It's been a shadow of itself for over ten years now and, finally, the BBC have axed it. About time too, as far as I can see – there's enough music channels showing nonstop crap that there really is no need for any more of it on the national airwaves. Shame that it'll reduce the amount of live music on TV, but since that's from near-zero to nearer-zero it isn't so much of a problem.

TOTP has been destroyed basically because it was the kind of format that the Theakstons and Coxes that dominate the BBC light entertainment department don't understand – they tacked on "interview" segments and added in lame "celebrity" hosts and it really didn't work. In its heyday, it was presented by Radio 1 DJs – at the time, as far from appearing in Heat magazine as you could get, and better for it (you certainly wouldn't get a John Peel-type figure presenting a primetime music show nowadays.) It has been killed by people who think that "celebrity", rather than skill or knowledge or a sense of fun, is the be all and end all for producing a "kids" TV programme.

It's also been killed by the music it's been showing; it's been rather incongrous watching the BBC2 variant of the show and seeing an archive clip of Bowie or whomever strutting their stuff and having that followed up by Yet Another Generic R&B Song (or something much, much worse). It just confuses people; who is such a show for?

If relaunched properly – no Andi Peters producing, no celebrity input, more artists in the studio (if not actually performing live, allow them to perform live), a presenter who actually likes music and has a sense of humour – TOTP could actually have worked. But it was never going to happen, and it's too late now for it – let's put the show out of its misery.

At least we still have 6music, for now; the station that Radio 1 should be, but isn't. And we've got Radio 2's specialist DJs, most of whom are wonderful. Shame about everything else, really…