The Spin: Six Mainstream Debuts In Record Week

DEBUT MADNESS: With six titles debuting at top 40 mainstream, the chart sees its largest number of new entries in a single week in at least the past three years. (The last time there were even five new chart entries was last July.)
"N Sync's "Bye Bye Bye" (Jive) debuts at No. 19 on the top 40 mainstream audience chart while picking up Most New Stations and Greatest Gainer honors on both the top 40 mainstream and rhythmic top 40 airplay charts. Out of 110 mainstream reporters, 103 are playing the song, as are 23 out of 35 rhythmic reporters.
Normally, you'd expect a country-to-top 40 crossover to spread from secondaries to majors, but because Lonestar's "Amazed" (BNA) got early airplay at WHTZ (Z100) New York, among others, it made the mainstream top 40 audience chart in advance of this week's debut on the mainstream top 40 airplay listing. "Amazed" is up 31-23 in audience and debuts at No. 34 in airplay.

AIRPLAY LEADERS: This issue marks the cutoff date for Monitor's first Airplay Leader competition. Look for a special section dedicated to the Airplay Leaders in a future issue, celebrating the stations and personnel that have been most successful in identifying hit records over the past year. Airplay Leaders, as ranked on Monitor's Airplay Leaderboard, are the first stations to give 150 spins to songs that achieve Airpower status (100 in AC), our recently revamped measure of when a song becomes a confirmed hit.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Middelhoff has told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel that Bertelsmann is actively looking to acquire major music companies, specifically Sony and EMI. Although he did not divulge how advanced talks were, he did admit that his goal is to make BMG "No. 1 in the music sector this year." Currently, Bertelsmann is No. 4 worldwide.
Also in that interview, Middelhoff noted that BMG's relationship with AOL (with which it is a partner in Europe) is all but over in the wake of AOL's merger with Time Warner. "I don't want to end up as a divison head working for [AOL chief] Steve Case," he said. However, he did express interest in Time Warner publishing properties (including Time and People) should AOL decide to divest AOL Time Warner of them.

PERSONNEL FILE: Veteran record promoter John Fagot joins Mercury Nashville as director of alternative marketing and promotion. He previously was senior VP of promotion for Hollywood Records, Capitol Records, and Columbia Records . . . Island Def Jam Music Group Houston rep Jammer shifts to Atlanta, replacing Karl Bader, who can be reached at 404-876-7163. Alex Valentine takes over all of Texas and adds Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Louisiana duties . . . Capitol Records national director of adult formats Nick Bedding exits to join Hits . . . Wind-Up Records needs a publicist; fax r sum s to Bridget Hollenback at 212-251-0779.

PANEL CHANGES: Effective this issue, KCDA (Mix 103.1) Spokane, Wash., and KSTJ Las Vegas are added to the adult top 40 panel, and WCDA Lexington, Ky., is added as a dual reporter to both adult top 40 and modern AC. WRMF West Palm Beach, Fla., moves from AC to adult top 40. In addition, modern rock reporter WLIR Long Island, N.Y., becomes a dual reporter to the modern AC panel. There are now 81 adult top 40, 74 AC, and 37 modern AC reporters.