How does college radio work? The Chart | Not The Chart

Unlike commercial radio charts, which are created by the literal tracking of songs being played on the air to determine which songs are being played most, the creation of the college/community radio charts are left entirely up the the station to determine. This makes the meaning of each chart, and the larger trade magazine charts to which they collectively contribute, impossible to understand in a conclusive, concrete sense.

Each station can use any method to create their chart, and there is absolutely no means of verifying the veracity of the chart or what relationship it has to reality. In effect, a music director could simply list his or her favorite 30 records on a list, call it the chart of the station for that week and submit it to the trade magazines to become part of the compiled trade magazine chart. Although this can and does happen, most stations make an honest effort to figure out which records got the most play and then list them in order of highest to lowest play on their chart.

But even this direct method, which seems straight forward and honest enough, doesn't shed a perfect light on the situation. For example: imagine that there are two records on a stations chart. One record is at #5 and the other is at #27. The #5 records got played 12 times that week and the #27 record got played 5 times. Common sense would dictate that the record getting played more deserves to be placed higher on the chart, however, what if the 12 times that the #5 record got played all occured between 3am and 6am and the #27 record got played at 5:15pm on each weekday? What if 100 people heard the #5 record on the radio that week, but 5,000 people heard the #27 record?

That's just one way out of many in which the chart is only a semi-useful tool, even when it is not intentionally distorted. And when you take into account the fact that what is #5 on one stations chart may mean one thing and yet something entirely different at another station, it becomes clear that the chart is very nebulous.