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 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, emanated from Hollywood, California, and was a countdown of the 40 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 as host of American Top 40 with syndicator ABC Watermark. The two sides were unable to come to an agreement for a renewal, so on February 9, ABC Watermark announced that it would begin searching for a replacement host. The process would eventually result in the signing of Shadoe Stevens that May, and he would take over American Top 40 beginning with the August 13, 1988 episode.

Westwood One, who was already producing several countdown programs between itself and its recent acquisition Mutual, offered Kasem a contract that would have paid him triple what he was making on AT40 to jump ship. In April 1988, he agreed to a five-year contract to join Westwood One. However, Kasem's contract with ABC Watermark was in force for the remainder of the year and Westwood One could not use him until the contract was up. It did not stop them from promoting his arrival, however, and stations that signed up to air Kasem's new show were sent a promotional package that included a “Westwood One Survival Kit” for the interim period that was labeled “what do to until Casey comes”. Inside the kit were a “shadow simulator” (portable flashlight), a button reading “Casey in ‘89”, and a pin with the date of his premiere on Westwood One.^[1]

Casey's Top 40 premiered on the weekend of January 21, 1989 on stations from coast to coast and overseas. Some of those stations had been carrying American Top 40 and opted to drop it in favor of Kasem's new show; in some cases both countdowns aired on the same station.

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 voiceover artist Mark Elliott, 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 about songs and artists (including the "stretch" stories). However, while American Top 40 used the Billboard Hot 100 as its source, Casey's Top 40 used the weekly CHR airplay-based survey produced by Westwood One's then-subsidiary Radio & Records. AT40 would eventually follow suit by moving to airplay-only charts, switching first to the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart and then to its Mainstream Top 40 chart.

When it launched, Casey's Top 40 was one of several shows using the Radio & Records chart; in addition to Unistar Radio Network's Rick Dees Weekly Top 40, this list included two programs already under Westwood One's corporate umbrella, The National Music Survey hosted by Charlie Tuna for Mutual (but using the R&R AC survey instead) and Rockin' America Top 30 Countdown hosted by Scott Shannon for Westwood One.

In 1994, Radio & Records split its weekly CHR survey into two different trackers. One focused on stations with a dance/rap/R&B-centered playlist, called the "CHR/Rhythmic" chart. The other chart, which tracked more traditional pop music was now called CHR/Pop, and it became the new chart source for Kasem's countdown, beginning with the program airing the weekend of April 30, 1994.

Like AT40, Casey's Top 40 was timed to generally fit ten songs per one hour. The show divided each hour into segments, with four three minute commercial breaks inserted per hour. Each hour consisted of five segments, the last of which was the shortest. Unique to Casey's Top 40, the last segment for each hour (never the last hour) consisted of one song and a teaser by Kasem used to segue into the next hour, followed by a musical bumper for stations to play their hourly required station identification, before immediately going into the next song on the countdown to start the next hour; this segue would carry over to the revived AT40 in 1998.

Features[]

