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.

Background

Beginning on July 4, 1970, Kasem hosted American Top 40 for what was then known as Watermark Inc. and which would later, through a merger, become ABC Watermark. In 1988, ABC Watermark announced it would not be renewing Kasem's contract, choosing instead to replace the 56-year old host with Hollywood Squares announcer Shadoe Stevens, who was fifteen years younger than Kasem. The last AT40 with Kasem aired August 6, 1988.

A free agent after eighteen years, Kasem quickly signed with Westwood One. Since he was still under contract with ABC until January 1989, Kasem was not immediately available to begin working for his new syndicator. Casey's Top 40 made its debut on January 21, 1989 on stations from coast to coast. This included a number of stations that dropped AT40 to air Kasem's new show.

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]

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. In 1993, former Los Angeles DJ David Perry took his place.

Similarities between CT40 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.

Bold text===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.
  • 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". At the beginning, a brass coris would play, followed bythe JAMsingers shouting "10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2!" until they shouted, "#1!" This would be done 3 different times per format. The AC version dubbed Cassey's Countdown added sexaphone rifs as the shouts get louder.

• 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 long 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. By 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. 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. The rundown always took place during the final hour of each countdown and led into one of the next songs on the countdown. If one of the three songs happened to be the next song on the survey, Kasem would identify the chart it topped and its position on the pop chart before giving the title and artist.
• 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.
• Casey's Biggest Hits: Every week, a series of five interstitial segments would be sent out to affiliates along with the weekly countdown. Each one consisted of a chart hit from the recent past accompanied by Kasem providing a piece of trivia to go with it. These sponsored segments were intended to air once per day in the week to follow.

Format

Like AT40 and most other similar countdown programs, Casey's Top 40 was four hours in length from beginning to end. Usually, each hour was divided into several segments with an average of about two songs played per segment. Most shows tried to fit ten songs into one hour, so that each subsequent hour began with the #30, #20, and #10 songs of the week.

The show was blocked in such a way that for each of the first three hours, a wraparound segment would feed into the top of the next hour. First, Kasem would tease or preview an upcoming song or a Request and Dedication subject. This would be followed by a short piece of bumper music, which was designed to give affiliates a chance to identify themselves as they are required to at the top of every hour. Kasem then immediately picked up where he left off and played the next song on the countdown, followed by the one he offered the teaser or preview for. This wraparound method would carry over to AT40 when it was relaunched in 1998.

As on AT40, the final segment of every show consisted of the top two songs of the week. Kasem would introduce the #2 song with little to no fanfare, saving that for the #1 song for which he provided one more teaser/preview. After the song was over, Kasem closed the show by reading the credits and finishing with his trademark "keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars" sign off. Most weeks he would add "and keep your radio tuned right where it is", another practice from his AT40 days.

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 was the annual top 100 countdown Kasem hosted. Near the end of the year, a list of the biggest hits of the previous year would be tabulated and the 100 songs that made the cut would be revealed over two programs, with half of the list played one week and the second half 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 put together a three-hour, twenty-five song survey for these stations called Casey's Countdown. In addition to counting down the biggest AC hits of the week, the staple "Request and Dedication" songs were played along with some hits from the past to round out the show.

In April 1994, Radio & Records added a hot adult contemporary chart to its tracking. Seven months later, Westwood One premiered Casey's Hot 20 and Kasem began his third concurrent weekly chart survey. Like Casey's Countdown, which was reduced to 20 songs at the time, Casey's Hot 20 included past chart hits and Requests and Dedications.

However, Westwood One would treat all three programs as if they were a single program, for purposes of exclusive programming rights in a given market; when a station picked up one of these programs, the other two programs would be shut out of the market.

Casey Kasem leaves Westwood One

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 to the branding for up to two years. Since they had not made an effort to relaunch the program since its 1995 cancellation, by rule the rights would revert to the show's creators, which according to the deal would be Kasem and Don Bustany. Bustany, however, had retired from AT40 in 1989 and had moved on to other projects. 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.

As this was going on, Kasem's contract was coming up for renewal and there were other issues at play. The ratings for CT40 were not as strong as they had been earlier in the show's run and as such, Westwood One was not garnering as much outside advertising revenue for its owner Infinity Broadcasting's satisfaction; in fact, by this time many if not most of the sold ad time had been purchased by Infinity's parent company CBS. Thus, the network decided to try to tie Kasem's future compensation to the declining revenue. Kasem, meanwhile, was not happy with what he saw as Westwood One not making an effort to promote his show as they once had. Further exacerbating the issue was that Kasem had no presence in either the New York or Los Angeles media markets at the time; WHTZ in New York had dropped the show sometime after March 1994 while KPWR in Los Angeles had shifted to more of a hybrid urban contemporary/CHR format and CT40 no longer fit its intended audience.

In December 1997, Westwood One decided that even though Casey's Top 40 was not garnering as much for them as it had, the idea of losing Kasem to a competitor was too great of a risk for them to take. Thus, the two sides agreed on a one-year renewal of all three of Kasem's weekly countdowns.^[3] The deal was 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 CT40 that aired the weekend before the annual Grammy Awards and he made several references to the show during the broadcast noting several of the chart residents who were nominated. After closing the show by playing "Truly Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden, which had been knocked out of the top spot one week earlier and had remained at #2, and "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion, which finished at #1 for the second 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. However, when the February 28, 1998 edition of the show aired, substitute David Perry was heard instead of Kasem, who had not said he would not be coming back the next week.

As it turned out, Kasem was looking for a way out of his deal with Westwood One. Chancellor Media, a large station group that included Kasem's former New York home, had just entered the syndication game by launching AMFM Radio Networks (now Premiere Networks) in January. The group immediately went looking for talent to bring into the upstart unit and signing such a well-known personality as Kasem would have given them a major coup and instant credibility.

Kasem and AMFM soon struck a deal where he would begin working for the new network hosting a revived AT40, with Kasem giving over his rights to the branding.^[4] 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 made an effort to continue CT40 in Kasem's absence, giving David Perry the permanent hosting position on March 7 and rebranding the show as The Top 40 Countdown on March 14. It was only a brief effort, however, as only two more countdowns aired following the rebranding and on March 21, 1998, the last edition of the program aired with Jeff Wyatt as host. Casey's Countdown and Casey's Hot 20, which had been rebranded as well to the Top 20 and Hot 20 countdowns, also ended that weekend; Wyatt hosted the last show for the former while John Tesh did so for the latter.

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. (It should be noted that when the new AT40 premiered, the show still was not carried in New York; WHTZ would pick it up in 1999 and has aired it ever since.)

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.