Top 40 Hits keep on coming
Oct. 30th, 2005 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drscottThe gym has switched from a rotation of tapes (really headbanging metal, then rap/R&B, then disco...) to a more steady diet of oldies from the 70s and 80s. Not too many metalheads or urban hiphoppers in Mountain View, but the oldies tapes are strange -- I haven't heard so much ELO in years. The Eagles -- I'd forgotten some of their lachrymose songs.
Anyway, I've dug up another bit of ephemera from the archives for you: a Top 40 radio survey from 1968. See, kiddies, long before iTunes and the iPod, there was this thing called radio. Far out in the hinterlands, radio stations were the only way you might hear new music, and their playlists generated sales of individual songs on 45-rpm records, known as "singles." Each week the record stores were surveyed for their sales numbers, which begat playlists confined to just the highest-selling songs -- thus "Top 40 radio." This led to payola, where the record company would pay DJs under the table to get their new music on the air long enough to get some sales.
[addendum: there's a web site on the historical role of station WHB in inventing the Top 40 format. They also pioneered call-in talk shows and other staples of AM radio. The station has changed to all sports now.]
Anyway, I've dug up another bit of ephemera from the archives for you: a Top 40 radio survey from 1968. See, kiddies, long before iTunes and the iPod, there was this thing called radio. Far out in the hinterlands, radio stations were the only way you might hear new music, and their playlists generated sales of individual songs on 45-rpm records, known as "singles." Each week the record stores were surveyed for their sales numbers, which begat playlists confined to just the highest-selling songs -- thus "Top 40 radio." This led to payola, where the record company would pay DJs under the table to get their new music on the air long enough to get some sales.
[addendum: there's a web site on the historical role of station WHB in inventing the Top 40 format. They also pioneered call-in talk shows and other staples of AM radio. The station has changed to all sports now.]
