American Top 40 (commonly abbreviated to AT40) is an internationally-syndicated, independent radio program created by Casey Kasem and Don Bustany. Originally a production of Watermark Inc. (later a division of ABC Radio), it is now distributed by Premiere Radio Networks in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, China, Singapore, India, the United Kingdom, and several other territories worldwide.
Co-creator Casey Kasem hosted the series from its inauguration on July 4, 1970 until August 6, 1988, and again from March 28, 1998 to January 3, 2004. Its other two regular hosts have been Shadoe Stevens (1988-1995) and American Idol's Ryan Seacrest (since 2004). Over 50 celebrities—among them radio personalities, game show hosts, and even charting artists—have substituted for these three throughout the show's run. Radio announcer Charlie Van Dyke filled in for Casey a record 31 times in the 1980s.[1]
As its title implies, AT40 counts down the forty most popular songs in the U.S., from #40 to #1. The show used Billboard charts in its early years, then switched to those from Radio and Records upon its late 1990s return.[2] The charts on Seacrest's version are based on request data from Mediabase, and affiliates carrying the series.
| “ | Here we go with the Top 40 hits of the nation this week on American Top 40, the best-selling and most-played songs from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. This is Casey Kasem in Hollywood, and in the next 3 hours, we'll count down the 40 most popular hits in the United States this week, hot off the record charts of Billboard magazine for the week ending July 11, 1970. In this hour at #32 in the countdown, a song that's been a hit 4 different times in 19 years! And we're just one tune away from the singer with the $10,000 gold hubcaps on his car! [3][4] Now, on with the countdown! | ” |
|
— Casey Kasem at the beginning of the inaugural AT40 broadcast
|
American Top 40 began on the Independence Day weekend in 1970, on seven radio stations.[5] It was originally distributed by Watermark Inc., and was first presented in mono until it started recording in stereo in September 1972.[1] In early 1982, Watermark was purchased by ABC Radio and AT40 became a program of the "ABC Contemporary Radio Network". The program was hosted by Casey Kasem and co-created by Kasem; Don Bustany; Tom Rounds; and legendary 93/KHJ Program Director Ron Jacobs, who produced and directed the various production elements. Rounds was also the marketing genius; the initial funder was California strawberry grower Tom Driscoll.
The show began as a three hour program written and directed by Bustany, counting down the top 40 songs on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart. The show quickly gained popularity once it was commissioned, and expanded to a four hour program on October 7, 1978, to reflect the increasing average length of singles on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. The producing staff expanded to eight people, some of them still in the business: Nikki Wine, Ben Marichal, Scott Paton, Matt Wilson, Merrill Shindler, Guy Aoki, Ronnie Allen and Sandy Stert Benjamin. (Bustany retired from AT40 in 1989; since 1994, he has hosted a political talk show on listener-sponsored KPFK.) By the early 1980s, the show could be heard on 520 stations in the United States[6] and around the world in 50 countries.
During Kasem's run as host, the AT40 show had a number of popular and distinguishing features:
Although the show's format obviously implied an average of ten countdown songs per hour (once the show had gone to a four-hour format), this was not rigidly enforced; however, by the mid-1980s it had become increasingly rare for the final hour of the show to have any more than the top eleven or any fewer than the top nine songs left to play. The songs' run times determined how many would comfortably fit into each hour. The show bent to fit the Billboard rankings which, to many listeners, were sacred, and some songs had to be edited (in addition to whatever edits had been done for single release), with a verse and/or chorus chopped out, in order to fit into the show. But Casey and his producers never lost sight of the fact that the same music was being played on other stations everywhere, and that the stories behind the songs were the chief reason that listeners tuned to AT40.
In 1988, Kasem left the show due to contract concerns with ABC. Industry trade paper Billboard magazine reported that the main disputes between Kasem and Watermark/ABC were over his salary, because of declining ratings and a smaller group of stations airing the show. Casey's final AT40 show aired on August 6, 1988. At no point during that final show did Kasem ever let on that any changes were afoot, and simply omitted the phrase "join me next week" while closing the show.
