It's the monthly "Top Of The Pops revival" moment

As has happened probably ever three hours since Top of The Pops was axed, we're going through a 'they're going to bring back Top Of The Pops' period. Except it's not bringing back TOTP, as Ben Cooper tried to explain:

He said: "I am working hard with Bob Shennan, asking, 'What are the ingredients that would work for today?'

"When people ask about whether Top of the Pops is coming back, what they are really saying is, 'When can we get a once-a-week primetime BBC1 music slot?'

"I have had this conversation with agents, independent production companies, and with Simon Cowell a few weeks back."

The appearance of Simon Cowell in the discussions suggest we're not really talking about Top Of The Pops, right?

He said: "With The Voice going to ITV, that does give you an opportunity, a moment in history, to go, 'Right, let's crack this, what can we do to bring the music and entertainment together for a primetime BBC1 audience? That's the Holy Grail!

"The music industry would like a weekly moment to showcase the best new British music."

I'd be more tempted, were I a tabloid editor, to suggest they sound more like they're reviving something closer to House Party or Swap Shop, if indeed anything.

The Mail, of course, has its own take:

Not entirely sure why Gary Glitter is included in there. Or, indeed, if that trio are such a problem, the BBC has carried on doing Top Of The Pops on Christmas Day for the last couple of years. Still, I'm sure it makes sense to the Mail.

Face '83: Indeep

We've already, for sake of... well, brevity isn't the right word as, boy, this feature is dragging on, but let's say brevity... for the sake of brevity we've decided to skip reissues from the list, so go home Derek Martin, you're safe.

This bring us to Indeep's Last Night A DJ Saved My Life.



As an aside, whoever put this onto YouTube manages to claim that this is the "official video" despite not only being clearly from Top Of The Pops, but being clearly from Top Of The Pops with a sodding UK Gold logo burned into it.

So... has this stood the test of time? Or does the "away goes trouble down the drain" followed by the sound of a toilet flushing reveal that what The Face has done here is to pick a novelty record for its best recordings of the year?

You'll recall that we discussed InDeep earlier this year, and in particular the way that toilet flush was considered good enough to get its own track on the album.

Oh, The Face. History has the benefit of hindsight, but you should have spotted this one coming.

The Face 20; history 16.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Top Of The Pops shut down by Savile again?

As it gets increasingly hard to work around episodes of Top Of The Pops with those accused of sexual misdeeds, BBC Four's Richard Klein is weighing up if it's worth going on:

"It is complex and it is difficult to judge," Klein told a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch on Wednesday.

"These are judgments we are making on a case-by-case basis. It requires us to be cautious and careful without overreacting, to take into account public sensibilities and legalities, and hopefully we are going to get it right."

He added: "At the moment we actually haven't scheduled 1978, so we'll take a view. We have only done it the last two years [beginning with 1976] so if we didn't do it again it wouldn't be the end of the world and audience figures have declined quite markedly.

"It has done a good job, whether I choose to continue or not I don't yet know."

You'd have to suspect that it's the declining audience as much as the rattling of Jimmy Savile's skeletons that is reducing the enthusiasm from the channel.

Mail fumes that Glitter gets gold

As part of its 1970s season, BBC Two re-repeated one of the 1977 Top Of The Pops that have been delighting BBC Four viewers since the start of the year. They chose one with Gary Glitter in - understandable, as nearly the rest of the year's selections to date have been Manhattan Transfer or Lynsey DePaul doing Rock Bottom forever.

The Daily Mail doesn't understand:

Convicted sex offender Gary Glitter stand to get paid thousands of pounds in royalties after the BBC aired a repeat of him performing on Top of the Pops in 1977.
Viewers were left outraged by TV chiefs' decision to rerun the BBC2 programme featuring the disgraced pop star, 68, on Saturday night.
Many expressed their disgust on social networking sites that Glitter, who has been convicted of possessing child porn and abusing two young girls, would receive money from the airing of the TV programme.

Oddly, though, they struggle to find "many", relying on a handful of tweets:

Kristian Carter ‏tweeted: 'Gary Glitter on TOTP. First line "Cuddle me close. Hold me tight." Awkward turtle.'

Another viewer Cath Elliot wrote: 'Gary Glitter on #totp77 is making my skin crawl.'

