With Sir Trevor McDonald fronting a returning News at Ten, there’s talk that he may not present the second series of News Knight.

I know what you’re thinking. Second series of News Knight?

That show was almost entirely based on the premise that they got a Sir (Knight, geddit??) to awkwardly read from auto-cue things that he was unlikely to say off-the-cuff - “fat white bastard” being the most famous example. So, they need a beknighted guy who has time on his hands and isn’t known for his sense of humour or his ability to present in a non-wooden manner.

My money’s on Sir Menzies Campbell.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. There has been far too much made of the “omg! new rules on single track downloads means golden oldies could chart!!” story. For a start, golden oldies would have to be figuring prominently in the Download charts anyway, and there would have to be a sizeable number of people who want to listen to golden oldies but cannot rip them from CD and do not want to buy a Greatest Hits album. I’m not convinced there’s a huge market in any one given week unless there is a resurgence due to a TV advert.

This just goes to show the power of the press release and how many news outlets will repeat things verbatim without a reality-check.

The only “oldies” that did actually chart were largely Previous Singles From Bands’ Current Albums (Chasing Cars, Crazy, Monster etc). Although they may have been deleted, you could probably still find the original CD singles in a shop (were it not for the fact that the back-catalogue singles sections of HMV and others are pitifully smaller than they used to be).

But that’s not what makes me go GAAH. Foolishly, someone attempted to flesh out the chart-change press release in this Times article, linking the new chart rules to the “long tail” theory.

Um, no. Whilst it does mean there is a wider pool of eligible singles, the long tail theory (as indeed it goes on to explain in the article) is that the combined sales of niche products rival the sales of the most popular products.

COMBINED. That is to say, the total value of sales Not In The Top 40 are greater than those *in* the top 40. If an individual item sells sufficient quantities to get into the Top 40, then it’s not a niche product.

What we *are* seeing with the new charts is that an unlimited supply of an item (ie it doesn’t get deleted or run out of stock) increases the chart lifespan. That’s the interesting bit.

Anyway. The best news out of the whole thing is: “a relaxation of rules on CD singles is expected to herald the return of the EP, with so-called maxi-singles now allowed to contain up to four tracks lasting up to 25 minutes (compared with three tracks and 20 minutes under current rules).” My prediction is that this will coincide with Oasis being good again.