like many things in British music, BBC Radio 1. In particular, Matthew Bannister, who became controller of the station in 1993, and changed the station's line up and output, played a major part in the resurgence of British music.

When Bannister took over Radio 1 in 1993, the station was filled with older DJs, such as Dave Lee Travis, Simon Bates etc, and the music output was, for the most part, of a more MOR nature, and shows centred as much around the DJs' personality and features as it was about music. Bannister's brief was, quite simply, to cater for younger listeners and play newer music.

This was achieved mainly by getting rid of many of the older DJs in favour of younger, specialised DJs, such as Steve Lamacq (indie/rock), Trevor Nelson (R 'n' B) and Tim Westwood (hip hop). Chris Evans also took over the breakfast show, as I discussed in a previous post).

This strategy took a little while to work; listening figures dropped at first as older listeners deserted the station, but eventually, with the rise of Britpop, Bannister's move seemed to have worked. More importantly, for me, the quality of programming had improved, and Britain's younger audience were finally catered for again, which, let's not forget, is the chartered reason for Radio 1's existence in the first place.

Whether Radio 1 made Britpop, or Britpop made (a revitalised) Radio 1 is a debatable point. Certainly, they were both good for each other and they both needed each other to have achieved what they did; I doubt Bannister's strategy for Radio 1 would have been so successful without the Britpop bands, and the Britpop bands wouldn't have been so successful without Radio 1. That said, many of the (better) Britpop bands pre-dated Bannister's tenure at Radio 1, so I doubt that Radio 1 was really responsible for making any better music at the time, but it was certainly responsible getting it to a larger audience.

You can read Wikipedia's (rather brief) section on this period at Radio 1 here, a rather good article on Bannister's "cull" here, or a recent interview with Bannister himself here.

Chris Evans

When looking back at Britpop, it's important to look at some of the influential people other than the bands.

One of the most important was Chris Evans. As Breakfast show presenter on Radio 1 (1995-1997), the then biggest show on British Radio, then later as host of 'TFI Friday' (1996-2000) on Channel 4, Evans was in a position where he could break bands into the public arena. One of the most famous of these were Ocean Colour Scene, when he used one of their songs ('The Riverboat Song') repeatedly during TFI Friday.

It is worth mentioning though that Evans did have a reputation as something of a "dadrocker", i.e. he seemed to favour the more retro Britpop bands such as Oasis, Ocean Colour Scene, Reef, Cast etc. Also, he seemed strangely obsessed with poor commercial music such as Texas. To this day, critics of his Radio 2 Breakfast Show make the same observations; it seems little has changed.

That said, Britpop was already well underway before Chris Evans jumped on the bandwagon. Personally, I see Evans as a "personality" DJ rather than a "music" DJ anyway, so I don't think it any great surprise that he was hardly on the cutting edge of music of the time. He was more into the "lad and ladette culture" side of the time I think rather than a hardcore music fan.

To be fair, he did champion bands like Pulp and Black Grape at the time though, and bands such as Gene and Longpigs did make it onto the show too so it wasn't all bad I guess.

If you really want to see what Evans was about on 'TFI Friday', you can see best of compilations on YouTube here.