Neither of those quotes actually seem to have anything to say about the issue of Glitter earning royalties. In fact, the entire Mail thesis is based on one tweet:

RedLiverbirdLou wrote on Twitter: 'Why are BBC2 giving Gary Glitter airtime? They should be ashamed! I don't pay my licence to watch Peado's!'

Peados. Presumably some sort of hairstyle on a vegetable?

Well done, though, RedLiverbirdLou - your single Tweet has generated an entire Daily Mail article. Presumably her equally impassioned call for a vet to be sent for to help the meerkat on Planet Earth Live is going to result in a full-page piece in tomorrow's paper: "Viewers call for medical intervention as BBC watches creature die".

Noel Gallagher cherishes outdated musical shibboleth

It's perhaps no surprise that a man whose music is so resolutely backwards looking would want to bring back Top Of The Pops. Noel Gallagher misses it:

"It was a great British tradition to have Top of the Pops on a Thursday, and it gave you a chance to see what these people looked like who you were listening to on the radio, and we don't get that anymore. I would bring it back in a heartbeat."

Ah, yes, we know how much Noel loves the idea of a show which brings you into contact with different types of music, and bands you wouldn't normally seek out.

Why, remember how much he enjoyed the last Top Of The Pops which was made, for Christmas last year:

"Christmas Top of the Pops was ­dreadful," he said, according to the Sunday Mirror.

"Every song ­sounded like it came from the same field of music. There was a rap in there somewhere, everyone sang in a transatlantic soul voice and it was rubbish."

And yet he wants to watch that every Thursday night.

Radiobit: Jimmy Savile

I think we've all, always, taken it on trust that Jimmy Savile - who died yesterday - really did invent twin-turntable DJing. It was certainly a story we heard often enough, normally from him, and like the yarns spun by favourite uncles, we were all happy to believe it might be true.

Mind you, Jimmy Savile could convince us of anything - that he actually had some sort of Old Record Club running in the corner of Radio One; that on days when he was noticeably elsewhere his show was live and in the hands of a hologram version of himself. He even managed to make trundling through the UK countryside on beige seats sipping undrinkable coffee sound exciting:



I think we all knew that Savile's actual technical talents weren't vast, and he benefited a great deal from being in the right place at the right time; his charm and enthusiasm helped carry his career long past the point where those with greater technical proficiency had spluttered to a halt. And his involvement in charitable endeavours never felt like cynical careerism - even during that period back at the start of the 1980s where it was almost impossible to buy a yoghurt without coming across a drawing of Sir Jimmy reminding us about spinal injuries seem motivated by a genuine desire to help.

That's not to say that he had a strong dose of creepy uncle alongside the favourite one: the Sunday Telegraph this morning claims he spent eleven straight New Years Eves with Maggie Thatcher and you'll all have heard the nastier rumours which clung to him. But it says much about how great the affection for Savile was that people could simultaneously believe some profoundly alarming "facts" about him, and be relaxed about him making kiddies' dreams come true on Saturday night TV, without feeling the slightest contradiction.

Even the Louis Theroux documentary, which Theroux seemed convinced showed Sir Jim to be a strange old stick, actually just looked like a man being bothered by a twit who was desperate to know why he didn't conform, dammit.

Jimmy Savile was rather odd, but also something rather wonderful. In another twenty years, we'll have a TV world full of Vernon Kayes and something called A Jeff Brazier who was in Milton Keynes yesterday. Aren't we better off with someone who sleeps in a caravan and spins yarns than an empty suit and an empty grin?

Gordon in the morning: Top of the world pops

Yesterday, Simon Cowell "invented" a game show, which appears to be people guessing from two things, but in a big arena surrounded with people cheering.

Today, he's inventing a new Top Of The Pops:

But Cowell, 51, said last night: "It's not cost effective just doing it in the UK.

"To do it properly it would need to be bigger than one country."

The Sun have decided this means it's going to be "global" rather than the more plausible American/British version.

Of course, it's never going to happen - sure, there might be a music show where Will.I.Am and whoever gets the chance to be Steve Brookstein appear together, but a week-in, week-out programme that features the people at the top of some nebulous "global chart"?

Never going to happen.

Si, who is launching X Factor in America, said: "It's for a year down the line."

In other words, it's never going to happen.

