"Frozen" Weeks' Effect on Top 40 Count

[papathree]

I'm confused about the impact of "Frozen" Chart weeks from Billboard with respect to a song's performance over time.

For example, "Say Say Say" by Sir Paul McCartney and MJ hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on Dec 10, 1983. It stayed there on Dec 17 and on Dec 24. I count 3 weeks at #1 so far.

Then the Chart for 31 Dec 1983 was "Frozen."

The next Hot 100 was published for Jan 7 1984, and "Say Say Say" was at #1 again, but the chart says it is in its 5th week at #1. Huh?

It remained at #1 the following week (Jan 14, 1984), and the Hot 100 (and Joel Whitburn's Top 40 book) says it was in its 6th week at #1. I still count only five chart appearances at #1.

Can anyone help explain, please??

Thank you!! Cheers, Mitch

[jdelachjr2002]

Billboard counted all the chart statistics from 12/24/1983 (and in all charts prior to frozen weeks) twice.

[papathree]

Thanks JD. What do you mean by "the statistics were counted twice?"

[Caseyfan4everRyanfanNever]

Oct 20, 2010 20:36:50 GMT -5 papathree said:

Thanks JD. What do you mean by "the statistics were counted twice?"

What this means is that the chart for Dec 24, 1983 was actually the chart for both December 24, 1983 and Dec 31, 1983 hence the chart postions for December 24, 1983 were counted twice to compensate for the non appearance of a chart for December 31, 1983.

I've been working on some playlists for Casey's Top 40 (which used Radio and Records charts) and I noticed that Casey's Top 40 sometimes counted the song positions for the last chart before the year end specials 2 or 3 times to compensate for the weeks that the charts supposedly did not appear (the weeks when the year end specials were broadcast) but, in other cases, they simply ignored those weeks. As part of my playlists, I kept up with the "weeks on" of each song and found that my figures were not always those announced by Casey or his guest hosts on Casey's Top 40 (I do note such discrepencies on the playlists with an * and an explanation). I vaguely remember that American Top 40 did the same thing--not being consistent on whether the chart positions for the weeks when the year end specials were broadcast were included in the total weeks of songs on the Top 40 at those times.

When compiling playlists or figuring my predictions on biggest hits, I always count the last chart before a year end show 2 or 3 times to compensate for the "frozen" or "lost" weeks.

[mkarns]

AT40 probably wasn't always consistent in this regard, but especially in the later 1980s they apparently did count "frozen" weeks toward a song's total points when figuring out the year end chart; the year end top 10s in that period seem somewhat biased in favor of songs high on the chart the preceding December and January, helped by the fact that they got a "free" extra week with a high position and a lot of points.

However, these weeks weren't always cited on the weekly shows; I recall an early Shadoe Stevens AT40, from August or September 1988 (I think), when he said that Steve Winwood's "Roll With It" in summer 1988 was the first song to spend 4 weeks at #1 since Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer" in early 1987. But in between those two hits George Michael's "Faith" was #1 for 4 weeks if one includes the "frozen" week.