Casey's Top 40

Casey's Top 40 was a syndicated radio music program that was distributed by the Westwood One radio network. The show was a vehicle for then-former American Top 40 host and co-creator Casey Kasem and ran for over nine years. Like Kasem's prior show, Casey's Top 40 aired on weekends and was a countdown of the forty biggest hits of the week on the popular music chart.

Background

In January 1988, Kasem was entering the final year of a seven year contract with syndicator ABC Watermark to host American Top 40 and the sides were unable to strike an agreement for a renewal. On February 9, ABC Watermark announced that, due to the impasse, they would begin searching for a replacement.

Westwood One, in the meantime, began aggressively pursuing Kasem and offered him a five year contract worth triple the money per year that ABC Watermark was currently paying. Kasem signed a five year contract to join their network and in April 1988, both sides made it official. Shadoe Stevens was named Kasem's replacement the following month and on August 6, 1988, Stevens debuted as host of AT40.

Although he had left his former employer, Kasem's contract with ABC Watermark was in force until the end of the year and thus he could not resume hosting duties until early 1989. In the interim period between Kasem's signing and debut, Westwood One made a significant effort to promote his signing with the network. This included a "Westwood One Survival Kit" that was sent to affiliates. Included in the package was a button with "Casey in '89" on it, a pin with the premiere date of the show on it, and a flashlight they called a "Shadow Simulator", perhaps taking a shot at Shadoe Stevens.^[1]

Casey's Top 40 premiered on the weekend of January 21, 1989 on stations from coast to coast and overseas. The initial list of affiliates included several stations that carried American Top 40; in most of these cases Kasem's new show served as a replacement for his old show, but in some cases both Casey's Top 40 and AT40 were both part of a station's schedule despite being competing weekly countdowns.

Substitute hosts

As on AT40, Kasem would require substitute hosts from time to time. In the early years of the show the role was filled by voice over artist Mark Elliot, who had also been one of many substitutes for Kasem on AT40. From 1993 until 1998, veteran Los Angeles DJ David Perry was the designated fill-in.

Similarities between Casey's Top 40 and AT40

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). However, while American Top 40 had always used the Billboard Hot 100 as its source, Casey's Top 40 used the Contemporary hit radio/Pop survey that was published every week by Westwood One's then-subsidiary Radio & Records. The difference between these two charts was that the Hot 100 used record sales as one of its determining values while Radio & Records based its survey solely on airplay. AT40 would eventually follow the lead of Casey's Top 40 and move to using airplay charts to determine their weekly rankings, switching first to the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart and then to its Mainstream Top 40 chart.

Like AT40, Casey's Top 40 was timed and blocked out in such a manner that most episodes were able to fit in ten of the weekly survey songs in one hour. However, Casey's Top 40 did not end each hour the same way AT40 did. After the last song to be played in the previous hour was played, Kasem would then offer a preview of something to come in the next segment. A brief musical bumper was then played to close the hour, over which an affiliate station would identify themselves as they are required to at the top of every hour. The countdown then resumed with the next song on the survey followed by the subject of Kasem's preview.