Silver Sun weekend: Too Much, Too Little, Too Late

From Top Of The Pops, when the single was at a storming number 20:



[Part of Silver Sun weekend]

Senseless Things weekend: Easy To Smile

I like to think when Richard Desmond talks about reviving Top of the Pops, it's stuff like this he wants to bring back:



[Part of Senseless Things weekend]

BBC insist their new Top Of The Pops won't be Top Of The Pops

For reasons that we're sure are well-meaning, the BBC is trying to develop a popular, mainstream, prime-time music programme for a general audience. MediaGuardian reports:

"We are working on it," [Andy] Parfitt told a Broadcasting Press Guild breakfast today, adding that it was "absolute rot" to say there was no music on BBC TV.

"It would be great if we could get a new popular music-based programme with a new format, a new kind of offer that really worked for the audience," he said.

"The work is on to try and find a format but we are not trying to relaunch or reinvent Top of the Pops. That is kind of a red herring. Should we be looking for a programme? Of course we should and we are.

"Would it be a good thing to try and persevere and work with producers to identify a new format? Yes. That's what television does all the time. Jan Younghusband is actually leading that process and I am closely involved with that."

Maybe there is such a mythical format, a world where The Ting Tings, Susan Boyle, The Cast Of Phantom Of The Opera and Sharon Corr can co-exist happily.

But you know what? I think I switched over as soon as Susan Boyle came on.

It'd be great to have a music programme - perhaps something a bit like Inside Sport, but... well, not about Sport - on BBC One. Or maybe a performance slot which does something a bit Whistle Test-y. Develop away happily.

But it's a bit like biscuits, isn't it?

You can have a Tea Time assortment, and if there's no other biscuits around, people will tuck in. But if they like jam rings, they're going to get the hump when there's only one in the box and they have to end up with rich tea fingers instead. Especially when there's an entire channel of jam rings available elsewhere.

At Christmas, it's nice to have a tin of Tea Time. And a few people will always enjoy a bit of a mix. But give most people a choice, and they'll always plump for a packet of their favourites. This isn't an era looking for something like Top Of The Pops, even if it isn't Top Of The Pops.

Richard Desmond plots an impossible dream

With his hands almost certainly to grab Channel Five, Richard Desmond has plans. The former wankmagnate and current owner of porn TV channels has a dream, according to MediaGuardian:

Richard Desmond has told colleagues he would like to revive Top of the Pops, which was shelved by the BBC in 2006 after 42 years, if he buys Five. He wants to create a series of landmark shows in peak time and believes a live music programme would win a big audience.

Except, of course, Top Of The Pops didn't win a big audience, which was why the BBC shelved it. Mind you, what was underperformance for BBC One and Two might look like a golden jewel amongst... whatever it is that Channel Five does these days. Is it still showing Fast Forward?

The other problem is that Top Of The Pops isn't actually in play. MediaGuardian speculates:

If he does press ahead with plans for a music show, Desmond may simply dust down the format and choose a different name.

Ah. So rather than brining back Top Of The Pops, effectively Desmond is planning to rebuild The Roxy.

Dubstar weekend: No More Talk

Although their chart career probably wasn't quite as stellar as EMI would have liked, Dubstar did manage to notch up an agreeable number of Top Of The Pops performances. Look! Look! Here's them doing No More Talk:



(When I watched this, it was offering me Julie Andrews tickets to buy; I can't decide if this was a genius piece of targeted marketing or totally broken.)

[Buy No More Talk]

[Part of the Dubstar weekend]

Rapobit: Derek B

Derek B, who has died from a heart attack, was a successful British rapper when it was quite a challenge.

The B was short for Boland; he dropped the 'Oland when starting his career at just 15 with Good Groove and Bad Young Brother. Although both tracks made it to the top 20 - taking him onto Top Of The Pops - he never managed to sustain success as a performer and switched instead to A&R and production.



A slightly more shameful contribution to popular culture came with his co-authoring of The Anfield Rap, Liverpool's 1988 FA Cup single:

He gives us stick about the north/south divide
'cause they got the jobs
Yeah, but we got the side

Perhaps that wasn't one of Derek's lines.

Derek B was 44; he is survived by his mother, Jenny.

