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Radio Station Surveys (Charts, Hit Parade) from ANYWHERE in Latin America/Caribbean

F

frankfrank

Hi all, Does ANYBODY have any knowledge about any radio stations which made their weekly song "countdowns" available, in ANY "printed" format, locally? I am talking about the sheets that were given to record shops (and customers could take one), or perhaps Radio Stations reporting their Top 10 to a local or metropolitan newspaper which printed the listing, or any other "local" form of distribution.

I am also talking about any and all eras, which could be as recent as 2017, or from as far back as the 1930s, and the entire era between.

As I have managed to collect so few of these in more than fifty years of collecting, I am likely to "need" anything from the entire Latin America and Caribbean region that can be found, without considering which language it is. Does any of this material exist?

I do have a few of these (even sometimes from places as surprising as Bolivia), but so few that it would be an amazing coincidence if anybody finds any of these from the same stations that I already have. This may happen with Puerto Rico, but probably nowhere else.
 
frankfrank said:
Hi all, Does ANYBODY have any knowledge about any radio stations which made their weekly song "countdowns" available, in ANY "printed" format, locally? I am talking about the sheets that were given to record shops (and customers could take one), or perhaps Radio Stations reporting their Top 10 to a local or metropolitan newspaper which printed the listing, or any other "local" form of distribution.

I am also talking about any and all eras, which could be as recent as 2017, or from as far back as the 1930s, and the entire era between.

As I have managed to collect so few of these in more than fifty years of collecting, I am likely to "need" anything from the entire Latin America and Caribbean region that can be found, without considering which language it is. Does any of this material exist?

I do have a few of these (even sometimes from places as surprising as Bolivia), but so few that it would be an amazing coincidence if anybody finds any of these from the same stations that I already have. This may happen with Puerto Rico, but probably nowhere else.
Click to expand...

I ran the Radio Musical (HCRM1)"57 de la Semana" list in El Tiempo newspaper in Quito from 1965 until around 1970. I know of no printed station list distributed in record stores because so few of the songs played on pop radio stations were actually for sale in the country. There is an example of one list on my personal website at http://www.davidgleason.com/1964-1970-Operating-My-First-Station.htm

In that same country, Vistazo magazine occasionally ran station playlists for Radio Musical in Quito and Radio Espectáculo in Guayaquil, but not on an ongoing basis.

In the 1970-1974 period, WUNO and WKAQ in San Juan published American style Top 40 lists each week and distributed then in record stores. I never saved any of the WUNO ones I was responsible for, and know of no surviving copies. WQII ran a list in Estrellitas magazine in the 1976-1979 period. That magazine is gone and I don't have copies.

When I apprenticed in Mexico City in 1963, I do not recall any of the pop stations (XERC, XEJP, XEDF and XEOY) having a list anywhere. Over then next decade, I visited Mexico about once a month or more often on radio matters and I don't recall any lists in that period.

One issue is that Top 40 radio came late to much of Latin America. Mexico got stations i the biggest cities in the early 60's. In South America, the first Top 40 came in late 1964 (HCRM1 in Quito) and other countries came even later. While there were some pop music shows on stations, there were no contemporary/pop stations were a development of the late part of the 60's.
 
Yeah David, you supplied me with one of those weeks of the HCRM1 survey from the newspaper way Back In The Day - thank you for that! It's among the South American surveys that I have which, to this day and added up in total, add to only "a few" different stations.

A few years ago I found a Peruvian guy who had two different printed-for-stores surveys from Lima and area; might have been 1250 and 1300 (I forget). They were from the early 1970's. Interestingly, one of them looked *EXACTLY* like the WABC surveys from the same time period. I think I know how that happened. (I mean, people from all over the world visit New York City, don't they?)