Features

• Last Week's Top 3: As he'd done for some time on his previous show, Kasem would preface each countdown with the top three songs from the previous week's survey. When Casey's Top 40 premiered, Kasem also brought back an old American Top 40 practice that he had stopped doing several years earlier and played the previous week's chart topper to begin the show; that song was "Two Hearts" by Phil Collins, which had just reached the top spot the week before Casey's Top 40 premiered (and would retain its spot atop the chart at the end of the show). Although not every show received this treatment, many episodes of Casey's Top 40 did.
• Jingles: A new set of jingles was recorded for Casey's Top 40 by JAM Creative Productions, which included the usual number jingles and title jingles leading into and out of breaks as well as the trademark "Casey's coast to coast" jingle from AT40 recorded in a different rhythm and key. JAM also composed the show's opening theme, which included its singers counting down from 10 to 1 over the music, something that would follow Kasem for the rest of his career.
  • Initially, some of these jingles included references to Kasem's abbreviated name for the show, which was "CT40". ABC Watermark would eventually win an injunction forcing Kasem and Westwood One to refrain from using that name as the court ruled it was too similar to their abbreviation "AT40".
• Droppers, Biggest Movers, and Longest Charting Song: For each song that debuted on the countdown in a given week, one had to fall out of the top 40 to make room. Kasem referred to these as "droppers" and would identify the songs that the show had to "say goodbye to" that week. He also paid special attention to two other songs. The first was the song that made the biggest climb up the chart from the previous week. The other was the longest charting song still in the Top 40, where Kasem noted how many weeks it had been since the song had debuted on the survey.
• Request and Dedication: Kasem continued to take requests from fans who contacted the show asking to have certain songs played and dedicated to someone who affected their lives. Since he could not use the title "Long Distance Dedication", as that was still in use on American Top 40, these became known as "Requests and Dedications". There were usually three of these segments per show. Originally, these were done completely through the mail. In the early 1990s, the producers enabled listeners to fax in their requests. Beginning with the countdown airing the weekend of July 8, 1995, a third option became available as the show set up an email account through America Online for requests.
  • Request and Dedication Update: Later in the show's run, the producers of Casey's Top 40 asked former Request and Dedication writers to send postcards to the show if they had updates on their situation since their song was played. Kasem would then call one of them and conduct an interview, of which a snippet would play during the next week's show.
• Affiliate mentions: This was another old AT40 staple that made its way to Casey's Top 40. Once every hour, Kasem would briefly break from the proceedings to identify some of what he called the "great radio stations" carrying his show. He would usually include an overseas station.
• Other charts: Kasem continued his old AT40 tradition of relaying other songs topping Radio & Records charts during the final hour of each countdown. Two charts that were always featured were the R&B and adult contemporary charts, with the former being referred to as the Black chart in early years. Originally, the third chart was the country chart, but later this was replaced by the alternative rock chart. If any of the three chart toppers were on the pop chart as well, Kasem often would mention this when the song was played; if the song immediately followed the recap, Kasem would hold off on identifying it until giving its pop chart position.
• Special reports: Usually at least once an episode, Kasem would break from the countdown to report on something. Usually this would be a snippet of music news, but on occasion he would field a question from a listener who was curious about a piece of trivia and answer it for them.
• Trivia Quiz: Once an episode, Kasem would lead into a commercial with a music question with three multiple choice answers. After the commercial played, he would give the answer.
• Casey's Top 40 Concert Calendar: Unique to Casey's Top 40, Kasem would inform listeners what bands would be playing in concerts in the coming week.
• Closing: The final segment of each countdown featured the top two songs on the survey, just as Kasem had done on AT40. After playing the #1 song of the week, Kasem read the credits and signed off with his trademark "keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars". He would also usually add "and keep your dial/radio tuned right where it is" to encourage listeners to keep listening to their Casey's Top 40 affiliate.

Casey's Biggest Hits

As a further promotional tool for the show, Westwood One added a weekly strip of interstitial segments featuring past chart hits to the countdown package shipped to the affiliates. Five segments for each week were produced. The segments, usually more than five minutes in length, consisted of Kasem offering a teaser of the past hit. After a sixty second commercial break, he would return with the story behind the teaser and then play the song.

Special shows

On occasion, Kasem would host special countdowns focusing on past hits, such as his countdown of the greatest summer songs of the 1980s that aired on July 7, 1990.

Year end Top 100

One constant special continued a tradition that had been established on AT40. Every December, Kasem temporarily broke from the proceedings to present a two-part, eight-hour, 100 song countdown of the previous year's hits. These episodes were usually aired around Christmas and New Year's Day, with the first fifty songs comprising one episode and the rest airing the following week. Kasem did a total of nine of these year-end countdowns, with the last airing over the weekends of December 27, 1997 and January 3, 1998.^[2]

Below is a chart of the songs that finished the year at #1. For the first year CT40 was on the air, only a top 40 list was compiled.

