Some Statistics From Which You Could Infer That The UK Chart Is Becoming A Closed Shop Presented With Little Comment

Admittedly the numbers go back up at the end, but there's still something of a visible trend.

Year	New Entries
2001	1849
2002	2278
2003	N/A
2004	2301
2005	1710
2006	1186
2007	1349
2008	997
2009	880
2010	1021

All figures are 'courtesy of' (stolen from) chart archive site zobbel.de and account for the Top 200 singles chart (apart from the first two months of 2006, which extend as far as the Top 250). To be honest it'd probably better if they only went down to 40, wouldn't it.

The stats for 2011 are yet to be revealed, but you can be sure that when they are there'll be basis for a spurious and extrapolative article in The Guardian.

UPDATE: There were 952 new entries into the Top 200 in 2011.
AND AGAIN: There were 927 new entries into the Top 200 in 2012.