Around 10 years ago, nearly all the FM stations in the north west, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire took this show including some community stations. I lived in one of the highest parts in Northern England and could easily pick up over 50+ fm stations. On a Sunday night, they all more or less took this program, there was hardly an alternative show unless you went onto DAB or AM 😂
Ryan Fitzpatrick - It was the same in for us in South Wales. In Swansea alone we had it on The Wave, Swansea Bay Radio and Heart South Wales (formally Real Radio South Wales) on standard FM. But we could also get Radio Carmarthenshire, Radio Pembrokeshire, Radio Ceridigion, Bridge FM on DAB, or even standard FM depending on the area of Swansea you live in, and all those stations carried The Big Top 40 as well as Hit40UK, and depending on the date of the station's first broadcast, the various commercial radio chart shows before them. So on Sunday afternoons, you could flick through each of them and it'd be the same song seconds ahead or behind the other station. Or the best was having each station on at once when the "Big Top 40" jingles would come on where the station names would be played over a gap. All you could hear was "96.4FM The Wave", "Real Radio"/"This is Heart, Heart", "Swansea Bay Radio", "Radio Carmarthenshire", etc. being said almost simultaneously. Now it's only on Heart South Wales in Swansea. 😂
I forgot about the split jingles! And yes, some stations had more of a delay that others, maybe some stations processing and transmissions were quicker than others. I wonder how the jingles were fired though. Was it each station had a person sat there to fire the jingles, were they timed perfectly in stations automated play out system to fire at the spot where the gap was, or did Global send out a silent signal down the line with the audio that fired the local jingles. Either way, it was clever how one studio got linked to many transmitters via local studios. I know the BBC national radio has one studio linked to many transmitters, but that was their standard and that’s how they were built. But the individual stations that took the big top 40 were all separate stations and were never linked up for anything.
@@fitzyraz - Yeah and not only that. Some stations carried the show to a lower broadcast quality than others. For instance, back when Hit40UK was on, its sound quality was always better on The Wave than on Swansea Bay Radio. It sounded tinier and more "cloned" on there. Similar when it became The Big Top 40 in 2009, but by that time Real Radio South Wales (which, again, is now Heart South Wales) had taken the programme. Same here. On The Wave, the station name would sometimes even be mentioned outside the jingle when on other stations it was in the jingles only. So for example, if a song was ending and there was a musical interlude before it ended, suddenly "96.4FM The Wave" would just randomly be heard. That happened more on Hit40UK than The Big Top 40. So maybe it was done manually. It might also have been done by the actual studio itself because there'd be times where the station name wasn't mentioned at all or when the gap would start, there'd be a slight delay and then you'd hear "96.4FM The Wave" and as the "ave" part of "Wave" is being said, you'd hear the start of "The UK's number one chart" or "The Vodafone Big Top 40" underneath it. If it was automated, it'd have been seamless, or at least almost seamless. I know. It's amazing. I understand that they made The Big Top 40 a Global Radio thing only to make the Sunday afternoon slot across local commercial stations less saturated, but there was something entertaining about the same programme being on multiple stations in one area either purposefully or indirectly.
@CultureMax-ks8yx - Am I interested? Do bears shit in the woods? Of course I am! I'll see if there's a way of PMing you my email address. Please send the whole lot over if possible. Many thanks in advance! :)
The film would have been better if the person filming had turned the camera so it would have been in landscape. So wouldn’t have had to keep moving around so much as more would have been in the picture. Just saying.
Hi Frederik... this was the last network chart for various groups (not just the Global) which took the programme (show) across the UK... it was syndicated to approx 140 stations in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland & Wales.
This went out across the UK to, as Craig said, 140 stations. Capital had been doing a Network Chart show since the 90’s. The name, the presenters and the owners of Capital changed over the decades as did the listening habits of the generations. The Chart is still played on Global stations.
Fredrik Lindblom - Incorrect. This was the last time that the Commercial Radio Chart was put out as a general programme to all the local commercial radio stations which had carried it under its various names since 1984. By this time, 145 stations around the UK carried The Big Top 40. In my home city (Swansea) alone we had it on The Wave, Swansea Bay Radio and Heart South Wales (was Real Radio South Wales). Not to mention the other local commercial radio stations across South and West Wales (Radio Carmarthenshire, Bridge FM, etc). After this, The Big Top 40 continued in the form it is now - i.e. as a programme which is broadcast only on Heart and Capital stations. It was done to allow other media corporations to create their own chart shows and therefore expand the marketplace. In Swansea, The Wave is now owned by Bauer and is part of The Hits Radio, so it now broadcasts The UK Chart Show with Sarah-Jane Crawford on Sunday afternoons. And the only station which has The Big Top 40 on there these days is Heart South Wales.
@@CJT80 - Even earlier than that. The first Commercial Radio Chart was actually The Network Chart Show, which was presented by David Jensen and ran from 1984 to 1993 when Neil Fox took over. Pepsi took sponsorship of the chart and it changed its name to The Pepsi Chart Show.
@@kwesiidun8512 In the early years of The Network Chart Show, it wasn’t even in stereo - the stereo light or indicator, depending on your stereo system, said it was - but it wasn’t - it was broadcast via the same feed that commercial stations that took IRN - fine for news, but hopeless for anything like music!
..and to think...'WILL' (or whoever made the video) all you had to do was to rotate the camera to landscape and you would not need to have been darting back all over the place to capture the screens. Landscape = good. Portrait = horrible.
This was the last time in December 2018 that the Big Top 40 was broadcast across hundreds of commercial stations across the country, before it was just broadcast on Capital and Heart (the Global-owned stations), it is still broadcast from Leicester Square on those two stations.