(Credits: Far Out / Top of The Pops / BBC)
Tue 23 December 2025 12:00, UK
If Top of the Pops was once considered one of the most artificial television broadcasts in music history, then people must have been pretty surprised when they started allowing artists to perform on the show “via satellite”.
The first episode of Top of the Pops aired on New Year’s Day in 1964; its main selling point was that it was shot before a live audience of young music lovers and boasted the hottest new talent at the time. Its host, the nation’s disgraced he-who-shall-not-be-named, was at once the shining face of new and emerging talent, and what seemed like the perfect figure to introduce all pioneering talent worth listening to in the lively pop scene.
Therefore, Top of the Pops was once one of the most coveted opportunities in the business. If you made it onto the show, you effectively made it, and anybody who wanted to be anybody wished for a chance to get up and show off in front of Pop’s dedicated audience – both physically and those watching from home. As the years rolled on, however, more guests began to oppose its only caveat: they had to mime their songs. Thus ensued a streak of rebellious figures who sought to subvert the system and prove their defiance in the name of artistic integrity.
For a while, this was the main controversy with the show – names from Oasis to Kurt Cobain deliberately defied the show’s mime rule, whether through sabotaging their own performances, not accepting the offer until it was set that they’d be singing live, or imitating other iconic performers to make a point about the show’s (and the industry’s) pretentiousness.
The show relaxed its mime policy somewhat in the early 1990s; however, by this time, it already seemed pretty uncool to accept a stint on the show in the first place. To make matters worse, as part of a major revamp, the team began to think outside the box when it came to expanding and maintaining relevance. And in an effort to shift towards American audiences, they started allowing artists to perform on the show via satellite.
So, who was the first to perform on Top of the Pops via satellite?
There were a handful of these types of performances throughout the ‘90s, which seemingly kicked off with Mariah Carey’s ‘Can’t Let Go’ in 1992, before expanding more intently from 1994 following Ric Blaxhill’s appointment as the show’s new producer. The occurrence of satellite performances increased substantially, and Blaxhill even had some of them taking on different backdrops to embellish the performance.
Bon Jovi, for instance, performed ‘Always’ against a Niagara Falls backdrop in September 1994, and Celine Dion performed ‘Think Twice’ from Miami Beach in December of the same year. Countless others joined in with the special away-from-home performances across those years, including Soundgarden, Garth Brooks, Sting, Boyz II Men, Wet Wet Wet, Meat Loaf, and more.
However, these changes weren’t here to stay, and this technique had phased by in the early naughties, likely a result of the new team chasing a more basic approach that reinstated the show’s original ethos. It’s easy to see why this is the case – even today, with tech advancements like AI, producers and execs are chasing the most authentic strategies possible, knowing that audiences can tell from a mile off when something is overly produced or overtly artificial.
And while these satellite broadcasts might have done well to expand the show’s reach beyond its core audience, this was merely a fleeting fad that only served them so far, especially as the show had started to wane for other, more consequential reasons, and adapting to new tech to boost longevity was always going to suffer.
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