Embed and breakfast man: Sleeper - Smart

In the long history of bemusingly reviled bands, Sleeper were probably one of the most unfairly attacked. The main charge against the group seemed to be that Louise Wener was pretty (although so was Brett Anderson) and said interesting things in interviews (although, again, so did Brett Anderson).

The band's debut album Sleeper in fifteen years old next March - if it was a child, it wouldn't be talking to you now, except for the odd grunt over breakfast and to roll its eyes when you try to do the drugs talk. And what better time that five months before this birthday to revisit the record in video form?

Track one was Inbetweener, the official video for which is on YouTube - complete with Dale Winton - but is unembeddable at the insistence of Sony Records.

This, though, is the track being done at one of those odd Top of The Pop live gigs:



and there's also a version from The Word, again unembeddable.

Buy
Smart: Mp3 download version
Smart: CD version

As many of the tracks available to follow...
Swallow
Delicious
Bedhead
Vegas
Alice In Vain

John Hughes weekend: Sixteen Candles... two

Also from the soundtrack, the supreme song-about-wanking:



Buy
The Vapors - New Clear Days

[part of The John Hughes weekend]

Neil Tennant misses Top Of The Pops

I yield to nobody in my admiration of Neil Tennant, but a grumbly interview about why Top of The Pops isn't on any more and people "stealing" music makes him sound like something out of a different era.

Mind you, the BBC News site suggests that Tennant has "slammed" the corporation, which is perhaps putting it a bit strongly:

He added he thought as part of the BBC's public broadcasting, the corporation should be keeping its "astonishing archive" of musical footage up-to-date.

"[That is] why we like the BBC, because they do things that should be done but don't always make complete commercial sense."

It actually sounds more like he understands it had to go, rather than "slamming" anyone or anything. Indeed, it doesn't actually sound like Tennant much cared for the show by the time it was axed:

The star, who has had hits with West End Girls and Always On My Mind, said a former BBC employee who now works for ITV had told him why the show had to go.

"He explained to me at great length that the public aren't interested in music unless its heavily editorialised - by which he means X Factor.

"If you look back over the presentation of Top Of The Pops in the 90s, cynicism crept into the way it was presented.

"In the past, everything - the rubbish and the good stuff - was presented with enthusiasm. And I think its up to the public to make the taste decisions - not the DJs presenting."

It's actually wider than that, Neil: instead of the running order being dictated by the chart positions of records, it became an editorially-selected choice; moving from a dumb list to a cheerleader service.

Tennant then offers what sounds like a pretty comprehensive argument against reviving the show:

"I think it must be really strange to be a new artist. Like if JLS are number one on Sunday, they won't have that great moment of being crowned that week's Kings Of Pop."

Anything that would make JLS labour about under the misapprehension that they were in some way pop royalty, surely, is broken beyond use?

Tennant then turns to those downloads the young people are all doing these days:

"It would be great if 30% of us could get a car for free, but it's not going to happen," he said.

"And I don't see why people should think they can."

Oh, Neil, Neil, Neil. You really don't believe that a manufactured car is like a digital music file, do you? That digital music is more akin to oxygen?

It turns out he doesn't buy the whole 'the supply is almost unlimited' argument, either:

He went on to describe an article he read on the internet, which suggested music should be free like water.

"I thought 'have you seen the water rates in London?'

"If you wanted to pay £700 pounds a year for music, I think we'd all be really happy.

He does seem to have worked in a complaint about the cost of water, too, which is quite impressive.

There's an important difference, though, between water and digital music anyway - water companies have to maintain the infrastructure which delivers the water. Oh, and are dealing with a finite resource which requires enormous storage space to smooth out the differences between supply and demand.

Not that - as far as I know - anyone has ever suggested charging for music as if it was water; the 'like water' case is actually about treating music as a utility rather than a distinct product - a pipe, rather than a bottle of water.

Oh, and the average water bill in the UK is £330 and the average charge by London supplier Thames Water being £295. I suppose Neil must live in a larger house than most of us, though.

Tennant's solution? Erm, something akin to the water rates:

"I think we should have a licence somewhere between the water rates and the BBC TV licence and then you could have it for nothing and it could be farmed out on a download pro rata basis."

What does that even mean, Neil? And why should some internet content - music - be licensed, when a lot of other stuff is available for free online? If musicians should get some money everytime a track is listened to, why shouldn't that licence cover people who make animated lego films, or write blog entries about Boris Johnson? What's so special about Paolo Nutini that he should be rewarded when his content is accessed online, when, say, Kirstie Allsopp tweets for free?

