Xfm are to move their listener voted Music:Response chart to the crowded Sunday chart show slot of 4pm. The Music:Response chart is based on the online votes of listeners. The chart is updated each night, with a full Top 20 counted down on Friday evening and Sunday lunch time. In the latest shift the chart show will air on Sundays at 4pm competing with the three pop chart shows - the Hit 40 UK on most commercial pop stations (including sister station Capital), the Smash Hits Chart on EMAP stations and Radio 1's UK Top 40.
The move is probably an attempt to give the Xfm chart a bigger profile in the music industry. When EMAP launched their Smash Hits Chart, which takes into account the votes of Smash Hits readers / viewers, they made a big deal about the fact that in the MP3 age the actual sales of singles are no longer a good indicator of what songs are popular, of what bands are big and of what albums are likely to sell. They argue a public voted chart is in many ways more reliable - and if you buy that argument that gives Xfm's long standing listener voted countdown more legitimacy, especially within the 'alternative rock' genre.
Whether putting the Music Response show in the traditional chart slot steals listeners from other chart shows remains to be seen. Listeners to the Hits 40 UK and Smash Hits charts are unlikely to fall into Xfm's demographic, though some of Radio 1's listeners might. Xfm has always competed with Radio 1 for their indie-kid listenership, and that competition has grown of late as the London station slowly increases its national reach through digital and web broadcasting and its national magazine spin off X-Ray. And then of course, after the arrival of a Radio 1 veterans Zoe Ball and Kevin Greening at the London station, the BBC stole man of the moment Zane Lowe to front their new evening show. Whether the chart show shift is the first stage in a ratings war between the two stations remains to be seen.
(On an aside, one Xfm insider was keen to point out that the exclusive Foo Fighters gig being staged at the intimated Mean Fiddler venue as part of Zane's new Radio 1 show for which tickets can be won on air, and of which a BBC spokesperson said: "This is a unique and very special event and only Radio 1 could make this happen", is not altogether unlike the Foo Fighters gig Xfm staged last year, also at a small venue (ULU), where tickets were also given away on air, and which was also part of Zane's radio show!)