The KRTH music survey in ARSA dated 2/16/82. "Centerfold" was #1 that same week. They were CHR/ AC back then. I haven't researched the KIIS-FM or any other local rankings for that song just yet.
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Songs that no longer fit the format?
- Thread starter 101tm
- Start date
Everything ATSFGuy said plus:
"Diamonds and Pearls"
"The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"
"Raspberry Beret"
"Sign 'O' the Times"
"You Need Another Lover Like You Need a Hole in Your Head"
I guess "Batdance" was so popular not so much because of the quality of the song but because people were caught up in the fever of the movie.
"Diamonds and Pearls"
"The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"
"Raspberry Beret"
"Sign 'O' the Times"
"You Need Another Lover Like You Need a Hole in Your Head"
I guess "Batdance" was so popular not so much because of the quality of the song but because people were caught up in the fever of the movie.
You must be aware that radio station surveys are 50% factual at most... the rest is internal positioning to show movement, even if song rotations don't change from week to week.
Remember, on most Top 40 / CHR stations the difference between #1 and #5 is nothing, rotation wise. A list of 40 songs (which nobody plays today) back in the day might involve 3 to 5 categories of different rotations. So a song that was #23 is no different than #18 or #28.
I did a Top 40 in Ecuador. There were weeks that not a single song we played was available locally at retail. So all we did for out "57 of the Week" was to mix up what we thought were the best current songs and play them in a countdown style on Sundays and publish the list in one of the daily papers to accompany the show.
Why did we do the list that way? That is what I learned from Top 40 stations XEJP and XERC in Mexico City when I interned there... they did the lists internally to create a fresh rotation each week and nothing more. And that was in the largest market in the Western Hemisphere.
Interesting, didn't know that. Yeah, unfortunately I don't remember hearing "Pac-Man Fever" in regular rotation on K-Earth, just on select weekend specials later in the decade. I wasn't listening to KRTH in 1982. For the record, I did look up the song in Radio and Records magazine listed in other station's surveys (called CHR parallels) and yes, "Fever" did reach #2 on KRTH, #1 on XETRA 690 and #5 on KIIS-FM, so yeah, quite popular in SoCal for a time.
Yeah, I like a few of them myself. But novelties hit their peak and drop off rather quickly. XM has plenty of them.
Please explain the list thing. I didn’t quite get that.
Station "Top 40" charts, often given out at record stores and retailers from the 50's well into the 70's, were not usually based on any kind of factual study of sales or popularity. They were put together by stations to create interest in their programming and to please fans that liked to have lists and often used them to decide what songs to buy.
My point is that those station charts were mostly made up, but based on what each station thought were the best songs each week... occasionally supported by contacts with record stores, lists from trade magazines ranging from Gavin and Hamilton and FMQB to Billboard and Cash Box.
Does that reasoning also include the KIIS surveys? These are the ones Rick Dees researched to do his weekly countdowns in the 80's and 90's. Wow, all this time I thought these lists and surveys were based on station spins and listener requests, in other words, the popularity of those songs on a station. Kind of like the Hot 100, popularity across the USA. At least we knew the songs that were popular locally (local hits), which in some publication's rankings, were different than the national charts. The Boss 30 and the older Fab 40's were that way every week.
Are you sure about that? I was of the impression that the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 used the Radio & Records chart.
Requests were sometimes tabulated, just as sales of 45's were checked from the 50's until they died out towards the end of the 70's.
But by the mid-70's the more significant Top 40 stations were using call out research to determine how often to play a song. That data was used on the published charts, but not precisely as otherwise it would give the station's research data to competitors.
Spins were based on whatever a station had as source data... sales, requests, callout, and a dose of national data such as we got from the publications we used to review new music and national play on other stations such as the Gavin, Hamilton, FMQB and other reports... and of course R&R going into the 70's.
I never carried that show nor did I follow it. But I believe it used R&R charts.
Now you've got me... In Radio & Records magazine are the weekly KIIS surveys, but I never thought of the national Radio & Records chart. He may have accessed the local KIIS surveys for a time early on, then went to the national. Now I'm not so sure...
I do remember him referencing the "Los Angeles #1 song" at the end of his countdown sometimes and that would mean KIIS surveys, but.......
Most of the weekly countdown shows of that time used the R&R chart. ABC had an exclusive with Billboard. The Dees show was carried by other stations, and I can't imagine other stations carrying a show that used a local LA chart.
I believe you, I highly doubt any major market station does this in today's world....
That's what we used to do; create our published list as a combination of R&R and Billboard charting, plus what was in power rotation that week. For newer/fast climbing songs, we would sometimes weight it with Gavin.
Yeah, you don't see radio station music survey leaflets at record stores anymore or published in the Calendar section of the LA Times. I guess we'll have to substitute the Barnes and Noble music section or that little ten foot section in Wal Mart as a "record store" nowadays! But hey, you still have some independents out there.
Usually it's published on the station website, or app. You know, the Interwebs?
Record stores??
I’ll check, is there a specific link?
Usually "doctored" (or, nicely, "adjusted") to not reflect actual rotations... even though any competitor today can get one of the services that shows cumulative and minute to minute airplay.
The only people who need to know actual spin numbers are the labels. And they have access to actual rotations.
For everyone else, it's just a hobby.
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