Casey's Top 40

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Casey's Top 40 was a CHR/Pop music countdown that was hosted by Casey Kasem and distrubted by Westwood One from 1989-1998. Kasem joined Westwood One when he was unable to reach an agreement with ABC Radio Networks in 1988 who was the distributor of American Top 40 at the time.

Casey's Top 40 was similar to Kasem's old AT40 show featuring Kasem's trademark voice, teasers, and trivia on the songs and artists (including the "stretch" stories) but rather than using the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, it used the Radio & Records CHR/Pop radio airplay chart (making it feature the exact same song positions as the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40, which used the same chart at the time). Kasem's dedication letters segment was now called "Request and Dedications."

Due to the decline of CHR radio in the 1990's and a handful of Adult Contemporary stations carring Casey's Top 40, Westwood One created a Adult Contemporary version of the program in 1992 called Casey's Countdown which featured the top 25 AC hits from the R&R chart. In November 1994 Casey's Hot 20 premiered and highlighted the top 20 songs on R&R's Hot Adult Contemporary chart which the trade paper began in April of the same year. At the same time Casey's Hot 20 premiered Casey's Countdown began to highlight only the top 20 AC songs of the week.

All three shows continued until 1998 when Kasem left Westwood One following a dispute, in which Casey wanted to rename "Casey's Top 40" as "American Top 40", after getting the rights to the name from ABC, after Shadoe Stevens' AT40 was off the air for about four years. Westwood One refused, so Kasem took himself and the AT40 name to startup radio network AM/FM Radio Networks (which was absorbed into Premiere Radio Networks) to revive American Top 40, and offer American Top 20 to AC and Hot AC radio stations. During the show's final weeks, guest hosts filled in for the "vacationing" Casey Kasem, even though he already left Westwood One for good following the dispute. On the last edition of these countdown shows, no mention of Casey was made, and the shows were renamed "The Top 40", "The Countdown" and "The Hot 20".

[edit] Trivia

  • In the first few weeks of Casey's Top 40, Casey would often refer to the show as "CT40", just like he referred to American Top 40 as "AT40". However, he stopped after ABC notified him of the legal ramifications, as "CT40" sounded very similar to "AT40". (The CT40 abbreviation is now used for Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40.)
  • Casey's Top 40 replaced M.G. Kelly's Top 30 USA as Westwood One's top hits countdown program when Kasem joined the network in 1988.
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