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Commercial radio chart show to stay in Sunday slot despite New Music Fridays

By | Published on Wednesday 8 July 2015

Big Top 40

So, are you all ready for New Music Fridays? Did you buy a new hat? Have you organised high tea at the Ritz for when the new chart comes in, so you can be sipping on some Earl Grey and chewing cucumber sandwiches just as Greg James reads out that list of best selling/streaming records on your battery-powered transistor radio?

I hear London’s tube drivers are so excited about this big innovation in music releasing that they’re all taking tomorrow off work to prepare, which is commitment. I assume they’re all building special sheds in which to experience the new chart. But yes, the global release day starts this week, with Radio 1’s all new big fat chart show in its new slot of Friday at 4pm.

But, hey, what, hang on just one minute, what about the actual “big” chart show? As in commercial radio’s ‘Big Top 40’, lovingly paid for by the flumps at Vodafone? You know, “Kid Jensen and the Network Chart”, except with Marvin Humes in the role as “the Kid”. You know, the Global Radio-produced chart show aired by 140 commercial radio stations across the UK. You know, the chart show you don’t care about but actual people listen to. Yes, that’s it, ‘The Vodafone Big Top 40 with Marvin Humes’.

Well, despite Global boss Ashley Tabor admitting back in April that his company was indeed considering whether to follow Radio 1’s lead in moving its big weekly chart show to Friday, to fall in line with the new chart week caused by the global release day, the radio firm has decided to keep the ‘Big Top 40’ in its traditional Sunday at 4pm slot.

This may well be for primarily logistical reasons, because shifting a weekly show aired on numerous radio stations owned by different companies isn’t as easy as Radio 1 just plonking the chart into the Friday drive time slot.

Not least because weekday evening rush hour is already a prime listening spot for commercial radio stations, and they won’t want to mess with their existing drive time formula, while Sunday tea time is an otherwise off-peak slot that gets a boost, in terms of listeners and sponsorship potential, because of the chart. Plus, while ‘Big Top 40’ already has twice as many listeners as the Radio 1 chart show, with that rival programme now shifting to Friday there might be more listeners to grab on Sunday afternoon.

Though a spokesman for the programme told Radio Today that the show was staying put because Sunday tea time is chart time in the UK and you shouldn’t mess with that, and anyway, because commercial radio’s chart is compiled differently to the record industry-endorsed countdown the BBC carries, ‘The Big Top 40’ is usually ahead of the ‘UK Top 40’ in terms of tracking new music (apparently).

Said the spokesman: “Sunday is the home of the charts. The ‘Vodafone Big Top 40’ is still the only place you can enjoy the UK’s hottest hit music almost a week before any other chart and includes the official iTunes top 10, every Sunday from 4pm to 7pm”.



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