Casey's Top 40

Updated on Dec 30, 2023

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Genre Music chart show Syndicates Westwood One		Country United States
Running time 4 hrs. (including commercials)3hrs. + 15 min. (w/out commercials) Hosted by Casey Kasemvarious guest hosts Air dates January 21, 1989 to March 21, 1998

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

Kasem's run as host of American Top 40 came to an end after the August 6, 1988 edition of the countdown. After eighteen years at the helm, his syndicator ABC Watermark (originally Watermark Inc.) elected not to renew his contract when it came up for renegotiation. Shadoe Stevens, who at the time was the announcer for the game show Hollywood Squares, was brought in to replace him. Westwood One decided to sign Kasem shortly thereafter to host a competing show for them, which was originally going to be called The Top 40 Countdown but was later branded with Kasem's name.

Due to the terms of Kasem's contract with ABC Watermark, he could not immediately begin working for Westwood One. 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.

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 former American Top 40 stations, which dropped the show when word came that Kasem was returning to radio.

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. 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.

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. Instead of taking a commercial break at the end of each hour, as AT40 did, a wraparound segment was employed. After Kasem played the last song of the hour, he offered a preview for one of the next songs coming up. This would be followed by a brief musical sting to close the hour out, which allowed for the top of the hour station identification for the affiliates. Kasem then continued with the next song on the survey and followed that with the song he had previously teased. The final hour closed the same way as on AT40, with the last segment featuring the #2 song of the week leading it off and one final story segment before the reveal of the #1. Kasem would then sign off for the week, closing with his traditional "keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars" catchphrase.

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. 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 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.

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.

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.

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 CT40 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 April 1994, Radio & Records added a hot adult contemporary chart to its tracking. This would eventually lead Westwood One to create another weekly countdown show with Kasem at the helm, and on November 5, 1994 Casey's Hot 20 launched.

In addition to the weekly chart survey, both Casey's Countdown and Casey's Hot 20 had special features. In addition to Requests and Dedications, both shows featured several chart hits from past years. Each hour would feature at least one of these songs, and the last song played before the revealing of the top two songs of the week was always a past hit.

The end of Casey's Top 40

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.

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's standing in the nation's two largest media markets. Charter affiliate WHTZ in New York was no longer airing the show by 1997 (having dropped it sometime after March 1994), and while the suburbs of Los Angeles had stations affiliated with CT40, no station in the city itself had carried it since KPWR dropped it.

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. 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. "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. 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 and bringing his CT40 production crew with him. 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.

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. 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; Jeff Wyatt hosted the last show for the Top 40 and Top 20 countdowns while John Tesh did so for the Hot 20.

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

Casey's Top 40 Wikipedia

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