The chart busters

Emap and MTV are going head-to-head on the forthcoming BBC/Sky free digital TV service. Meanwhile, the BBC faces a new challenge to its radio chart run-down. Tim Luckhurst on the pop battleground

In their 1978 hit "Top of The Pops", Edinburgh sci-fi punks The Rezillos described the eponymous television chart show as "a stockmarket for your hi-fi". As punk vied with pomp for the pocket money of teenagers, there was only one show that really mattered. It was on Top of the Pops that a new act's value could rise like dot.com shares in a bull market.

Then came MTV and Dire Straits' cynically precise observation "that ain't working, that's the way you do it, you play your guitar on the MTV". The music-video format dictated popular taste. Fans still locked themselves in their bedrooms to listen to Radio 1's Sunday-evening chart show, but the likelihood was that they had first seen their new idols on the small screen. Music radio was in trouble, and decades of change followed at Radio 1 and across the radio spectrum. Gold and classic stations proliferated. The notion that there was one genre called pop, and that chart dominance was the sole arbiter of success, seemed as dead as Janis Joplin.

Last month, TOTP chief Chris Cowey seemed to confirm that. He attacked the official singles chart as "dysfunctional" and suggested that a new version should be invented using value not volume of sales to calculate chart position. Cowey was adamant the Top 40 "doesn't provide us with a list of the most popular songs in the country. It's controlled by the record companies." What he meant was that record companies routinely discount new releases to artificially inflate their chart position.

Over at Emap, the publishing giant that runs a raft of music television channels including Kiss, Magic, The Box, Q and Smash Hits, Tim Schoonmaker, chief executive of the Performance division, reached a similar conclusion a long time ago. From 30 October, Emap will offer a free-to-air service, The Hits, to viewers of the new BBC/Sky joint venture Freeview. Schoonmaker promises that The Hits will allow digital terrestrial viewers to see "all music, all the time. Within three minutes, you'll see a big song that you recognise. It'll range from Eminem to Mad- onna, Kylie Minogue to Oasis and Westlife."

There will be a chart, too. Between 10am and noon on Saturday, The Hits will transmit Emap's Smash Hits Chart Show to DTT viewers. Emap's core innovation, interactivity, will play a role. Viewers will be able to phone, text or e-mail while the programme is on air to vote for which of the top-five tracks each week should be Number 1. "There are 15 million people watching music television every week in the UK," Schoonmaker explains. "A lot of that music is not available at Woolworths – it's downloaded from the internet or released on video first. Sales do not reflect its popularity. Our audiences hear tracks weeks before they appear in conventional charts."

So charts may change, but Emap thinks they still matter. Commercial radio networks agree. Last week, Capital, GWR, Scottish Radio Holdings and Chrysalis signed a deal to commission the successor to the Pepsi Chart Show. Unique, the production wing of UBC Media, will make it and it will be supplied to 94 independent radio stations. The programme will launch in January, in head-to-head competition with the BBC's Top 40 countdown, the radio version of the chart that Cowey calls dysfunctional.

There is still life in lists. More obviously, there is very definitely life in music television. Since Emap and MTV have made their subscription channels available on Sky Digital, the total share of music watching on that service has risen from 1.7 per cent to 3 per cent. A similar pattern has emerged on cable networks. That's why MTV was not prepared to let Emap steal an advantage in the free-to-air market by making The Hits the only music channel on Freeview. On 3 October, just as the press conference announcing Emap's inclusion in the new service was winding up, MTV text messaged Freeview with confirmation that it, too, will supply a channel to the new service. The Music Factory, based on a format that's been successful in Holland and Belgium, will run in competition to The Hits.

Michiel Bakker, managing director of MTV Europe, explained: "Building on our unrivalled access to artists, our unique archive of live performance footage... The Music Factory UK will be MTV Europe's first offering targeted at the entire family."

Schoonmaker is sceptical: "MTV will do housewife music in the morning when the kids are at school, pop at 3.30pm when they get home, and rock for the older audience in the evening. It thinks it is part of the global rock business, but it has a very traditional view of music television. We think music TV is like radio. The Hits is based on our Big City radio stations. We are thinking of the guy on a couch in Manchester. This is not appointment-to-view stuff."

Perhaps not, but Schoonmaker and Bakker both know it has the potential to become immensely popular. Freeview provides target audiences with the first chance to get non-stop music on television for nothing more than the cost of a digital decoder. Record companies will be keen to reach this new market, and Emap's chart show will give their week a focus. Nostalgics may moan about the death of a single, dominant programme, but that has been happening for decades. The modern equivalent of that "stockmarket for your hi-fi" may be just around the corner on digital terrestrial television. The element of democratisation provided by interactivity has the potential to make the Top 40 look tired.