redsnapper

If, as I said in my original post, the BBC's chart was the most broadcast during the 1960s, then the NME comes in at a healthy second place, as I believe that Radio Luxembourg used the NME chart in their Top Twenty show from 1960 onwards. Prior to that they used the sheet music charts, and from about the late 1960s onwards, they compiled their own chart which tried to be a week or two ahead of everyone else's!

Actually this thread was first suggested by Dave Taylor rather than myself. Prior to 1969, as many chart enthusiasts are aware, the BBC used to compile their own chart using a average of chart positions from up to four simultaneous music papers' weekly charts. They were used on radio's Pick Of The Pops and tv's Top Of The Pops. Later they were also used on Jimmy Savile's long-running Double Top Ten Show / Old Record Club radio shows. Even Roger Scott on London's Capital Radio used to refer to them in the oldies slot on his show in the 1970s and early 1980s. Then, in 1977, along came the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles and the "official" chart suddenly became the NME chart up until 1960, then the Record Retailer (later Music Week) chart thereafter. It's true that the NME was the first to publish a Top 30 (in 1956) and RR a Top 50 (in 1960). However, there is no question that it was the BBC-compiled chart that was the most extensively broadcast and arguably the most accurate (from the compilation method described above). Its only drawback was that it was only a Top 20 (until 1967 when it became a Top 30). The RR (used by Record Mirror from 1962) also omitted all the EPs and LPs from its chart, so, for example, in December 1963, its chart dumbed down Beatlemania to just their two singles whereas all the other music papers' charts included their EPs and even their latest LP. It's a long shot trying to convert those in the Guinness camp, I have to admit, but for those of us growing up in the 1960s, the idea that Guinness has rewritten the chart history books for that period does not sit well with the "50+ set" who cut their chart teeth on Pick Of The Pops and Top Of The Pops.