Kasem was replaced by Shadoe Stevens, whose first American Top 40 show aired on August 13, 1988, on 1,014 stations.[9] Kasem joined the Westwood One radio network less than a year later to start a rival show, Casey's Top 40. Many AT40 listeners were upset by Kasem's departure and, as a result, many stations dropped American Top 40 in favor of Casey's Top 40 once it hit the airwaves on January 21, 1989. In an attempt to win back an audience, several new show features were tried. These included interview clips, music news, top 5 flashbacks, and previews of upcoming chart hits (called the "AT40 Sneek Peek"[10]). In addition, AT40 in its later Shadoe years frequently used a "No Nuttin'" gimmick, in which the number jingle was followed by the song, with no introduction by Shadoe; this irked critics of the show, as not even announcing the song's title would leave some listeners confused. This gimmick was used as many as 22 times in a single countdown.[11] In some instances, Shadoe would announce the artist, but not the song.
Casey's Top 40 was based on the Contemporary Hit Radio/Pop tracks chart in Radio & Records magazine, which at the time was the same chart source as Rick Dees' Weekly Top 40. American Top 40 was briefly canceled in the USA on July 9, 1994,[12] when then-owner ABC withdrew the show and acquired the rights to rival Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 (since moved to another company, Dial Global). The show ended up in the hands of Radio Express[13] (its overseas distributors since the 1980s, founded by AT40 co-founder Tom Rounds),[14] and was also canceled in the remaining foreign markets on January 28, 1995. These foreign markets replaced it with a similar format called The World Chart Show, originally hosted by Joe Cipriano and Adrienne Walker. (That show is still broadcast as of October 2009, with Lara Scott as host.)
American Top 40 was revived on March 28, 1998, when original host Casey Kasem pitched the idea to his network Westwood One to rename "Casey's Top 40" as "American Top 40", after getting the rights to the name from ABC, since Shadoe's AT40 had been off the air for over two years. Westwood One refused, so Kasem took himself and the AT40 name to AMFM Radio syndication (AMFM, once owned by Chancellor Media,[15] was later absorbed into Premiere Radio Networks).
The resurrected American Top 40 kept the Radio and Records CHR/Pop chart previously used for "Casey's Top 40" and was used as the basis for the show for the majority of this period. The only exception was a brief period from October 2000 to August 2001 when an obscure Mediabase chart was used. This chart had a rather ambiguous recurrent rule, which would see songs removed weekly from the chart from as high as #10.
On January 10, 2004, Ryan Seacrest took over the hosting duties of American Top 40 from Kasem, although Kasem would continue to host American Top 20 and American Top 10. With the host change, AT40 underwent a makeover, using a new theme song and introducing several new features. These extras included playing the previous week's #1 song at the beginning of the show (although that was later discontinued), a gossip section, and an update on movies screening in cinemas. Other extras inducted on a regular basis include "AT40 Breakout", a song predicted to crack the chart within the next few weeks (formerly known as the "Out of The Box" hit); "Request Line", a segment in which Ryan Seacrest will play a song requested by a listener; "Double Play", a former hit from the artist just played; "AT40 Sleaze" (inspired by the "Dees Sleaze" segment of the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 radio show); and "AT40 Rewind", a hit song from the past decade or so. In between songs, Seacrest and guest hosts often makes deadpan one-liners while writers and producers can be heard laughing frequently.
The show also began using a new chart that used no recurrent rule. On the first show with Ryan Seacrest, this led to several older songs reappearing after having dropped off many weeks earlier. Over the long term, it meant songs could spend long runs for about a year on the chart even after they went to recurrent status on other published charts. "Here Without You" by 3 Doors Down set a longevity record in 2004 for the show by lasting 50 weeks before finally falling off. In 2006, "Scars" by Papa Roach would go on to tie the record. American Top 40 also became more interactive, involving online song voting and e-mail. In December 2006, the series' website was revamped, and the online song voting was discontinued. However listeners can vote on the AT40 breakout songs via ratethemusic.com.
Due to schedule reasons, some songs are shortened by removing some verses and the bridge.