In the 1980's somebody came up with glossy POSTER-SIZED surveys from two Brazilian radio stations, Bandeirantes and I can't remember the other. Oh, OK, the station on 1410 there but I forgot their name. DX'er Frank Williams in California in the 1960s sent a reception report to HJKX 1370 Bogota and asked them about surveys (as they always sat there, alone and weak, on Monday mornings playing Top 40) and they sent him three or four of their monthly newsletters which contained their top 20. I wrote to the U. S. Embassy in Bolivia in the 1960's and they found me a couple Bolivian radio surveys that were published (1200/LaPaz, 1440/Tarija). Last year I found somebody on ebay in Montevideo who had a 100.3-FM survey that was in a local newspaper in the 1980s. In the 1960s I wrote to Radio Rumbos YVLL and they sent me a mimeographed survey from Caracas which also included their Shortwave YVLX. In the 1960's somebody found surveys in the newsletter from ACN Armed Forces Radio in the Canal Zone. Yeah, in all of this, nothing from Argentina. This covers the ENTIRETY of everything I've ever found from "the mainland" anywhere south of Mexico (and I do have a vintage chart from XEL 1260 Cd. de Mexico which was another of those stations which, back in the day, "sat there by itself" overnight, or more accurately in and out with KYA, weakly, playing Top 40).

I remember looking at radio station websites about seven or eight years ago, and noticing that TONS of Brasil radio stations were posting Top 5 and Top 10 (or more) charts, actually more stations had them than not, but I don't "count" charts off the internet...

I consider my best Latin American chart find ever, or actually my best ever find of ANY chart, to be my ebay find five or six years ago, when somebody had a publication from Radio Progreso (CMBC La Habana, Cuba) from 1958, which had a Top 15 Cuban songs in it. The only way I can ever possibly "beat" that is to find a Top 5 chart from a radio station in perhaps Indianapolis from 1926 or something (and it's a station that didn't survive the Depression...so, no, not WIBC).
 
frankfrank said:
Yeah David, you supplied me with one of those weeks of the HCRM1 survey from the newspaper way Back In The Day - thank you for that! It's among the South American surveys that I have which, to this day and added up in total, add to only "a few" different stations.

A few years ago I found a Peruvian guy who had two different printed-for-stores surveys from Lima and area; might have been 1250 and 1300 (I forget). They were from the early 1970's. Interestingly, one of them looked *EXACTLY* like the WABC surveys from the same time period. I think I know how that happened. (I mean, people from all over the world visit New York City, don't they?)

In the 1980's somebody came up with glossy POSTER-SIZED surveys from two Brazilian radio stations, Bandeirantes and I can't remember the other. Oh, OK, the station on 1410 there but I forgot their name. DX'er Frank Williams in California in the 1960s sent a reception report to HJKX 1370 Bogota and asked them about surveys (as they always sat there, alone and weak, on Monday mornings playing Top 40) and they sent him three or four of their monthly newsletters which contained their top 20. I wrote to the U. S. Embassy in Bolivia in the 1960's and they found me a couple Bolivian radio surveys that were published (1200/LaPaz, 1440/Tarija). Last year I found somebody on ebay in Montevideo who had a 100.3-FM survey that was in a local newspaper in the 1980s. In the 1960s I wrote to Radio Rumbos YVLL and they sent me a mimeographed survey from Caracas which also included their Shortwave YVLX. In the 1960's somebody found surveys in the newsletter from ACN Armed Forces Radio in the Canal Zone. Yeah, in all of this, nothing from Argentina. This covers the ENTIRETY of everything I've ever found from "the mainland" anywhere south of Mexico (and I do have a vintage chart from XEL 1260 Cd. de Mexico which was another of those stations which, back in the day, "sat there by itself" overnight, or more accurately in and out with KYA, weakly, playing Top 40).

I remember looking at radio station websites about seven or eight years ago, and noticing that TONS of Brasil radio stations were posting Top 5 and Top 10 (or more) charts, actually more stations had them than not, but I don't "count" charts off the internet...

I consider my best Latin American chart find ever, or actually my best ever find of ANY chart, to be my ebay find five or six years ago, when somebody had a publication from Radio Progreso (CMBC La Habana, Cuba) from 1958, which had a Top 15 Cuban songs in it. The only way I can ever possibly "beat" that is to find a Top 5 chart from a radio station in perhaps Indianapolis from 1926 or something (and it's a station that didn't survive the Depression...so, no, not WIBC).
Click to expand...


I've always wondered too about a reference book or radio station surveys from South America (similar to the Joel Whitburn books in the USA) that contain rankings of Latin hit music from the 60's through the 80's as ranked in countries like Argentina, Peru, Colombia...etc.. Considering that my favorite era there is the "Nueva Ola" music from the mid-late 60's and early 70's, something like this could come in handy. I've seen very limited lists of music on wikipedia from certain countries, like Argentina, but no individual surveys.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number-one_hits_of_1970_(Argentina)

http://top40-charts.com/chart.php?cid=3
 
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