Sadly Tony Blackburn got it right; nobody cares anymore. The majors killed the power of the chart. Interest declined. TOTP got dropped. Punters stopped buying. A list of big corporate priorities influences very few, only deaf programmers who rely on lists instead of ears.

It's a shame that the BBC won't document what's happened to the music biz in general, and the singles chart in particular, but of course - thanks to those dullards Bannister and Dann - the Beeb has been complicit in the decline, and those hyper-sensitive souls in control of the industry would perceive such an account as some kind of 'betrayal,' rather than the much-needed mainstream critique that it could be. Bannister and Dann knew nothing about public service broadcasting, so their smug redefinition of Radio One rendered it into something that required absolutely no public funding whatsoever because of its demographic insularity and its submissiveness to various commercial-driven markets and niche audiences. They didn't deserve a slap on the back, just a slap in the face. I don't think the broader public turned its back on the singles chart. The singles chart turned its back on the broader public. The only people I know now who could tell me, for sure, any single in the top twenty are in the biz, which is an incredibly sad fact, because it really isn't inevitable.

I don't entirely agree that the charts don't mean anything anymore. The Sunday Official Chart Show still gets respectable listening figures, (as does the Big Top 40 show). To be honest, I don't think our generation are expected to know what is number 1, but I do believe most teenagers do. (And the Christmas No.1 gets massive media coverage). Pru, apologies if you're not in the same generation as JK and I are.