"Who's On Line 1?"

I've just finished watching a documentary originally shown almost exactly a year ago called "When The Stranglers Met Roland Rat", looking at the relationship between pop music and children's television originally shown as part of BBC 4's Children's TV On Trial season.

The documentary itself went as far back to Freddie and The Dreamers on Blue Peter back in the 60s and looking at the many acts who appeared on Saturday mornings shows throughout the 80s and 90s such as Captain Sensible making an idiot of himself on Saturday Superstore and Chrissie Hynde getting splattered on Tiswas and to a lesser extent Mike Read getting his guitar out at any given moment.
One of the contributions I liked was when someone compared the Stranglers said performance on "Roland Rat - The Series" to the scene in "This Is Spinal Tap" when the revamped band were scheduled alongside a puppet show.

However the documentary ended on a rather downbeat note looking at the current state of children's television where there are no longer platforms for popstars to perform on shows anymore.
Emma Forbes, formerly of Live And Kicking also appeared as a contributor saying that her children long to ring up and speak to their favourite performers and now that there aren't any programmes to offer such things is disapointing.
The use of the S-Club track "Goodbye" in the end credits helped to elaborate the current overall situation of music and television and how it's changed in the last 5 or so years.

With programmes allowing the public to choose future acts now in centre stage it doesn't appear that many of the acts last beyond the limelight of the shows and if this is the way it continues then it will be predictable as always.
Not just the performers but the way the programmes are produced like in the X-Factor for example, there's always a big build up with a Whitney Houston track playing in the background when an auditionee is waiting to find out if they have passed the judged approval. In which case they'll have.

I never realised at the time of shows such as Going Live! that I'd remember them in such a way as innovative and that hardly any of today's programmes would be good when compared. Programme makers just don't appear to like creativity these days and that seems to go for radio as well.