The licence idea appeals simply because everyone knows that online music, left to fight in the market place, is worth almost nothing. It's like bakers suggesting that people should be forced to have a bread licence, and then they'll be happy to let people take the stale bread from their dumpsters.

Parfitt: Only the odd Pops, while Pop and Ma welcome at One

It's been the day of the Radio Academy radio and music forum, and somewhat impolitely Andy Parfitt turned up and talked about television.

In particular, he focused on the question of if the Christmas and Comic Relief successes of Top Of The Pops suggested there might be life in the corpse yet:

"It has come back in those event-driven moments and that's the way to go," he added.

"It's got a mythical status ... but I don't think we should get hung up on that one programme. We are a long way from [BBC1 controller] Jay Hunt recommissioning Top of the Pops in its old-school form on BBC1."

Andy remembers that Christmas is the most magical event-driven moment of the year, and you can't just have that event-driven moment every week of the year.

Besides, says Andy, you can't have a music programme on television now, because the kids have the mp3s on their iPods:

Parfitt said that younger music consumers expected more interactivity than just broadcasting Top of the Pops once a week, in an age of iPod playlists, online music services and other options open to the BBC audience. "The days are gone when we can make a programme and just put it out there," he added.

Yes, nowadays, programmes have to be scheduled, promoted; audiences have to be nurtured. Back in 1977, it used to be enough for programmes to be taken from the edit suite and dumped in the street - audiences would run out in packs and collect the shows to entertain themselves with on their G-Plan televisions and flared radios.

Isn't the opposite more true now? That an organisation with the BBC's clout and nous could just film five or six bands doing a couple of songs, just stick the files up online and perhaps behind press red, brand the whole thing 'Top Of The Pops' and leave the rest to the audience? Wouldn't that be quite exciting? Couldn't Top of The Pops become the equivalent of an iPod playlist for music TV? You could draw up your own list of favourite records; that could generate a chart in turn which - right down the end of the line - could be assembled to make an old-style rundown programme.

Parfitt did turn his attention to radio, though, to wrestle with the problem of Radio One's aging audience:

Parfitt also today defended Radio 1 against accusations that its audience and roster of presenters are too old, insisting that the station reaches 40% of its target demographic, 15- to 24-year-olds.

"As Radio 1 has grown it has grown its 35-plus audience but it has also grown its teen audience. Its mean audience is 27," he added.

"If I want a way to travel for Radio 1 it would be not older but younger," admitted Parfitt, who is also controller of Radio 1, 1Xtra and multimedia teen content brand BBC Switch.

So... hang about a minute while I try to make my brain catch up. The remit of Radio One is to target 15 to 24 year-olds, two out of three of whom it misses altogether; instead, it hits an average age of 27, already three years older than where it's being pointed - so the boss thinks his ideal plan is to try and attract a larger number of older listeners?

Perhaps Parfitt would have been happier arguing that the obsession with age targets is meaningless once you get past the CBBC age group, but given that part of his remit is pushing BBC Switch, or "Hullo Teenagers... Everywhere" to give it its official title, he's going to find doing that a little tricky.

However, he said that older audiences who grew up with the station have stayed with it because "they want to remain younger longer". "You can't make them go away," Parfitt added.

Actually, Andy, you can make them go away, by changing the line-up of presenters. You might remember Matthew Bannister demonstrated this quite effectively when he had the Radio One studios sprayed for Travis, Bates and Juste.

He insisted that "Radio 1 is a hot young radio station", citing the popularity of the late John Peel as proof that the age of presenters did not mean that they could not appeal to younger audiences.

Bloody hell, after all these years, and Radio 1 controllers are still using John Peel as their get-out of all sorts of awkward situations. A couple of decades ago he would be invoked as proof that the station still cared about new music; now, he's proof that young audiences will listen to older presenters. Well, yes: but only if they trust their taste. Do fifteen year old kids really think that Jo Whiley is more musically acute than their mates' iPods playlists?