As of 2009, American Top 40 is produced and engineered by Claudine Cazian and Sal Cocio. There are two versions of American Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest: one for CHR/Pop stations, and another for Hot AC stations. The Seacrest incarnation is heard on over 400 radio stations worldwide[2], most recently on the Philippines, when Magic 89.9 has replaced the Magic 30 with the AT40[3].
From January 2001 to December 2002, many radio stations aired reruns of 1980-1988 episodes under the title American Top 40 Flashback. The show was syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks. In its early weeks the shows were the original four hour format of an American Top 40 episode, but after the first month and a half the show was reduced to three hours. Although American Top 40 Flashback ceased in December 2002, radio station WMMX in Dayton, Ohio continued to carry American Top 40 Flashback on Saturday mornings until the premiere of American Top 40: The 80s.
On August 4, 2006, XM Satellite Radio began replays of the original 1970s and 1980s AT40 shows with Casey Kasem that were digitally remastered by Shannon Lynn of Charis Music Group. The event began with a weekend long marathon of original shows, with AT40 then being added as a regular show on two of XM's Decades channels, "The 70s on 7" and "The 80s on 8". With the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio these AT40 shows can also be heard on Sirius.
Sirius/XM "70s on 7" currently runs AT40 each Saturday at 12PM with encores the following Sunday at 9AM and at 12 midnight. Likewise, "80s on 8" runs AT40 each Sunday at 12PM with an encore at 8PM (all times Eastern). Most show dates roughly correspond to the current day and month of real time. (This was not always the case. During the first few months of AT40 on XM, only a limited number of episodes were ready to be run, and as a result their programming schedule tended to be more fluid and random than it is now. Sometimes each channel would even air two different episodes per week, one in each time slot.) The mix of AT40 episodes being run on XM include the year-end countdowns, which are typically run in two parts: the first half (#100-#51) in one time slot, and then the second half (#50-#1) in the following time slot. The AT40 specials are also part of XM's rotation; for instance, "AT40 Goes to the Movies" aired prior to the 2007 Academy Awards on February 24, and "The Top 40 Acts Of The 80's So Far", which aired on XM 80s the first week of July 2007. The first AT40 special, "Top 40 Recording Acts of the Rock Era," aired on May 12, 2007 on the 70s channel after XM intended to air a countdown from May 1, 1971, not realizing that that week was a special that contained mostly 50s and 60s music. The confusion can be traced to Charis, who had a regular countdown show listed for that date. [4]
From October through early November 2006, oldies radio station KQQL in Minneapolis/St. Paul, which is owned by Clear Channel Communications, ran a series of American Top 40 episodes from the 1970s. Aside from one week, when the station attempted to air a four-hour episode from 1979 in the three-hour timeslot (resulting in the show getting cut off at #11 and the top 10 not being heard), this test run was largely successful. Because of the success, Premiere Radio Networks decided to launch "Casey Kasem's American Top 40: The 1970s" into national syndication featuring the three hour shows from 1970 to 1978 and three hour edited versions of the four hour shows which aired from 1978 to 1979. The extras and Long Distance Dedications were edited out of 1978 to 1979 editions of the '70s show. Also, some of the extras featuring older songs are removed and replaced with new extras, generally from the same year as the show that week, with intros and outros either by Kasem or by Ed McMann. Occasionally, an extra which was edited out of a show is made into a new extra segment. These extras are used at the discretion of the station and are usually aired by stations which do not air an hourly newscast. KQQL was the first to sign on, airing programs beginning on December 30, 2006 (after the Christmas music hiatus). WBBG in Niles, Ohio and KQLL in Tulsa, Oklahoma, also owned by Clear Channel, picked up the show shortly thereafter. KQQL and WBBG air AT40 twice each weekend-- once on Saturday morning, and again on Sunday, while KQLL only airs it on Sunday morning. WODS FM in Boston, MA is airing the edited version Saturday Nights at 11pm. WRRR-FM in St. Mary's, WV, began carrying the show in September, 2007. More stations are expected to sign on in the near future.
