The
CHUM Chart was a ranking of top 30 (and, until August 1968, the top 50) songs on
TorontoToronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America...
,
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, radio station
CHUM 1050 AMCHUM, now branded as CP24 Radio 1050, broadcasting at 1050 kHz in the AM band, is a Canadian radio station licenced to Toronto, Ontario. The station is owned and operated by CTVglobemedia. Long known as 1050 CHUM, the station played Top 40 hits from the late 1950s to early 1980s...
, from 1957 to 1986, and was the longest-running Top 40 chart in the world produced by an individual radio station. In the early 2000s, sister station
104.5 CHUM FMCHUM-FM is a Canadian radio station licensed to Toronto, Ontario and operated by CTVglobemedia. Its transmitter is located on the CN Tower and the station can be heard down south to the New York and Pennsylvania border, and up north to Orillia, and it also has a large following of American listeners...
, which airs a hot adult contemporary format, revived the CHUM Chart name for a new countdown show.
The CHUM Chart also aired as a television program on
CitytvCITY-TV is a television station based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, owned and operated by Rogers Media. It is the flagship station of the Citytv television system....
every Saturday at 2:00 p.m until January 2008 when the show was discontinued after
Rogers CommunicationsRogers Communications Inc. is one of Canada's largest communications companies, particularly in the field of wireless communications and cable television, with additional telecommunications and mass media assets. It is headquartered in the Rogers Building in Toronto, Ontario.The company considers...
gained control of the Citytv stations and replaced it with the
JackNation chart, a show based on their
Jack FMJack-FM is the moniker and on-air brand of 60 radio stations in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Jack stations play a mix of 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s hits with some current hot adult contemporary singles...
radio brand.
The
CHUM Chart was a ranking of top 30 (and, until August 1968, the top 50) songs on
TorontoToronto is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. With over 2.5 million residents, it is the fifth most populous municipality in North America...
,
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, radio station
CHUM 1050 AMCHUM, now branded as CP24 Radio 1050, broadcasting at 1050 kHz in the AM band, is a Canadian radio station licenced to Toronto, Ontario. The station is owned and operated by CTVglobemedia. Long known as 1050 CHUM, the station played Top 40 hits from the late 1950s to early 1980s...
, from 1957 to 1986, and was the longest-running Top 40 chart in the world produced by an individual radio station. In the early 2000s, sister station
104.5 CHUM FMCHUM-FM is a Canadian radio station licensed to Toronto, Ontario and operated by CTVglobemedia. Its transmitter is located on the CN Tower and the station can be heard down south to the New York and Pennsylvania border, and up north to Orillia, and it also has a large following of American listeners...
, which airs a hot adult contemporary format, revived the CHUM Chart name for a new countdown show.
The CHUM Chart also aired as a television program on
CitytvCITY-TV is a television station based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, owned and operated by Rogers Media. It is the flagship station of the Citytv television system....
every Saturday at 2:00 p.m until January 2008 when the show was discontinued after
Rogers CommunicationsRogers Communications Inc. is one of Canada's largest communications companies, particularly in the field of wireless communications and cable television, with additional telecommunications and mass media assets. It is headquartered in the Rogers Building in Toronto, Ontario.The company considers...
gained control of the Citytv stations and replaced it with the
JackNation chart, a show based on their
Jack FMJack-FM is the moniker and on-air brand of 60 radio stations in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Jack stations play a mix of 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s hits with some current hot adult contemporary singles...
radio brand. The program aired a list of the most popular songs in the countdown, starting from #30, playing approximately half of them.
History
The chart debuted on May 27, 1957, under the name
CHUM's Weekly Hit Parade. The CHUM Chart name was adopted in 1961.
The chart was published for 1,512 consecutive weeks, and had 694 different #1 songs over the course of its original run. Its first #1 single was
Elvis PresleyElvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. A cultural icon, he is commonly known simply as Elvis and is also sometimes referred to as The King of Rock 'n' Roll or The King....
's "
All Shook Up"All Shook Up" is one of the many hit songs of Elvis Presley. It reached the top of all three U.S. charts , staying there for eight weeks in 1957, from April 13 through May 27. On the R&B chart, "All Shook Up" became Elvis Presley's second single to reach number one"All Shook Up" is one of the...
", and its final #1 was
MadonnaMadonna is an American recording artist, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, and raised in Rochester Hills, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977, for a career in modern dance...
's "
Live to Tell"Live to Tell" is a pop ballad by American singer-songwriter Madonna. Originally written by Patrick Leonard for the soundtrack of the film Fire with Fire, the song was shown to Madonna, who decided to use it for then-husband Sean Penn's film At Close Range...
".
From its inception until 1975, each week's CHUM Chart was published in a
brochureA brochure or pamphlet is a leaflet advertisement. Brochures may advertise locations, events, hotels, products, services, etc. They are usually succinct in language and eye-catching in design. Direct mail and trade shows are common ways to distribute brochures to introduce a product or service...
format, with additional features promoting the station and its personalities. It was distributed to record stores and music venues across the city. In 1975, the brochure was discontinued, and each week's chart was instead published in the entertainment section of the
Toronto StarThe Toronto Star is Canada's highest-circulation newspaper, though its print edition is distributed almost entirely within the province of Ontario...
.
Mike MyersMichael John "Mike" Myers is a Canadian-English actor, comedian, screenwriter and film producer. He was a long-time cast member on the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s and the early 1990s and starred as the title characters in the films Wayne's World, Austin Powers, and ...
,
Gordon LightfootGordon Meredith Lightfoot, Jr., CC, O.Ont is a Canadian singer and songwriter who has achieved international success in folk, country, and popular music...
, Dick Clark and
Dave ThomasDavid "Dave" Thomas is a Canadian comedian and actor. He was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, but moved to Durham, North Carolina where his father, John E. Thomas, attended Duke University and earned a PhD in Philosophy. Thomas attended George Watts and Moorehead elementary schools...
all reportedly own collections of CHUM Charts.
For the first 26 weeks in 1957, the chart published full information only for the top 10, listing only song titles for the remainder of the chart. On November 25, 1957, however, the chart began publishing information on all listed songs. In 1959, the chart briefly added a Top 10 albums list, which was discontinued in 1960, revived in 1963 and discontinued again in 1967.
Author Ron Hall published
The CHUM chart book (ISBN 0920325157) in 1983, listing every song that had appeared in the CHUM Charts to that point. Following the discontinuation of the chart, he published an updated edition in 1990 listing every charted song and profiling the history of the chart. The final chart, for the week of June 14, 1986, was never published until Hall's 1990 book. A commemorative list of all the chart's number one songs was also published in poster format by CHUM in 2007 to commemorate the station's 50
th anniversary.
External links