Ready Steady Go! and Top of the Pops

The beat group boom that reinvigorated British pop music in the 1960s reached the nation’s television screens in February 1963, when the Beatles appeared on Independent Television’s (ITV’s) Thank Your Lucky Stars, followed in July by the Rolling Stones. However, it was ITV’s Ready Steady Go!, launched that August, and the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Top of the Pops, which debuted in January 1964, that became essential weekly viewing for hip and not-so-hip fans alike. It...