American Top 40 in the Boston market

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Tue, 2 Mar 2021 14:06:14 -0500, "James Duffy" <jimduffy75@gmail.com> said:

> took over Countdown America.  This initiated several affiliate changes that
> did not all occur at once.  When Dick Clark moved to Countdown America in
> November of '85, WROR picked it up from top40 WHTT.

Did (CBS-owned) WHTT ever carry (CBS-syndicated) Top 40 Satellite
[sic] Survey with Dan Ingram in this timeframe?

		    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ingram's is the countdown show I remember most from growing up; it
aired on WQCR 98.9 in Burlington (now WOKO) -- and it was distributed
on a pair of long-playing discs, not satellite.  WQCR ran an illegal
contest when they were airing Ingram, call in Monday evening and name
the Nth song on Sunday's countdown and they would give you "all the
songs" on that week's chart -- by which they actually meant they would
give you the "destroy after air" syndication discs, complete with
Ingram's patter, commercials, prerecorded promos, and everything.[1]

(I just got out my 1989 M Street Directory to see if Q-99 had switched
to WOKO by then, but they were still WQCR.  A quick rundown of the
Spring '88 Arbitron 12+ AQH ratings for the Burlington-Plattsburgh
market: WXXX 95.3, 19.8; WIZN 106.7, 16.9; WEZF 92.9, 14.1; WQCR 98.9,
9.6; WJOY 1230, 9.0; WVMT 620, 7.3; WDOT 1390, 5.1; WLFE 102.3, 3.4.
Who gets ratings like that any more?  None of the Plattsburgh stations
made it into the Arbitron book, not even class-C WGFB 99.9.  WNCS was
still on 96.7 in Montpelier, an unrated market, and -- I did not know
this -- was apparently competing with WORK for the 104.7 allocation.
M Street also gives Birch ratings, which included non-commercial
stations, and Vermont Public Radio's WVPS got an 8.1 in the Spring '88
Birch book.[2])

-GAWollman

[1] The set that I received was, I think, lost in a flood in 1991.  I
can remember two bits of Ingram patter, one talking up Peter Gabriel's
"In Your Eyes" 'in your ears', and one talking up Sting's "Russians"
'yes, the Russians _are_ coming'.  Unfortunately, these songs charted
about a year apart so I have no idea whether either one was on the
discs that I "won".

[2] I'd love to see the intab for either of these surveys just to
assuage my curiosity about how much listenership CFQR, CJFM, and CHOM
were getting south of the 45th parallel, before all the drop-ins came
on the air and made those frequencies uncopyable.