The Pop-Pickers Have Picked Decentralised Media

The Fall of Top of the Pops and the Rise of the Second Media Age

Bibliographic Data

ID2642341
AuthorsD Beer (0000-0002-6926-4595, University of York, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume11
Issue3
Pages26-33
Publication date2006-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Research Online (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1360-7804 • E-ISSN: 1360-7804
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5153/sro.1429
OpenAlexW2119443234
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited27

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' (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

Appropriation · Art · Epistemology · Media studies · Musical · Nuclear decommissioning · Sociology · Visual arts · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Digital Games and Media · Engineering · Music History and Culture

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