The 1980s version, featuring the Casey-hosted shows from the 1980s, premiered on April 8th 2007 on stations such as WMGA FM in Huntington, West Virginia (Noon-4pm ET every Sunday), WKIM FM, Memphis TN (KIM FM) and on WMMX in Dayton, Ohio, replacing the American Top 40 Flashback reruns. The shows are available in either their full original four hour format (which WMGA offers), or an abbreviated three-hour version similar to the old Flashback shows (although no stations currently air this version). The first show rebroadcast was from March 5, 1983. More stations are expected to add the show in the near future.
In March 2008, XM Satellite Radio rebranded the XM broadcasts with the "Casey Kasem's American Top 40" name and logo used for terrestrial broadcasts, although XM still airs the unedited commercial-free broadcasts, while Premiere Radio carries edited and recut broadcasts with commercials. All the classic AT40 shows currently featured on XM and by Premiere Radio Networks have been digitally remastered from the original vinyl LPs by Shannon Lynn of Charis Music Group.
AT40 used the Top 40 portion of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart from the show's inception in 1970 to November 23, 1991. The chart was widely regarded as the industry standard in tracking the most popular songs in the country, and was thus a natural choice to be used. While using these charts worked well for the first half of the 1970s, as music changed during the decade, and disco became popular on the charts, some rock stations began to drop the show because of complaints from program directors that AT40 was "playing too many songs not on their playlist."
This gradually became a wide schism as rock splintered into a half-dozen formats in the early 1980s. Historians have noted that no one station actually played all of the songs on Billboard Hot 100 list, because they represented overlapping formats -- hard rock, mainstream rock, heavy metal, dance, new wave, punk, pop, easy listening/adult contemporary, country, and so on. Stations tended to specialize in only one or two of these formats, and completely ignore the others. As a result, AT40's weekly playlist could be very diverse in the styles and formats of the songs played.
One solution for the AT40's producers was to air frequent specials (at least three or four times a year) that concentrated on the classic music of the past, such as Rock in the Movies, Top Hits of the Seventies, and so on. But as Top 40 stations evolved into CHR, they began to avoid syndicated shows like AT40, preferring to stick with their own special niche formats.
By the early 1990s, many songs, mostly rap or heavy metal/grunge songs, would appear on the chart being fueled by single sales, and had received low airplay; several were very long, others were too controversial or risqué for mainstream airplay. These songs would generally only be aired in brief snippets during the show.
Because of this, American Top 40 began using the Top 40 portion from the Hot 100 Airplay chart in lieu of the Hot 100. These songs generally scored much higher radio airplay, and some were not even released as singles (such as "Steel Bars" by Michael Bolton). During this time, a few songs made big debuts, including 2 that almost debuted in the #1 spot: "I'll Be There" by Mariah Carey, which entered American Top 40 at #4, and "Erotica" by Madonna, which entered at #2.
In January 1993, American Top 40 switched charts again, this time to the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream chart. This chart had more Top 40 Mainstream hits but fewer urban/dance/rap songs.
AT40 did not always use the official year-end chart from Billboard during the 25 years that they used their charts. In 1972 and 1973; in 1977; from 1980 to 1984; and again from 1990 to 1994, AT40 compiled its own year-end chart. These charts were very close to Billboard's, but AT40 would go with a mid-December to early-December time period where Billboard's survey year varied from year to year. AT40 matched Billboard's number one song of the year every time except in 1977, 1984, 1990 and 1993.
With the show's revival in 1998, a new chart was implemented, the top 40 portion of Radio and Records CHR/Pop top 50 chart, which was already in use on Casey's Top 40. This would also be a first time a recurrent rule was used on the show, albeit indirectly. Songs that were below #25 and had exceeded 26 weeks in the top 50 were removed, and these removals, if they occurred in the top 40, would be reflected on the appropriate week's program. In 1999, the rule was modified to further restrict long chart runs. Songs falling below #20 with at least 20 weeks in the top 50 would now be removed.
