Press ReleaseUK 10 Jan 2018

UK: BMG acquires rights to iconic 60’s TV show Ready Steady Go!

The Rolling Stones perform on Ready Steady Go!

LONDON, 10 January 2018 – BMG has acquired rights to the name. branding and to certain surviving audio visual broadcast footage from iconic Sixties TV pop show Ready Steady Go!

It now plans to explore the legacy of what was arguably the most influential UK music TV show of all time in a series of new audio, video and book releases.

The first fruits of the deal is the 60-track, 3CD set Ready Steady Go – The Sixties. BMG plans to tell the story of the iconic programme in documentary, book and exhibition form as well as through CD and DVD releases based around the world-famous artists that performed on the show.

BMG EVP Global Catalogue Recordings Peter Stack said, “Few television programmes can match the sheer cultural impact of Ready Steady Go! In just three and a half years it changed the face of popular culture. We are delighted to become the custodians of this great brand. We already have detailed plans for a whole series of beautiful products which we believe will delight older fans as well inspiring a new generation.”

Ready, Steady, Go!  began broadcasting on Friday, 9th August 1963 and within a matter of weeks, the show became an essential television ritual. It provided a style bible - setting trends, becoming the barometer for popular culture and epitomising the spirit of youthful optimism that gripped Britain in the mid Sixties.

Ready, Steady, Go! ran for three and a half years up to December 1966. Within that time it set a blueprint for music presentation and production on British television that resonated over the following decades and can still be felt today.

The programme presented some of the greats in popular music, at the outset of their careers, including The Rolling Stones, The Who, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Beach Boys, Dusty Springfield, Manfred Mann, The Kinks, Otis Redding, The Dave Clark Five and The Beatles.

Ready, Steady, Go! reflected the cultural upheaval of the mid Sixties, with an “anything-goes” approach to performance, fashion and attitude. It also rewrote the rulebook technically in terms of what was possible on TV.

Young directors such as Michael Lindsay-Hogg experimented with new camera techniques. And sets designed by Nicolas Ferguson and Arnold Schwartzman were consciously modelled on current mod fashions and op art, perfectly reflecting the handpicked mod audience, an integral part of the programme.

In 2000, the British Film Institute named Ready Steady Go! in its ‘TV 100’ as one of the best British television programmes of all time.