A bit of a Relief

So, not only did last night's Comic Relief raise the sort of sums that only Fred Goodwin could dream of, but actually managed to be consistently entertaining throughout. Normally, by pub-chucking-out-time, they're scrabbling about to give you "another chance to see" stuff that had already played out earlier; this year, they had so much stuff they hadn't even got round to The Apprentice firing by midnight. Even the French and Saunders bit was funny, and that's something you've not been able to say for the best part of a decade and a half.

There was the puzzle of Patrick Kielty - did they call him up and offer him the chance to do a single link while David Tennant and Davina McCall were busy doing Mastermind, or did he just show up and they reckoned that "since you're here, you might as well..."?

What really detains us, though, is that strange edition of Top Of The Pops which filled the gap that normally would have had an episode of QI in. Incidentally, how do they think poor Huw Edwards feels, getting ready to read the news, hearing everyone on BBC One telling the massive audience to turn over and not watch him. I bet he has to wipe a little tear each time it happens.

Now, although it was coming from the Comic Relief studio and there were a couple of extra nods to the event - superimposing red noses on the chart rundown, for example - this was, to all intents and purposes, like Top Of The Pops had never been canceled. Even down to that Top Ten and having the number one act live in the studio. Sure, there was a bit of smudging the boundaries, but even the shoe-horning of Oasis and U2 was for their latest singles rather than, say, something that people might actually want to hear. It was all a little bizarre having, in the midst of 'very special episodes of', to get 'more or less a bog-standard edition of' a programme that doesn't even exist any more. If nothing else, it showed there's still an enormous amount of affection for the old warhorse both amongst bands and at the BBC.

Perhaps if someone could come up with a chart that actually reflected the new music scene, there might be a second life for the programme...

Gordon in the morning: Christmas spirit

Having somehow taken the credit for the BBC decision to do a Christmas Top Of The Pops after all, Gordon Smart looks forward to Christmas Day:

CRACKERS won’t be the only thing going pop on Christmas Day.

Today I can reveal the acts who will be gracing our TV screens on the Top Of The Pops Christmas Special.

Perhaps he should have asked Pete to give him a hand with this one - crackers going pop? "gracing our TV screens"?

Smart reveals the surprising line-up: it's bands who've had number ones this year. But someone is missing:

More acts for the special will be confirmed in coming days but I can spot a gaping whole in the line-up.

Rock veterans STATUS QUO have released their first festive song, It’s Christmas Time, but are absent from the pop-orientated performers’ list.

I can feel another campaign coming on...

But hang on Gordon - surely you won't have to campaign, will you? After all, you told your readers there was a good chance that the Quo would have the Christmas number one, in which case they'll appear on the show as reigning champions.

Elsewhere, Madonna has done a clothes advert for some company or other - Louis Vuitton or Per Una or something. Gordon, of course, wouldn't be as easily swayed as to run a heavily airbrushed advert and pretend it's a news story. He does, however, have commentary to offer on the photo:

WELL-HEELED Material Girl MADONNA has never been averse to the odd spot of dressing up.

And she’s stil-etto pretty good at it too.

The pop veteran shot the glossy promo pictures in a traditional Parisian bistro.

She took the opportunity to show off her well-toned pins, topped off with killer stiletto heals.

Hang about, Gordon... did you say this was shot in Paris? And it's a woman wearing fishnets? Aren't you forgetting something?

Oooh la la.

That's better.

Pre-recording: that'll keep Jonathan Ross in line

Tim Davie, BBC's head of music and audio, has suggested that when Jonathan Ross returns in January, his Radio 2 programme might be pre-recorded to keep him in line:

"It's a little early to confirm anything at this point. We've said that on January 24 the Jonathan Ross Show will come back. That's the lead assumption," he said.

It is understood that most of Ross's Radio 2 programmes were aired live, but sources have suggested that more may be pre-recorded in future or that the show will be subject to tighter editorial controls.

Ah, yes, pre-recording. Although given that both the TV show where he told Gwyneth Paltrow he'd fuck her and the Russell Brand programme were prerecorded and still went out anyway, it's not clear how.

Davie also had some thoughts about music TV:

Davie added that there was "lots more work to do with music television".

He said shows such as BBC2's celebrity conducting series Maestro and forthcoming Top of the Pops specials were ways of making music appealing to television commissioners.

But didn't Top Of The Pops get cancelled precisely because it wasn't appealing to commissioners, and it only got brought back this Christmas due to complaints from the public rather than out of the love of the commissioners?