On October 21, 2000 American Top 40 began using an unpublished chart on a weekly basis for the first time in its history. The chart seemed to be a variant of the CHR/Pop chart provided by Mediabase, the data provider to Radio & Records. The most noticeable feature of this new chart was its ambiguous recurrent rule. Songs would be removed regularly from within the top 15, seemingly regardless of the number of weeks it had spent on the chart. This chart lasted until August 11, 2001, when AT40 returned to the Radio & Records Pop chart. The return coincided with another modification in the recurrent rule; songs would be removed below #25 after 3 consecutive weeks without a bullet (an increase in radio plays). This change would be short-lived, and in November 2001, Radio & Records returned to the 20 weeks/below #20 rule, which remained in place for the remainder of Kasem's tenure.
Since the early 1990s, Casey Kasem has also hosted two other shows counting down the top adult contemporary hits of the week. He has continued to host both shows even after Ryan Seacrest took over the reins of American Top 40.
Kasem's countdown for Mainstream and Soft Adult Contemporary radio stations debuted in 1992 under the name Casey's Countdown. Originally Casey's Countdown consisted of 25 songs, but in 1994 it was shortened to 20. With the revival of the AT40 brand name, the AC chart became American Top 20. In March 2004, the Mainstream AC edition was shortened again, this time from twenty to ten songs, and has since been known as American Top 10.
Another show for Hot Adult Contemporary radio stations debuted in November 1994, since the Hot AC or "Adult Top 40" format was rapidly growing in popularity at the time. The original name of the show was Casey's Hot 20. Like its sister Mainstream AC show, it, too, was renamed American Top 20 once AT40 was relaunched (resulting in two different shows being entitled "American Top 20"). The Hot AC version remains a top 20 show to this day.
Originally both AC shows were three hours in length and included many AT40 staple features, including chart "extras" and Long Distance Dedications (known as "Requests and Dedications" during the Westwood One years), as well as spotlight features on number one hits of each chart week from years past. AT10 continues to feature Long Distance Dedications, and some additional features that were staples on the original AT40 have been re-added to both shows over the last several years, including the "Book of Records" and "Whatever Happened To...?" AT10 also features additional chart extras under the banner of "AT10 Spotlight," built around a particular theme (the theme for the first week of the revamped AT10 in 2004 was "Band Members Gone Solo").
As with the Top 40 show, both Casey's Countdown/AT20/10 AC and Casey's Hot 20/AT20 Hot AC initially used the AC charts published by Radio & Records from their inception until 2003, except for a brief period in 2000-2001 when both used unpublished Mediabase 24/7 charts. From 2003 to August 2006 (when R&R stopped using Mediabase to compile its charts), both shows used the Mediabase charts. Now the AC shows once again are based on unpublished charts.
In 2005, WLTW-FM in New York City commissioned a shortened one-hour version of American Top 10 featuring only the current hits of the week and eliminating the "extras."
In December, AT10 focuses on Christmas Music due to the fact that many of its affiliates broadcast a holiday/Christmas music format around the holiday season.
From 1980 to 1992, a video version of the show entitled America's Top 10 was aired in syndication to television stations across the United States. Kasem hosted this version from 1980 to 1989. When Kasem left American Top 40 in 1988, he remained as host of America's Top 10 until the end of 1989, when he would be replaced by Siedah Garrett and later Tommy Puett. Kasem returned by 1991, and the show ran until 1992.
Based on the success of American Top 40, Kasem and Don Bustany created a spinoff top 40 countdown for Watermark for Country Radio called American Country Countdown, patterned after Kasem's program. "ACC" premiered in 1973, and was hosted by radio personality Bob Kingsley from 1978 until 2005 when Kix Brooks of the Country Music Duo Brooks & Dunn took over, and has been doing so since.
After Kasem left ABC, the network launched American Gold, a spinoff oldies countdown (featuring far fewer songs, and often focusing on a particular artist) hosted by Dick Bartley.
The American Top 40 format was adapted in an Australian show titled take40 Australia similarly counting down the top 40 songs in the country.
