Global has informed all stations currently taking the Big Top 40 that the chart will be withdrawn from syndication at the conclusion of its contract later this year.
The show will be solely on Capital and Heart come January after Bauer confirmed The Hits Radio Network is pulling out in favour of its own programming.
Both moves have been a long time coming.
The scale of today's industry has made commercial radio an attractive proposition for national advertisers so a network chart is no longer required to serve that purpose.
Furthermore, in practice, the days of a two-horse race between the BBC and commercial radio as a whole are gone.
Stations are now multi-platform brands and competing not just with each other but also new digital media.
This is an opportunity to develop three more hours of original, targeted, programming - and greater choice is always something to be celebrated.
The Big Top 40 has a weekly audience of 2.2m, the overwhelming majority of whom tune in on either Capital or Heart with Bauer equating to the next biggest share of listening.
For Global, there's no benefit in continuing to offer the show to a bunch of independent local stations which make up such a small percentage of its reach and TSL.
This is no mid 00s "chart wars" - when EMAP briefly introduced their own Smash Hits countdown and other short-lived syndicated shows tailored by format arrived (The A List for AC and Fresh40 for Urban) but everyone returned to the fold soon after.
This time, it's truly the end of an era for commercial radio.
The charts - does anyone still care?
Around the time I fell in love with radio as a child, iTunes was beginning to take off with some 90% of sales in the UK Official Chart coming from downloads.
Hit40UK became The Big Top 40 Show which was described by Global's Richard Park as the "first ever totally interactive chart where the listener decides" as it used real-time iTunes data meaning the top ten could change during the show.
In recent years, even this seemed old-fashioned with streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer now accounting for more than half of music consumption - and that's excluding video platforms.
We can debate different methodologies and accuracy until the cows come home. Above all, people still love a radio countdown (e.g. bank holiday specials or retro charts).
Whether or not today's youth really care what's number one is a different question; and if I was looking to be properly distinctive, I'm not sure I'd simply bring another weekly chart show to the party.
Bauer are replacing a network chart show because of their “relentless drive to innovate”.
— Scott Myers (@ProducerScott) September 19, 2018
The new show is a networked chart show of their own.
That is game changing innovation. https://t.co/qJmRqMvp2A
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