• Last Week's Top 3: As he had done on American Top 40, Kasem would begin each countdown a rundown of the top three songs from the previous week's survey, often playing the previous week's chart topper to begin the show (although this became more infrequent as the years went on). The first of these was "Two Hearts" by Phil Collins, which had reached the top spot the week before Casey's Top 40 premiered and would retain its #1 spot that week.
• Jingles: A new set of jingles was recorded for Casey's Top 40 by JAM Creative Productions, which included the usual song-number and title bumper jingles 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 singers doing a count down shout counting down from ten over the music until they reached "Number One!", something that would follow Kasem for the rest of his career. His mainstream AC spinoff Casey's Countdown also had its slogan jingle created by JAM ("Casey Counts Them Down"), which would be later used on his other countdown shows. Initially, some of these jingles refererred to the show as "CT40", but ABC Watermark won an injunction preventing this reference for being too similar to "AT40".
• Droppers, Biggest Movers and Longest-Charting Song: For each song that debuted on the countdown, 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 would also identify the song making the largest leap up the chart and the longest-charting song still in the Top 40.
• Request and Dedication: Kasem continued to take requests from fans requesting songs dedicated to others who affected their lives. Since he could not use the AT40 title "Long Distance Dedication", these became known as "Requests and Dedications", with typically three of these segments airing per show. Originally, these requests were received entirely by postal mail, but listeners were later provided the ability to fax in their requests. Beginning with the countdown airing the weekend of July 8, 1995, listeners could also submit requests through an America Online email account created specifically for Kasem's program.
• Request and Dedication Update: Later in the show's run, the producers began reaching out to the listeners who had their Requests and Dedications fulfilled. Those same people were encouraged to follow up with the show by sending postcards to the producers with their telephone numbers if they had updates on their situation. If one was selected, Kasem would phone that person and conduct a brief interview, of which a snippet would play during the following countdown. This was largely a feature unique to Casey's Top 40, as the original AT40 very seldom included updates for past Long Distance Dedications.
• Affiliate mentions: Another AT40 staple included in Casey's Top 40 was Kasem's hourly mention of some of the "great radio stations" carrying his show.
• Other charts: Kasem continued his AT40 tradition of announcing the songs topping other Radio & Records charts during the final hour of each countdown. He usually made mention of the R&B (originally Black) and country charts, later adding the adult contemporary chart and the alternative rock chart once those launched. If any of those songs appeared in the top 40, Kasem would make note of it before playing the song.
• Special reports: Usually at least once per episode, Kasem would break from the countdown to report on an item of relevance, such as a snippet of music news, or field a listener question.
• Trivia Quiz: Once per 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 give a rundown of prominent bands with upcoming concerts.
• 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 would read the show's credits and sign 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. That last portion was another carryover from AT40, which was used from 1977 to 1984, and would be used with AT40's revival in 1998.

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, designed to be played during the week. Five segments for each week were produced, each usually longer than five minutes, with Kasem offering a teaser for the past hit. After a 60-second commercial break, he would return with the story behind the teaser and then play the song.

Special shows[]

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

Year-end Top 100[]

As with AT40, each December, Kasem presented a two-part, eight-hour, 100-song countdown of the past year's hits. These episodes were usually aired around Christmas and New Year's Day, with the first 50 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 charts[]

As with AT40, Casey's Top 40 also had problems with some stations reluctant to play music that did not agree with their format. In one example, WSTR in Atlanta, Georgia, being an anti-rap station and a very Adult Contemporary-leaning CHR, edited "Another Night" by Real McCoy (a Euro disco record with rap breaks) out of its broadcasts of Casey's Top 40 in 1994, even while the song was at #1 on the show.^{[citation needed]}

In 1992, Kasem added a second countdown show. With mainstream pop radio in decline, and many Casey's Top 40 affiliates having an adult contemporary format, Westwood One launched Casey's Countdown on March 7, 1992, as a three-hour, 25-song countdown (reduced to 20 on August 13, 1994^[3]), using the Radio & Records AC chart. In addition to the weekly hits and "Request and Dedication" pieces, Casey’s Countdown also included what were referred to as “Extras”, which were past hits from artists with anecdotes provided by Kasem.

On November 5, 1994, Kasem began yet another show, Casey's Hot 20, a three-hour countdown that used a new Radio & Records hot adult contemporary chart that had launched in April. The format was nearly identical to Casey’s Countdown.

As on the parent program, both Casey's Countdown and Casey's Hot 20 concluded their years with an annual special featuring the top hits of the year. Casey's Countdown featured a two-part, seventy-song countdown in 1992 and 1993, reduced to thirty-five beginning in 1994.^[4] Casey's Hot 20 only featured thirty-five songs in its abbreviated first year countdown, but beginning in 1995 this was expanded to sixty over two programs.

The songs that finished the year atop the charts are as follows:^[5]

¹ In 1994, Radio & Records did not compile a year end Hot AC list. The countdown was instead based on data gathered by the producers of Casey's Hot 20.

The end at Westwood One, and the rebirth of AT40[]

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Entering the final months of 1997, Kasem and Westwood One were at odds over his continued employment for the syndicator. After his initial contract expired, Kasem signed a second contract for four more years and it was about to come due. While Casey’s Top 40 was still a ratings draw for many domestic and international stations, at this point in its run it had no presence in media markets such as New York and, thus, Westwood One felt there was a lack of advertising revenue coming in to justify the production costs. Meanwhile, during Kasem's latest contract, a series of mergers took place that resulted in Westwood One becoming a subsidiary of CBS. Feeling that should have enabled his show to receive promotion opportunities across various CBS media outlets, Kasem instead found himself disappointed that these opportunities were not taken advantage of.

