Hot 100 1970s Recurrent Rule?

Stations would under-report recurrents.

AutumnAarilyn wrote: Stations would under-report recurrents.

Paul Haney wrote: I've often wondered about that issue myself. It seems like for most of the 1960s and the first few years of the 1970s, that songs would fall completely off the Hot 100 once they dropped below the Top 40. However, I can always find some exceptions. I've never seen any "official" documentation about this.

As someone who was working in radio in the late 60s/70s (albeit part time, and before 1974 at stations in unrated
markets), I don't recall there even being such a thing as a recurrent prior to 1973 or so. Chart turnover was fairly
fast, and once a song started its descent it was only a couple weeks before it dropped off, and didn't return except as an
oldie (which was generally considered something a year or more old).

I'm sure policy on this varied from station to station, in general songs just disappeared for a while after dropping out
of the top 30.
Even in the 90s when I was music director for an R&R reporting CHR, we did not report spins of recurrents to the trades.

Hi People,

Although I'm confident everyone is right about Billboard
having different (possibly unwritten) recurrent rules
through the ages, please don't forget the role promotion
departments had affecting the charts.

Let's say a record was being worked up the charts that
the label thought could become a top-five record, but it
seems to be underperforming when its charting in the
twenties. The promotion department gets word that some
stations are pulling it (or maybe some records in stores
are just sitting on the shelves...) so the promo
department wants to stop pressuring PDs who are still
playing it to increase rotation because they would be
'beating the dead horse' with many stations concurrently
dropping the record.

The promo person tells the station the equivalent of
"focus your attention now on this other, newer record".
Because of this, the original record plummets on the
charts, not because it's a certified stiff, but because
the label doesn't want to spend anymore resourses & money
on it so nobody reports it to the charts anymore (even if
it's still working well & being played in some markets).

Anybody who has any similar (or different) stories please
chime in!

Andy

<Even in the 90s when I was music director for an R&R reporting CHR, we
did not report spins of recurrents to the trades.>

I always found it hard to fathom that a song could be dropping, say at 15-
20, and then off the top 100 the next week... as in, it's statistically
impossible for all stations to stop PLAYING a song in the same week. But
what you say is something I hadn't considered, and that is that the stations
simply stopped reporting that they were still playing the song that was
dropping. That makes a bit more sense, but it also means that all these
stations stopped reporting the spins of the 45 during the same week.

I remember observing the country charts in the mid to late '80s, and a #1
song would almost always last there just one week and then drop
considerably the next week (usually out of the top 10, maybe from 1 to 15).

And it baffled me
that all the country radio stations could coordinate playing the most popular
song one week, and then play it so little just after one week of top
popularity, that it would drop out of the top 10. That would take a lot of
radio station coordination! And of course, I didn't think that was happening.
But I couldn't figure out what WAS happening that this happened so much
specifically on the Country chart during that period in the latter '80s.

Edited by EdisonLite