For chart enthusiasts it was all change on Tuesdays from October 1987. Tuning into Radio 1 at lunchtime – listening to Johnnie Walker, Paul Burnett, DLT or Gary Davies depending on your era – and noting down the chart positions ready for Sunday. Come Sunday you’d be there, finger poised over the pause button, waiting to record the latest chart entries. Admit it, we all did it!
“This show
is going to kick everything else into touch,” boasted Bruno Brookes, bagging
himself a Radio Times cover to boot.
From now on chart release day was shifted from Tuesday to Sunday, requiring
even more of a trigger finger for home tapers.
Broadcast
the chart on the same day it’s compiled? Surely not! When we now have chart shows that are updated to
reflect sales and downloads during the programme it all sounds very quaint.
Back in 1987 the chart manager at Gallup, Godfrey Rust, explained all to the Radio Times.
Of the 4,300
record shops Gallup selected a representative panel based on size of outlet,
type of shop (chains like HMV, multiples like Boots or independents) and
region. For the new chart this panel was upped from 250 to 500 shops.
Each of the
panel shops has a little Epson data-gatherer and sales assistants key in each
record’s catalogue number at the time of sale. The machine is connected to a
telephone line and four times a week Gallup’s computer downloads the data.
After the last update in the early hours of Sunday the chart is compiled.
The computer
is able to compensate for incorrectly punched catalogue numbers, typically the
first letter is missed. About 10 to 20 per cent of the information is rejected
as “incomplete or unrepresentative.” For security a back-up system was maintained
at Thame in Oxfordshire.
Anticipating
the new chart and new show on Sunday 4 October 1987 Bruno said: “The Top 40 is already Europe’s most
listened-to radio show. Now all of the music industry as well will have to be
listening to find out where their records are. I can imagine executives and
promoters jumping about making urgent telephone calls as I read out the
positions, I like anything with a sense of excitement and this show tops the
lot.”
And this is
how it all sounded.
Here’s Paul Burnett with a Tuesday lunchtime chart rundown from September 1978. I can’t claim to have recorded this one; it comes from the pages of Radio Rewind.
From my own collection is this clip of Gary Davies, with his “Bit in the Middle”, and a chart from July 1984.
