The pop pickers have picked! David Beer (2006)

Net 102 READING #3

Week 2 Topic 1.1 Music: I Want My MP3

David Beer. (2006, September 30). The Pop-Pickers Have Picked Decentralised Media: the Fall of Top of the Pops and the Rise of the Second Media Age.

Sociological Research Online, Volume 11, Issue 3,

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/3/beer.html

Abstract

The BBC has recently announced that Top of the Pops, the long-running weekly popular music programme, will broadcast its final episode in the summer of 2006. This brief 'rapid response' article considers how the conclusion of Top of the Pops' 42 year history may be understood as representative or indicative of broader transformations in musical appropriation. As such it considers the fall of Top of the Pops in relation to the rise of what Mark Poster has described as a 'second media age' (1.3 This 'rapid response' article considers the details surrounding this recent fall of TOTP and suggests that this may be understood to be representative of the rise of what has been described as a 'second media age'  (Poster, 1996).  I argue here that in light of the transformations we are seeing in music appropriation, embodied by the demise of TOTP and the emergence of internet sites such as MySpace and Bebo, we now need to formulate new research initiatives and strategies that attempt to understand these complex decentralised media models through critical analyses of the ways in which these digital media intersect with music industry agendas and the everyday life aspects of music culture. I suggest here that it is necessary to interrogate the utopian rhetoric that surrounds these apparently democratised, decentralised, and disinter mediated forms of technologically afforded musical appropriation in order to open up opportunities for sociological investigation."(p1)  Poster, 1996).   This second media age is defined by the emergence of decentralised and multidimensional media structures that usurp the broadcast models of the first media age. This article argues that the decommissioning of Top of the Pops, and the ongoing expansion of 'social networking' sites such as MySpace and Bebo, illustrates the movement from a first to a second media age. In light of these transformations I suggest here that there is a pressing need to develop new research initiatives and strategies that critically examine these new digitalised forms of musical appropriation.

This article is a reaction to the end of the British television show, Top of the Pops and was written in 2006, what we'd like you to focus upon are the issues and trends Beer describes as contributing to the show's demise. Would the Internet necessarily work against broadcast media (i.e. radio and television)?

http://www.webcitation.org/5dwDNlg6c

My Review
In this article, the writer poses the question whether the internet caused the demise and cancellation of "top of the pops".


My thoughts
It is quite possible with the ubiquitous use of the WWW (MySpace etc), iPod, MP3's and so on, that a program such as TOTPs will have struggled and that constant format and time schedule changes could have contributed to the lack of following the program, thus the collapse in ratings. With the further popularity of the internet and the world wide web (www) it has made sharing of music interests and fan bases expand at an indeterminable rate. Also with the increased use of file sharing sites, peer to peer, MySpace, iTunes etc people can either be private or public in their contributions of music lists. Artists, who find connecting with major record companies, are now able to become their own producers and production agencies through previously mentioned MySpace and Bebo. Will this spell the downfall of traditional media?