Casey Kasem and Watermark's policy regarding putting American Top 40 together was to always play the 40 most popular songs in the United States and never to ban a record from the countdown. However, whenever songs with potentially offensive lyrical content made the top 40, Watermark would send out memos to affiliated stations alerting them of the presence of that song in the countdown and sometimes provide stations with suggestions on how to edit the song out of their AT40 broadcasts. The first song to receive this advisory was in April and May 1971, with a spoken word piece, The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley, by Terry Nelson and C-Company. [16][17] Some more well-known songs which received this treatment included "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon, "Roxanne" by The Police, "Ain't Love A Bitch" by Rod Stewart, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Meat Loaf, and perhaps most infamously, Chuck Berry's number-one hit "My Ding-a-Ling" (which put some stations in the odd position of having to air AT40 without playing the number one song). The censorship of this song continues even today as WOGL in Philadelphia replaced this song with an optional extra when it aired a rerun of the November 18, 1972 broadcast on December 6, 2008.
Another example of this policy dates from 1978, when Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" was on the charts. Due to the nature of the song (Joel singing about urging pre-marital sex by a teen Catholic girl, Virginia), AT40 had placed warnings in shipments to warn affiliates in highly Catholic populated areas along with a special break in the countdown for stations to substitute another song in its place. The affiliates usually used the suggestion, though some did not and no major complaints were ever heard. Many of these memos have been reprinted in Pete Battistini's book, "American Top 40 with Casey Kasem (The 1970s)."
Although Kasem and his crew never banned a song from airplay on the countdown, there was at least one instance in which Kasem refused to announce the title of a song on his show. When George Michael's "I Want Your Sex" hit the Billboard charts in the summer of 1987, Kasem refused to announce the name of the song; only its artist. Also, as had been done with previous controversial hits, due to the song's suggestiveness, the show's structure was altered slightly, so stations could opt out of the song. This pattern was also evident during the 1987 Year End countdown. The only times Casey announced the title of the song on AT40 was during the 6-27-87 show, during the week-ending episode of September 26, 1987, when it dropped out of the Top 40, and during the Top 100 of 1987 show; Shadoe Stevens, his successor, however did mention the title on the show from July 31, 1993 as part of the Flashback feature, as it was in the top 5 from that week in 1987.
As has been mentioned previously, many rock radio stations in the late 1970s adopted anti-disco stances, and this, too, was reflected in the way some affiliates edited AT40. For example, one 1979 show featured a story about disco saving New York; again, the show was structured so that anti-disco stations could edit the story out of the show.
More famously, on the weekend of July 7-8, 1979, Cleveland, Ohio AT40 affiliate WGCL (now WNCX), instead of carrying the "American Top 40 Top 40 Disco Songs" special because of being an anti-disco radio station, did its own version of American Top 40 using the July 7, 1979 Billboard chart as the source with Townsend Coleman handling the hosting duties for Casey Kasem. The special Cleveland-only American Top 40 episode did not feature the AT40 Archives, extras, or Long Distance Dedications — just the top 40 singles of that week, which was preceded by a recap of the previous week's top three. Most of the songs played were longer album versions or 12-inch extended versions. Through clever editing, Coleman also took the "Casey's Coast to Coast" jingle (pronounced "K-C's Coast to Coast") and spliced in a "T," to provide an appropriate "TC's Coast to Coast" jingle.
Occasionally, between 1971 and 1991, American Top 40 would air special countdowns in place of the regular American Top 40 countdown show. These included1:
Additionally, the top songs of the year were counted down at the end of every year. In 1970 & 1972, AT40 counted down the year's top 80 hits. In 1971 & 1973, they only counted down the top 40 because of their top 40 Christmas Countdowns those two years. Beginning in 1974, the top 100 songs of the year were counted down and was done so every year with few exceptions. In 1979, they did the top 50 songs of that year and followed it with the top 50 songs of the 1970s. This was done again in 1999, except only the top 40 of the year and decade were aired. The year-end shows were counted down over a two week period (although stations could edit the shows into one long show) until 1983, when the year-end show ran just one week for eight hours. In 1992, the year end countdown was temporary back to its two-week format, in 1994 (the last year of the old AT40) the year end countdown was only 50, and with the AT40 return in 1998 the year end countdowns were the 2 week format (except for 1999 when it was 50).
A new show must be produced every week, meaning that occasionally a substitute host must fill in. Substitutes for Ryan Seacrest have included:
Some well-known guest hosts for Casey Kasem have included:
Shadoe Stevens' guest hosts for his American Top 40 reign included: