Re: top 40 surveys

[apodlecki@webtv.net (Alex Podlecki)]

I regularly collected the weekly top 40 surveys from WCOP and WHIL in
the late 50's in Lynn because my local record store gave them away with
record purchases. I have only a vague recollection of the WBZ survey.
The local record store did not carry it, but some supermarket (like A&P)
did and I only got one or two editions. No other radio station published
surveys were distributed in Lynn around then.

However, the survey that 50's teenagers in Lynn paid most attention to
was the Joe Smith Tuesday night Top Twenty show on WVDA and later WEZE.
Joe took his Top Twenty show with him when he moved to WMEX in 1958.
When Arnie Ginsberg replaced Joe Smith in 1959, WMEX dropped the Tuesday
night Top Twenty show and, I think, adopted a station-wide top 40.  Joe
Smith may have taken the Top Twenty concept with him when he moved to
WILD in 1959, but the WILD daylight-only operation killed off any chance
of its survival. There were several format changes on WILD before Wild
Man Steve surfaced in the early 60's.  I'm positive that WILD had no top
40 list, at least through 1968 when I left the Boston area.

Another interesting music survey was published weekly in the TV/radio
section of the Sunday Record American Advertizer in the 50's. It was a
composite top 10 list based on the inputs of disc jockeys at a dozen or
so Boston area radio stations. The names of the jocks and stations were
dutifully listed each week so you had some idea of when jocks changed
stations or stations changed calls. This survey was slightly bogus
though, because some of the jocks/stations listed did not even have a
top 40 play format.

Alex Podlecki

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