weekly November 27, 2023, Issue 886
Fifty Years Of Chart Hits
The Country Aircheck/Mediabase Top 50 chart traces its roots to Radio & Records’ “Country & Western Top 20,” which launched 50 years ago last month (10/5/73). Next month, Country Aircheck will include the Top 100 songs from that five-decade span in the year-end print issue, which will also crown 2023’s top songs, artists and the airplay label of the year. As a preview, the Top 25 can be found on page 5. Retro Specs: In 1973, that first R&R chart only listed 20 titles and was compiled from the ranked playlists of 27 reporting stations, including five whose FM successors are still reporters: KSONAM/San Diego; KTUF-AM/Phoenix (now Tim McGraw KNIX); KUZZ-AM/Bakersfield; KWJJ-AM/ Portland, OR and WUBE-AM/Cincinnati. The first No. 1 was “You’re The Best Thing” by Ray Price. Since then, 1,727 songs have followed in the top spot. The chart expanded to 40 titles by the end of 1974, and then to 50 in 1980. The number of reporting stations first reached the 100 mark in 1977, and 150 for the first time in 1983. In 1984, the Toby Keith numbered station playlists used to compile the chart were replaced by a three-category system, with stations reporting songs in Lonestar heavy, medium or light rotations. It Kenny Chesney was during this era that the reporting panel reached its peak. Billboard moved to monitored airplay with BDS in 1990, dropping stations in then-unmonitored markets, all of which R&R picked up. The result was a panel of 231 reporters by the end of 1993. The category reporting system was replaced by stations reporting their projected spins in 1994, foreshadowing the (continued on page 5)
Fast Food: WIRK/West Palm Beach’s Nick Rivers and his turkey fly home (North Carolina) for the holidays. ”As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly,” he tells Country Aircheck.
Family Tradition: Sally & Jim Allgeier
Our series spotlighting family members working in the country music industry continues with Red Street Records Dir./Country Field Promotion Sally Allgeier and her father, Leighton Broadcasting/St. Cloud GM Jim Allgeier. JA: I’ve been in radio since ’99, and in the billboard business for about 15 years before that. SA: I actually went to college to be a teacher. When I graduated, I was a teacher for, like, six months and absolutely hated it. So I needed a job. I’d had an internship at my dad’s radio stations [Federated Media/Fort Wayne]. He needed a receptionist and I said I’d do it for a few months while he looked for someone. Then the Dir./Promotions Dir. gig came available and, at that point, I kind of knew I wanted to get to Nashville in some capacity. So I went to my dad like, “I think I want to do this job.” JA: I said, “First of all, you’ve got to go apply for it with the OM, not me. And if he does give it to you,
Jim Allgeier
Sally Allgeier
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