Expansion into adult contemporary music tracking

In 1992, Kasem added a second countdown show to his dossier. Since some adult contemporary-formatted stations had been carrying Casey's Top 40, pop radio was in a general decline at the time, and Radio & Records had its own AC chart, Westwood One decided to put together a spinoff of Casey's T40 for those stations. On May 2, 1992, Casey's Countdown premiered on Westwood One as a three-hour, twenty-five song countdown (later reduced to twenty). In addition to the weekly hits and Request and Dedication pieces, several other songs that were past hits would also be played and were given Kasem's usual treatment of an anecdote related to the song or the artist.

In April 1994, Radio & Records added a hot adult contemporary chart to its tracking and Westwood One decided to put together a radio show to accompany the chart. On November 5 of that year, Kasem began hosting Casey's Hot 20; the show had a similar three hour format to its mainstream AC counterpart.

Conflict, departure, and cancellation

Toward the end of 1997, Kasem had regained a significant piece of his radio past. As part of his exit deal with ABC, the network agreed that if, at any time, they decided to cancel American Top 40, they would retain the rights as long as they made an effort in an intervening period to relaunch the show.

ABC did in fact cancel AT40 by dropping it from its network in July 1994, with the show continuing under the production of Radio Express until January 1995. ABC did not attempt a renewal in the agreed upon timeframe, as they had instead assumed production of Rick Dees' Weekly Top 40 upon dropping AT40.

Thus, by rule, the rights would revert to the show's creators. Kasem and Don Bustany were named in the agreement, but Bustany had retired from AT40 in 1989 and had moved on to other projects, no longer having any affiliation with the program or its associated intellectual property. As such, Kasem ended up with sole control of the American Top 40 branding and he wanted to exploit it. Westwood One, however, did not want to change the name of Casey's Top 40.

Kasem re-signs with Westwood One

As this was going on, Kasem was nearing the end of his second contract with Westwood One. This time its then-owner Infinity Broadcasting, whose parent company was CBS, appeared not as willing to sign him as the network had been when he first joined then back in 1988 and when Kasem re-upped with Westwood one following the conclusion of the original five-year contract he left ABC Watermark to accept.

Casey's Top 40 was still a successful property for Westwood One as it continued to be carried across the nation and around the world. The ratings, however, were not as strong as they had been, which led to a decline in outside advertising revenue. Some markets that had aired the countdown when it first premiered, the largest of which being New York City, were no longer carrying it which helped to put a further dent in ratings. Westwood One did not feel Kasem's salary demands were justified based on the lost revenue. Kasem, meanwhile, was growing more and more upset with his syndicator. Earlier in the run of CT40, especially after its 1989 launch, Westwood One gave the show a great deal of promotion. The support, however, began to dwindle as the years had passed and Kasem felt the network no longer made a satisfactory effort to promote it. Kasem was also not happy at what he saw as a lack of desire from Westwood One to use its connection to CBS to aid in promotion.

As news began to filter out about the contract dispute, other radio networks began showing interest in luring Kasem away from Westwood One just as they had when Kasem was a free agent in 1988. In December 1997, Westwood One decided that even though Casey's Top 40 was not garnering as much for them as it had, Kasem was enough of a valuable asset that they did not want to see employed by a competitor. Thus, the two sides struck a deal to bring Kasem back to Westwood One for a ninth year. It included a one-year renewal of all three of Kasem's weekly countdowns,^[3] contingent on an advertising revenue target of $6 million being reached. If it did not, a provision stated that either side could opt out of the deal.

On February 21, 1998, Kasem hosted an edition of Casey's Top 40 that aired the weekend before the annual Grammy Awards and, as he had done for the previous few shows, he made several references to the show during the broadcast noting several of the chart residents who were nominated. "Truly Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden and "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion, the two most recent chart toppers, were played in the final segment. "Truly Madly Deeply" had hit #1 on January 31, ending Chumbawamba's seven week run at the top with "Tubthumping", and stayed #1 until February 14 when "My Heart Will Go On" finished at #1 for the first of what would be nine consecutive weeks, Kasem signed off and told the audience to join him next week for the next installment of the countdown.

A new syndicator enters the fray

On February 28, 1998, Casey's Top 40 listeners tuned in to hear Kasem's regular substitute at the time, David Perry, at the microphone. Kasem had not given any indication to the audience at the end of the previous program that he was not going to appear on this particular edition. What Westwood One did not realize at the time was that Kasem's absence was not intended to be temporary and he was actively seeking a way out of the contract he had signed just two months before.

