Charting A New Course

It’s moving to its new slot to accommodate the change in release day for the UK’s new record releases, which is also shifting from Sunday to Friday. The change will see the UK fall in line with most of the rest of the world, which will mean Friday will be the new global release day for new product.

“I’m sure people will be shaking their cassettes in rage, but you have to react to the market place. If you don’t you are dead in the water,” said Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper. “We could keep it on a Sunday but the audience would say it’s two days late. It’s not being downgraded, if anything this gives the chart a new lease of life. It gives it exposure to a new audience on a Friday afternoon, a new presenter and a new format.”

The new show will lose one hour of its current three-hour running time. It will focus on the Top 20, rather than the current Sunday afternoon show’s Top 40. A chart countdown has been part of Radio 1’s Sunday schedule for nearly five decades, starting with Alan Freeman’s Pick Of The Pops in 1967.

As part of the changes, the BBC will also launch a weekly half-hour TV chart show – its first since the demise of BBC1’s Top of the Pops in 2006 – on children’s TV channel, CBBC.