Letters to you

Balancing popularity with influence, the Beatles were peraps both the most influential and popular band. It's weighted toward the earlier bands for several reasons. The first is the fact that there are more decades to influence. The second is that there were fewer bands to compete with, and so became possible to capture the imagination of a larger percentage of the audience. Some of the later ones had an influence, but only on a cross section of people and not on everyone. I'm not sure how that would have affected listener votes, though - they tend to vote for what they like, and many of them wouldn't remember half of those bands. I think the programming on WTMD (at other times besides the indie slots in the morning and evening) makes for a very broad spectrum of listeners, and the listeners tend to be better educated musically.