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Post by Michael1973 on Jul 19, 2013 19:29:10 GMT -5
I began listening to AT40 in 1983. At the time, the NY Times published next week's Billboard top 10 on Friday. This was especially helpful when Casey was on so late on Sunday nights that we couldn't hear the end of the show, however it also spoiled a bit of the current week's chart.
My father would bring us the list faithfully every week from work, and I remember one Good Friday walking to a store to buy the paper for just that reason.
The list was discontinued in 1985, for the most part. On and off in 1986 and again in 1988 we would catch America's Top 10, but eventually hearing the entire 40 became less of a problem.
Still, I seriously wish the full charts had been as accessible in the 1980's as they are now!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2013 19:49:52 GMT -5
I thought the same thing when I finally subbed for a few months in 2006. Even had ACC been worth listening to then I could have followed something. I'll say though in large part the HAC chart and I think AC chart matched AT20/AT10 almost to a tee each week.
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Post by 80sat40fan on Jul 22, 2013 9:31:27 GMT -5
I started listening to AT40 in late 1978 when I moved to St. Louis but really got into the Top 40 charts in the summer of 1982. In the fall of 1984 when I was 17, someone at work had a copy of Billboard magazine, and when I saw the complete Hot 100, I was in chart heaven for a number of minutes! I couldn't afford to buy Billboard every week so from the fall of 1984 through the fall of 1985, I would buy an issue of Billboard every other week (available at a newsstand the Tuesday after the chart date), and then update the chart while listening to AT40 the next weekend. In the fall of 1985, I found out the local county library received its copy of Billboard the Friday before that weekend's AT40 show. Being the dork that I was back then and thought that the copyright police might go after me if I photocopied the chart, I wrote down the Top 40 songs of the week plus the songs below the Top 40 which had bullets. By the summer 1989, I didn't visit the library for the chart but I still purchased BB every other week for a number of years.
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Post by Dale Latimer on Jul 22, 2013 9:48:24 GMT -5
From the beginning of 1976 until I believe the middle of '78, I bought Billboard by the copy, even with the measly amount of cash I had at the time. There was a pharmacy (!) in a town next to my hometown in Pennsylvania that supplied those copies... faithfully... for much of that time, but they dropped it in '78 and I then got them from another store in town that primarily sold tobacco products. The pharmacy folded in the 80s and there is a (very good) Italian-style restaurant in its place today; the tobacco store moved to another location in the same block, and still has a modest selection of reading material, tho not BB. dL
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Post by jlthorpe on May 25, 2017 20:28:23 GMT -5
For a time, I was buying Billboards from newsstands near where I lived or near college. But most of the time, I was frequenting libraries and photocopying the charts I was interested in (primarily the Hot 100 and Billboard 200). I even used to compile chart info in a word processor document, continuing with wherever the Record Research books left off. I stopped doing this sometime in 1997, because by then it just got too tedious to compile the Hot 100 info: songs not hitting the chart, songs charting that I didn't listen to and didn't care about at the time (primarily hip-hop), long chart runs with little chart movement, etc.
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Post by dth1971 on May 26, 2017 7:07:59 GMT -5
I didn't first discover a copy of Billboard Magazine until Summer 1981 when I was sold in some kind of grocery store, I was young and never bought it anyway.
It was until 1982 after I started listening to Casey Kasem AT40 in April 1982 when the show started to air on WLS 890 AM Chicago (Though I did listen to a few bits of the show in August 1980 and August 1981 while on vacation with my parents, and I even remember seeing the America's Top 10 TV show after it premiered on TV in 1980), but then after 1983 did I notice Billboard Hot 100 charts on display of the 45 RPM singles at record stores of the time where I lived (Musicland, Flip Side, Rose Records, Camelot Music, J.R.'s Music Shop)
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Post by adam31 on May 26, 2017 12:20:28 GMT -5
The only place I saw the charts growing up was at the record store. They would frame the Hot 100 above the singles rack, and the Billboard 200 Albums above the albums. How I enjoyed to come in and have a look each week. Especially those songs that were not on AT40 and all the albums.
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Post by johnnywest on May 26, 2017 12:49:31 GMT -5
For most of the '90s, I was paying over $600 a year in magazine subscriptions for both Billboard and R&R. That's a lotta money for someone who wasn't working in the radio business.
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Post by mitchm on May 28, 2017 10:57:25 GMT -5
I started listening to music on the radio back in 1967 when there weren't many options to find out what was going on nationally if you were a broke teenager with no access to Billboard or Cashbox. My brother and I were starting to get interested in "golden oldies" (from 1955-1966) songs that were often played, but we wanted to know how well those records had done when originally popular. Whitburn didn't publish his first book until 1970 and I don't think we got a copy of one until about 1975. Every Sunday our local newspaper printed the Top 10 songs nationally (I'm not sure their source, but it wasn't Billboard) so we decided to go to our local library and copy down with pen and paper every Top 10 going backwards as far as we could go. The library had microfisched the local newspaper going back decades, so we started with the most recent and worked our way backwards. We got back to early 1961 which was when the Top 10 ended/started. Each month was on a separate "fische" and you would load the fische and hand crank through the month looking for Sunday's paper. It took about an hour to go through each month. We were pretty pleased with the results, but looking back it seems like such a waste of time compared to how easy you could get such information after Whitburn started publishing his books and Lotus/Excel became an option. My youth would have been so much different if Excel and laptops had existed.
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Post by dth1971 on May 28, 2017 20:02:51 GMT -5
For most of the '90s, I was paying over $600 a year in magazine subscriptions for both Billboard and R&R. That's a lotta money for someone who wasn't working in the radio business. You have to pay a lot for a Billboard or R&R subscription? Does it cost around $10 if you find it at a newsstand or Waldenbooks or B. Dalton bookstore back in the day?
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Post by djjoe1960 on May 28, 2017 20:28:09 GMT -5
I faithfully collected CKLW's weekly charts during the early 1970's (Detroit area) and became aware of the national charts through AT40, in the mid '70's.
I saw the first national charts at a record store in Atlanta in the late '70's called Peaches and tried to talk them into letting me have the 'old issues' but with no success. The store carried Billboard, Cash Box and Record World. I then wrote to all three to try and get a 'sample issue' as I told them I was thinking of subscribing. I got samples from both Billboard and Record World but never did get one from Cash Box.
I did work in radio for 14 years (1979-1993) and had a personal subscription to Billboard from 1985-1989. I tossed most of the issues out a few years later but kept a few specials.
Sort of ironic that I never actually got my hands on an issue of Cash Box, as I now do countdowns taken from their charts.
'DJ' Joe
Cash Box Countdown
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Post by Rodney on May 31, 2017 9:12:20 GMT -5
To the Merritt Square Mall on my way to work in high school. So, 20 miles. I would peruse the charts at Mother's record store in Merritt Square Mall as well. About 2 miles from where I was born and raised. Never could afford to buy Billboard, but loved looking at the weekly charts at the record store. Every now and then they would have charts that you could have from local radio station WCKS (CK 101). Great memories.
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Post by retroguy on May 31, 2017 18:05:26 GMT -5
A bookstore called Cover to Cover about 34 miles away in Sioux Falls, SD was my go to spot to peruse and study billboard magazine. This was in the late 70's-early 80's. I never bought one because $6.00 seemed like a ridiculous amount to spend on a magazine. For a couple bucks more you could buy an album. Therefore I sat in the store and looked at it for free. The cashier could care less.
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