In January 1998 Chancellor Media, a large station group that included Kasem's former New York home, had formed a syndication arm that has since become Premiere Networks but was originally called AMFM Radio Networks. Immediately, the company went to work to try and find big name radio talent to sign to its lineup. The disgruntled 65-year old Kasem would be an instant coup as he boasted nearly thirty years as a countdown host and over forty years as a disc jockey by 1998. The two sides went into discussion regarding a contract, which would result in Chancellor taking over the AT40 branding and relaunching the show with Kasem as host.^[4] After Kasem signed, show producer Lorre Crimi immediately followed him; many of his production staffers, including original AT40 holdover Merrill Shindler, would eventually follow.

Westwood One and its corporate parents Infinity and CBS responded by suing Kasem for breach of contract and filing to try to block the new American Top 40 from launching. Kasem, in turn, cited the continued broken promises Westwood One made to him and claimed the contract he agreed to in December 1997 had vague language. Specifically, Kasem claimed that the advertising revenue clause that had been negotiated into the contract only applied to 1997's final figures and not anything calculated since the current year began, and thus he was allowed him to seek a new syndication deal somewhere else if that was his desire.^[5]

Westwood One tries to go forward as American Top 40 returns

Westwood One made an effort to continue CT40 and its spinoffs in Kasem's absence, making the following changes.

• After the March 7, 1998 edition of all three programs, David Perry was named as Kasem's permanent replacement.
• Each of the three countdowns were given new names. CT40 became The Top 40 Countdown, while Casey's Countdown became The Top 20 Countdown and Casey's Hot 20 was renamed The Hot 20 Countdown.
• The interstitial segments sent to stations with the weekly countdown removed Kasem's name from them and simply became known as "The Biggest Hits".
• JAM Creative Productions re-recorded the theme and jingles for all three countdowns to remove any mention of Kasem (they were otherwise unchanged musically).
• Requests and Dedications continued to be featured but no mention of Kasem accompanied them. Instead, the "Dear Casey" open was simply omitted as was any mention of his name in the body of the letter.

Despite the changes, the March 21, 1998 airings of all three countdowns were the last for each. The Top 40 Countdown and Top 20 Countdown were both hosted by Jeff Wyatt, the former host of American Dance Traxx for Westwood One, and The Hot 20 Countdown was hosted by John Tesh. Like Kasem's last show before his abrupt exit, there was no mention made of the cancellation of any of the three countdowns; in fact, on the former CT40 Wyatt continued to solicit Request and Dedication letters as well as updates on previous featured requests, and signed off encouraging listeners to join him on the next program.

On March 28, one week later, the new AT40 launched on AMFM Radio Networks with Kasem again behind the microphone of his creation. The legal wrangling between the two sides continued. However, Westwood One did not object to Kasem's continued use of the Radio & Records CHR/pop survey as its chart source. As such, Kasem's first and second #1 songs on the new AT40 were the same as his last two with Westwood One. That week, "My Heart Will Go On" finished its seventh week atop the chart. Three weeks later, "Truly Madly Deeply" reclaimed the #1 spot for a third non-consecutive and last week at the top. (The song that succeeded "Truly Madly Deeply" after its second run to #1 also proved to be a longstanding #1; that song, Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn", would become the longest running #1 of the year as it topped the chart for eleven consecutive weeks.)

Kasem's AC countdowns also found a new home at AMFM under the name American Top 20. These shows also launched on March 28, 1998 and Kasem continued to host them even after leaving AT40 at the beginning of 2004. The mainstream AC show would undergo a 2004 format change that would reduce it to a countdown of ten songs and add a special weekly spotlight feature to the chart extras and dedication segments. Both American Top 20 and the reformatted American Top 10 ended on July 4, 2009 after Kasem retired from broadcasting.

References

Sources

• Durkee, Rob. American Top 40: The Countdown of the Century. ISBN 0-02-864895-1. New York City: Schirmer Books, 1999. Accessed December 10, 2007.