American Top 40


American Top 40 is an internationally syndicated, independent song countdown radio program created by Casey Kasem, Don Bustany, Tom Rounds, and Ron Jacobs. The program is currently hosted by Ryan Seacrest and presented as an adjunct to his weekday radio program, On Air with Ryan Seacrest.
Originally a production of Watermark Inc., American Top 40 is now distributed by Premiere Networks. Nearly 500 radio stations in the United States, the Armed Forces Network, and multiple other stations worldwide air American Top 40, and the show streams through several venues, including iHeartMedia's own iHeartRadio app.
Co-creator Kasem hosted the original American Top 40 from its inauguration on July 4, 1970, until August 6, 1988. Shadoe Stevens took over the program on August 13, 1988, and hosted until January 28, 1995, when the original program came to an end. Three years later, Kasem teamed up with Premiere's predecessor AMFM Radio Networks to relaunch American Top 40. Kasem, who had spent nine years hosting his own countdown Casey's Top 40 for Westwood One, returned to hosting his creation on March 28, 1998. Seacrest took over American Top 40 on January 10, 2004, following Kasem's retirement from the series.
Currently, American Top 40 with Seacrest airs in two formats, with one distributed to Contemporary Hit Radio stations and the other to Hot Adult Contemporary stations. However, there is no distinction made between the two shows on air. There are also two classic editions of the original American Top 40 distributed every weekend, featuring past Kasem-hosted shows from the 1970s and 1980s.
In its early years, American Top 40 used the Billboard charts to compile the countdown, touting it as "the only source". The program subsequently switched to being based on Radio and Records airplay data upon its late 1990s return, until R&R was folded into Billboard in 2009. The current source for the American Top 40 charts are unpublished mainstream Top 40 and hot adult contemporary charts compiled by Mediabase.

History

1970–1988: First Casey Kasem era

American Top 40 began on the Independence Day weekend in 1970, on seven radio stations, the first being KDEO in El Cajon, California, which broadcast the inaugural show the evening of July 3, 1970. Billboard reported prior to the release of the show that it had been sold to stations in 10 radio markets. Kasem was reportedly inspired by Make Believe Ballroom, a radio show that was nationally syndicated in the 1940s and popularized the concept of a disc jockey playing current popular recorded music on the air.
The chart data broadcast for the premiere show actually included the top 40 songs from the week ending July 11, 1970. The first show featured the last time both Elvis Presley and the Beatles had songs simultaneously in the Top 10. It was originally distributed by Watermark Inc., and was first presented in mono until February 24, 1973, when the first stereo vinyl copies were distributed. 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 Kasem and co-created by Kasem; Don Bustany, Kasem's childhood friend from Detroit, Michigan; radio veteran Tom Rounds; and 93/KHJ Program Director Ron Jacobs, who produced and directed the various production elements. Rounds was also the marketing director; 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. By the early 1980s, the show could be heard on 520 stations in the United States and at its zenith, the show was broadcast on 1,000-plus stations in some 50 countries. In the 1980s, it aired in the United Kingdom on Signal Radio, DevonAir, Radio 210, County Sound, Chiltern Radio, Northants 96, Radio Tees, Saxon Radio and Fox FM and was also transmitted on Manx Radio. Kasem told the New York Times in 1990 "I accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That is the timeless thing."

