WABC weekly surveys (was: WKFY)

[Sid Schweiger]

"I'm betting that 43 and 53 on that survey were "hitbound" or"chartbound" singles -- songs that weren't on the charts but werebeing heavily promoted for some reason."

Despite the fact that WABC PD Rick Sklar insisted that his weekly charts were based exclusively on record sales, that was really only true for the heavy-rotation cuts (in that era, usually the top 14 to 18 records).  Below that, there were some more subjective criteria used, including input from the weekly record meetings to which members of the WABC staff were invited on a rotating basis (and from which record promoters were specifically excluded; they weren't even allowed in the building until after the meeting broke up).  On some of the surveys you'll also see some records without any number at all.  For example, in early September 1968, Mason Williams' "Classical Gas" debuted at the bottom of the list without a number.

The up-and-comers were labeled "Pick Hits" on WABC, and on many of the surveys on the musicradio77.com site you can see an asterisk used to denote a "Former Pick Hit of the Week" once it entered heavy rotation.