Once word began to spread of Kasem's potential free agency, other radio distributors began considering offers for his services. Westwood One ultimately decided that keeping Kasem in the fold was in their best interests, and negotiations continued. In December 1997, Westwood One agreed to a deal that would bring Kasem back for at least one more year of hosting his three countdowns for the network.^[6] The deal included a contingency plan regarding advertising revenue; this would prove important in what followed.

Kasem, with new deal in hand, continued on and on the weekend of February 21, 1998, hosted an edition of Casey’s Top 40 with significant attention paid to songs by nominees for the Grammy Awards, which were to be awarded that week. The next week, Kasem was absent from the show and David Perry, by then his designated substitute, was at the helm. The absence was not expected and, perhaps more significantly, was not intended as temporary.

In January 1998, AMFM Radio Networks, the syndication arm of broadcaster Chancellor Media and forerunner of today's Premiere Radio Networks, was organized, and upon its establishment, the new company sought big-name radio talent and piqued the interest of the disgruntled 65-year old Kasem.^[7] Kasem also had something else to offer AMFM after another series of events took place at the end of 1997.

As part of Kasem's exit deal with ABC Watermark when he left American Top 40 in 1988, ABC Watermark was allowed to keep the branding. If, at any point, production of AT40 were to cease for any reason, ABC would be able to keep the branding if either they continued to pay licensing fees to Kasem and the show's co-creator Don Bustany or they made any effort to use it in an interim time frame; AT40 was dropped by ABC in 1994 domestically and in early 1995 internationally, and since they made no effort by the end of 1997 to revive the program, ABC decided to stop licensing the branding. Bustany ceased to have any further involvement in AT40 after 1989, having become a political talk show host with Pacifica Radio, and thus sole control of the branding was given to Kasem. The interest from AMFM gave him a chance to exploit it.

Before he could sign with the upstart syndicator, Kasem needed to find a way to break the contract with Westwood One that he had just signed. He managed to find that out in the advertising revenue clause inserted into the contract. The clause stated that if the countdown was not generating $6 million in advertising revenue at any point, both sides had an option to break the contract. Claiming the language of the clause was vague and that it only applied to the final 1997 figures, Kasem took advantage of his option and struck a deal with AMFM that included rights to the American Top 40 brand. CBS, Infinity, and Westwood One responded by filing a breach of contract lawsuit against Kasem, who justified the decision by criticizing the lack of effort to promote the countdown across the networks of CBS.^[8] Despite his departure, Westwood One kept Kasem's name on the countdowns temporarily as it plotted its next moves. Those moves began with the promotion of show staffer Ben Harris to the producer position for all three countdowns in place of Lorre Crimi, who had replaced Bert Kleinman in that position in 1996.

Eventually, this led to Kasem's name being struck from the countdowns beginning on March 14. Casey’s Top 40 and Casey’s Hot 20 saw their titles add the word “Countdown” to them while dropping Kasem's name (becoming The Top 40 Countdown and The Hot 20 Countdown), while Casey’s Countdown changed its name to The Top 20 Countdown. Although the special features of these shows, especially the Requests and Dedications, were otherwise left intact, the host would read the body of the request and not mention Kasem at all or even start with “Dear Casey”.

However, after making these changes, Westwood One abruptly shifted course and cancelled all three countdowns. Their final editions all aired a week after the name changes became official, on the weekend of March 21, 1998. David Perry, who had been hosting the countdowns since Kasem's exit, was not a part of the proceedings; instead the hosting duties were shared by Jeff Wyatt, who hosted the pop and AC countdowns, and John Tesh, who hosted the hot AC countdown. Westwood One gave no indication of the cancellation on any of the three countdowns that week, as Wyatt and Tesh both continued to solicit for Requests and Dedications as well as updates from past senders.

Although the legal wrangling over Kasem's departure continued, Westwood One did not object to his continued use of the Radio & Records charts for the new American Top 40, which premiered on March 28, 1998. (The show would continue to use the chart for several more years before switching to Mediabase to track its songs.)

As for Kasem's adult contemporary countdowns, AMFM chose to rebrand them both as American Top 20 for their debut on the network. Kasem would host all three countdowns simultaneously until January 3, 2004; after this, he continued on with his adult contemporary countdowns until his retirement on July 4, 2009.

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.