1/6/1995
Next to when I was nine years old and I got that shiny, red bicycle and my first kiss under the mistletoe, this was my best Christmas ever.
Ever!
R&R changed their charts. Whoa! Can you believe it? R&R will begin publishing unweighted Plays Per Week charts this week.
Truly unbelievable.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and enemas, animals and freaks, this is an announcement of mammoth proportions…particularly for an uneducated, ignorant country boy like me. Two years ago this week, I wrote the first Editorial on the pages of Network 40 condemning R&R’s charts and the methodology used to gather the information. The entire industry laughed from the sidelines as Network 40 began attacking R&R as an unreliable source of music information.
We began the attack and waited for R&R to blink.
Over the next two years, Network 40 debuted the first Plays Per Week Chart and challenged R&R to do the same. For the next year, R&R clung to their tired, worthless methodology of tabulating inaccurate playlists even as the industry screamed for change. Finally, R&R succumbed. A year ago, R&R finally went to a Plays Per Week Chart. But some of the powers who ran R&R couldn’t even do something that simple correctly.
Instead of a standard PPW chart, R&R conjured u a chart with add factors, unrelated weighting and other voodoo weirdness. The industry howled, but capitulated…for a while.
After another year of ceaseless barraged from the outside world…after 12 more months of foaming at the mouth while trying to drum up empty excuses for the inadequacies of the charts…R&R finally capitulated. With last month’s announcement that R&R would begin publishing an unweighted PPW chart, R&R admitted two long years of mistakes and justified every shot taken in the past 24 months by Network 40.
With this acknowledgement, R&R didn’t blink. R&R grimaced and shit its eyes!
And just when I thought this would be the merriest of Christmases ever…it got even better. First, R&R admitted that their charts were totally screwed up and announced changes beginning in 1995. My heart truly skipped a beat. Then, R&R announced that all of the charts would be changing in 1995…except the Country chart.
Hello…McFly?
The Country chart is the most screwed up of all the R&R charts. It isn’t based on Plays Per Week, the weighting system is bogus, the add factor is ridiculous, the “projected†plays are an industry joke…for all of these and more reasons recently outlined on this commentary page, the Country chart should have been the first one R&R changed. Yet they aren’t changing it at all!
What is wrong with this picture? Are all the other charts (using the same methodology) wrong, but the Country chart right? If so, how? Of all the bone-headed moves made by the R&R hierarchy in the past two years, this one takes the cake. If the methodology behind all the other charts makes them inaccurate and the Country chart uses the same methodology…it doesn’t take a genius to know that the Country chart is also screwed up. Forrest Gump could figure this one out. This chart doesn’t need help like Bosnia doesn’t need help.
The compilation of the Country chart in R&R on the last week of 1994 created so much controversy that Nashville is still up in arms, but this is the chart that doesn’t need to change.
The R&R Country chart is so perfect that Monday at 5 pm on the last week of 1994, that chart showed Faith Hill’s “Take Me As I AM†as the number one song. At 5:30 pm, fully half-an-hour past the cut-off time, a station called in to make changes in their previous report. After the report was tabulated, the new number one record on the Country chart was Joe Diffey’s “Pick-Up Man.†Chart positions were announced and all was right with the world.
Except that Warner Bros. wasn’t pleased that Faith Hill had been knocked from the number one spot after the deadline. Someone let loose some righteous indignation and, supposedly, no less than Erica Farber (who everyone knows is an expert in the field of radio, charts and music…particularly in the Country field) took it upon herself to invalidate the report.
Final result? Faith Hill was back at number one.
Network 40 has long maintained that R&R’s methodology allows the opportunity for chart manipulation, but we never thought the manipulation might take place within the hallowed halls of R&R. Although we applaud Ms. Farber’s zeal in righting what she thought was an obvious wrong, we have a lot of questions.
Did she recall every radio station that reported information that week? As we’re sure someone who heads up a publication based on accurate statistical reporting knows, if you subject any raw data to a challenge, you must subject every piece of raw data to the same challenge for the final information to be statistically accurate. Why was a report taken after the deadline? Who called R&R’s attention to the late report? Why did R&R determine that Joe Diffey would be number one, only to change their mind later? Couldn’t they have waited to make sure? Why does R&R take phoned-in reports that are so easy to manipulate? Why doesn’t R&R demand faxed play information? If, after Ms. Farber changed the station’s report, she had received a call from Epic about another station whose list might have been in error, would she have changed that report also?
This is the chart that’s okay? This is the chart that didn’t change? This is the chart ridiculed on Music Row by a sign saying, “Joe Diffey…Number One in Billboard for Four Weeks…Number One in R&R for an hour!†This chart needs so much help, R&R should call Jimmy Carter.
Come on, R&R. Face the music. The Country chart is absurd. Drop the ridiculous “add factor.†Discontinue the archaic weighting system. Stop having stations “project†their Plays Per Week. Stop letting stations phone in their reports. Accepted only faxed, computer-generated airplay reports so there can be no manipulation.
Then you’ll have an accurate chart. Just like the one coming in Network 40.