Features of the Kasem-era shows

During Kasem's run as host, the AT40 show had a number of popular and distinguishing features, some of which Kasem had done for some time at such stations as KRLA in Los Angeles:
  • Number jingles: Occasionally, a song was preceded by a brief audio clip of a group of singers announcing the song's position on the chart. This was especially common for the first song played in each hour of the show and often for the first song after a commercial break, but was usually not done for the number-one song, or for songs preceded by a story. The "number" jingles were updated and re-recorded from time to time, and by the mid-1980s, the show began using two sets of "number" jingles: the standard set, to be used with up-tempo songs; and a softer alternative set, usually used with low-key or romantic songs.
  • Long Distance Dedication: This feature evolved from a spoken-word 45 single that Kasem had recorded in 1964, "Letter from Elaina", in which a girl wrote to Kasem about her encounter with the Beatles.
In a 2007 Valentine's Day special edition of American Top 10, Kasem explained that the LDD feature was intended to be part of the show from the beginning. He knew, however, that it was going to take some time before a listener wrote in with a request and let the process proceed organically. Kasem's patience proved correct, as staffer Matt Wilson found such a letter while checking the show's mail in August 1978. The listener asked Kasem to play the song "Desiree" by Neil Diamond, which he dedicated to his girlfriend of the same name who was moving to West Germany to live with her family on an Army base. The request was fulfilled on the weekend of August 26, 1978; when that show was rebroadcast the weekend of August 25–26, 2007, Kasem recorded two optional segments in which he did phone interviews with the man and his former girlfriend about the LDD. Most shows featured two long distance dedications, usually with one during each half of the show. This feature endured on AT40 into Shadoe Stevens' run as host of the show, from 1988 to 1995, and also followed Kasem on his Westwood One shows, first as "Request and Dedication", and then back to LDD when he returned to AT40 in 1998. Long Distance Dedications were dropped after Ryan Seacrest became host in 2004, but they continued as part of Kasem's adult contemporary countdowns.
  • Great Radio Stations: Once an hour, generally halfway into the hour, Kasem relayed three or four radio stations that carried AT40, beginning each list with "American Top 40 is heard in the fifty states and around the world every week on great radio stations like... ". In the first few years of the program, Kasem said "coast to coast" instead of "in the fifty states." One foreign AT40 affiliate, or mention of Armed Forces Radio, was often included, usually as the last station in the list. In addition, new AT40 affiliates were mentioned at the top of one of the hours. The multiple station mentions became a regular feature in 1972; prior to then, only one station was mentioned per hour. The first station mentioned on AT40 was KMEN in San Bernardino, California, on the August 29, 1970, program.
  • Sign-off: After the number-one song was played, the bumper music began playing, and over that, Kasem typically reported that week's chart date and read the end credits, then signed off with what became his, and the show's, unofficial motto: "Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars." Beginning with the show of June 25, 1977, he usually added "and keep your radio tuned right where it is", as a way to help its affiliated stations improve listener loyalty; this phrase would be retired in 1984, but returned to the show when the AT40 brand name was revived in the late 1990s. Guest hosts would be prohibited from using Kasem's sign-off, but still used the "keep your radio tuned right where it is" phrase when its usage was in effect. Even his sign-on and sign-off music became popular, as "Shuckatoom" became a highly requested song, although it was never used apart from the show; "Shuckatoom" was first used to close AT40 with the "Top 40 Rock & Roll Acts of the 1950s" on October 4, 1975, and first used to open AT40 on November 8, 1975.
  • AT40 Archives: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kasem began a review of each number-one single of the 1970s played in chronological order at the rate of three per week spaced throughout the broadcast. When completed, he began a similar review of each number-one single of the 1960s.

    1988–1995: Shadoe Stevens era

In 1988, Kasem left the show over contract concerns with ABC and signed with Westwood One to host a competing weekly countdown. 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. Kasem's final AT40 show, the 940th in the series, aired on August 6, 1988. Kasem was replaced by Shadoe Stevens, whose first American Top 40 show aired on August 13, 1988, on 1,014 stations.
Later, Stevens and AT40 lost a significant number of affiliates when, on January 21, 1989, Kasem's Westwood One show launched. The program, titled Casey's Top 40, used the weekly chart survey published by Radio & Records instead of the Billboard Hot 100 chart AT40 was still using. Further complications arose when some stations that stayed with Stevens also added Kasem's new show.
In an attempt to win back an audience, AT40 tried new features, including interview clips, music news, top 5 flashbacks, and previews of upcoming chart hits. It also stopped using the Hot 100 chart, switching first to the Hot 100 Airplay chart and finally to the Mainstream Top 40 chart. Later still, the countdown would use what was called a "No Nuttin'" gimmick that drew criticism; at various points of the show, a song would start immediately after the jingle for its position on the chart was played and Stevens would not offer any commentary until it concluded.
ABC kept American Top 40 in its syndication lineup despite the continued lack of improvement in ratings, but in 1994 the network finally decided to cut its losses. ABC announced that after the July 9, 1994 edition of the program, it would be dropping AT40 from its lineup and replacing it with Rick Dees Weekly Top 40. The move resulted in AT40 completely disappearing from United States radio, as no network picked it up for distribution domestically. Despite this, AT40 did not end production. Radio Express, the show's international distributor, kept the program alive for the overseas markets that had not dropped the series after ABC's cancellation.
On the weekend of January 28, 1995, the final episode of the original AT40 was broadcast.