Right. But it (as earlier) didn't match either local pop station. Or industry mags (Billboard, CashBox...). I wouldn't think local record stores sent them a list of sales...
Some record stores did report, as they felt that having people read lists of the hits encouraged them to go and buy their favorite songs.
That said, in the later 60's and 70's when "our" WMAK (I was a GM at one of the Mooney group stations) was #1, that station did not use Cashbox or Billboard or Record World. It used FMQB, Gavin, the Hamilton Report and its own local tracking that did, for a while, include record store surveys.
Also keep in mind that back when a company could only own 7 AM and 7 FM, we often chatted with similar station PDs in nearby markets. When I did WERC in Birmingham, I would talk with a friend at the modern AC station in Jackson, MS, about songs. And for our Top 40 FM, I'd talk to the Mooney PDs in Nashville, Knoxville and Pensacola as well.
Oh, and remember that we also did tabulate requests and talk to the jocks about what they felt about the people calling... they could tell legitimate requests and distinguish them from organized "Partridge Family Fan Club" swarms of requests.
We have to remember that record stores... and nearly nothing else... was computerized in 1970. So stores did not have accurate sales data unless they physically counted the remaining copies of singles and deducted them from the order invoices. So generally, when a station talked to a store, they got mostly "it exploded this week", "it's doing about the same", "it seems to be going up" or "it does not sell much" or "I have not sold a single one". The information was vague, and it did not show who... teens, young women, men, kids... were buying the 45's.
