Supersonic (TV series) facts for kids
Supersonic was a British television music show, which featured pop music artists of the day. Launched in 1975, it was produced by London Weekend Television for the ITV network and ran for two years. The show typically lasted 30 minutes and was broadcast, firstly, on Thursday afternoons - Series 1, Show 1: (4 September 1975) - Series 1, Show 18: The Supersonic Christmas Show 1975 (25 December 1975.) It was then moved to a Saturday afternoon slot from Series 1, Show 19: (3 January 1976.) The programme was devised and created by David Deyong and presented by film and music producer Mike Mansfield and the main theme was composed and sung by Andy Bown.
Although the show starred performers with songs in the music charts, the show, unlike its BBC rival Top of the Pops, was not chart-based. Whilst Top of the Pops ran all year, Supersonic had a limited run with season one consisting of 30 editions and season two consisting of 28.
The show was recorded in front of an audience of teenagers at London Weekend's studios, then known as the South Bank Television Centre and used a style of production in which cameras were highly visible and areas such as the production gallery were featured. Its producer and director also doubled as host, cueing in performances from the studio gallery instead of presenting conventional links to camera.
The original series received limited U.S. broadcast in syndication at the time. Later, musical performances from this show were repackaged for U.S. television, under the title Twiggy's Jukebox, hosted by model-turned-actor/singer Twiggy, which ran for one season in 1978–1979.
In 2020, Elbow lead singer Guy Garvey presented a multiply-repeated one-hour programme on UK Freeview TV channel Sky Arts in the series 'From The Vaults' (episode 5 of 6, sub-headed '1975') which was largely based on clips from 'Supersonic', including performances by ELO, Rod Stewart, Status Quo, Roxy Music, Ace and Dr Feelgood et al.
