American Top 40
American Top 40 (abbreviated to AT40) 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.
Other names
AT40
Music chart show, talk
4 hrs. (including commercials)
3 hrs. + 15 min. (w/out commercials)
United States
English
- Ryan Seacrest (2004–present)
- Casey Kasem (1970–1988, 1998–2004)
- Shadoe Stevens (1988–1995)
- See also § Substitute hosts and guest co-hosts
Miles Hlivko
- Easton Allyn & Jennifer Sawalha (Present)
- Nikki Wine (1970s)
- Don Bustany (1970s, 1979–1987)
- Lorre Crimi (1998–2004)
July 4, 1970 –
present
(hiatus January 28, 1995 – March 28, 1998)
Originally a production of Watermark Inc. (later a division of ABC Radio known as ABC Watermark, now Cumulus Media Networks), American Top 40 is now distributed by Premiere Networks (a division of iHeartMedia). Nearly 500 radio stations in the United States, and several other territories worldwide air American Top 40, making it one of the most listened-to weekly radio programs in the world. It can also be heard on iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and the official American Top 40 applications on mobile smartphones and tablets as well as on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 consoles (via iHeartRadio's console app), and the Armed Forces Network. GEICO is the main sponsor for the show.
Co-creator Casey 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 (Top 40) 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,[1] 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.
In October 2021, the show stopped using the AT40 abbreviation and now uses its full name on air. Despite this, some affiliates still use the abbreviation when promoting the show, and Seacrest (as well as guest hosts) occasionally continues to use it throughout the countdown after this change.
Competition[edit]
American Top 40 has faced numerous competitors since its debut in 1970. These include The Weekly Top 30 with Mark Elliott (1979–1982); several Dick Clark-hosted shows starting in 1981 with the National Music Survey and Countdown America, the latter of which was originally hosted by former R&R CHR editor John Leader and later by Clark; Rockin' America Top 30 Countdown with then Z100 Program Director and personality Scott Shannon; and the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40, which has run continuously since 1983 with Rick Dees as host. Numerous other shows following the same format, both in the general top-40 category and in various specific radio formats, have aired over the course of AT40's history as well. In addition to Dees' show, Mario Lopez, Carson Daly, and (in overseas via World Chart Show) Mike Savage, all host competing countdown shows targeted at the pop top 40 market.
Reairing of older shows[edit]
AT40 flashback[edit]
From December 2000 to December 2002, many radio stations aired reruns of 1980–88 episodes under the title American Top 40 Flashback. The show was syndicated by Premiere Radio Networks. In its early weeks the shows were the original four-hour format of an American Top 40 episode, but after the first month and a half the show was reduced to three hours. Although the national syndication of American Top 40 Flashback ceased in December 2002, radio station WMMX in Dayton, Ohio, continued to carry American Top 40 Flashback on Saturday mornings until the premiere of Casey Kasem's 'American Top 40: The 80s.
Casey Kasem's American Top 40—the 70s and 80s[edit]
On August 4, 2006, XM Satellite Radio began replays of the original 1970s and 1980s AT40 shows with Casey Kasem that were digitally remastered from the original vinyl LPs and open-reel master tapes by Shannon Lynn of Charis Music Group. The event began with a weekend long marathon of original shows, with AT40 then being added as a regular show on two of XM's Decades channels, "The 70s on 7" and "The 80s on 8". With the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio, these AT40 shows began airing on both services on November 15, 2008. On the 70s on 7, it replaced the 'Satellite Survey', a Top 30 countdown of 1970s hits, produced by Sirius and hosted by Dave Hoeffel. On the 80s on 8, it replaced 'The Big 40' countdown produced by Sirius and hosted by Nina Blackwood. As of October 11, 2009, Sirius XM replaced the AT40 countdown on 80s on 8 and debuted a revised version of 'The Big 40' countdown now co-hosted by three of the five original MTV VJs: Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman and Alan Hunter (Martha Quinn was a fourth co-host from 2009 to 2015).
Sirius XM "70s on 7" currently runs AT40 each Saturday at 12 pm with encore broadcasts the following Sunday at 9 am and at 12 midnight (Eastern Time). Most show dates roughly correspond to the current week in real time. A random episode is also featured on J.J.Walker's show on "70s on 7" Thursdays at 9 pm ET. The mix of AT40 episodes being run on XM include the year-end countdowns, which are typically run in two parts: the first half (#100-#51) in one time slot, and then the second half (#50-#1) in the following time slot. The AT40 specials are also part of XM's rotation; for instance, "AT40 Goes to the Movies" aired prior to the 2007 Academy Awards, and on February 24, "The Top 40 Acts of the 80s So Far" aired on XM 80s the first week of July 2007. Also, "The Top 40 Songs of the Disco Era (1974–1979)" aired on Sirius XM "70s on 7" the second weekend of July 2011. As of the weekend of February 11, 2023, the 6am and noon Saturday editions were discontinued and replaced by a single 9am Saturday airing, with the Sunday airing moved to noon Eastern time.
From October through early November 2006, oldies radio station KQQL in Minneapolis/St. Paul, which is owned by iHeartMedia, ran a series of American Top 40 episodes from the 1970s. Aside from one week, when the station attempted to air a four-hour episode from 1979 in the three-hour time slot (resulting in the show getting cut off at No. 11 and the top 10 not being heard), this test run was largely successful. Because of the success, Premiere Radio Networks decided to launch "Casey Kasem's American Top 40: The 1970s" into national syndication featuring the three-hour shows from 1970 to 1978, and the last three hours of shows originally aired from October 1978 through December 1979. (One original four-hour program, first aired in October 1978, was edited into a three-hour program for re-airing in 2007, and the four-hour "Disco Hits" special from July 1979 with the first hour optional was aired in 2008, but until the fall of 2010, no other program from the last 15 months of the 1970s was included in the "AT40: The 70s" package. Starting in late 2010, Premiere began airing three-hour versions of four-hour AT40s from 1978 to 1979, beginning the broadcasts at the start of the countdown's second hour; during the spring of 2012, Premiere began making the first hour of these programs "optional," meaning that stations can choose to air all four hours of the four-hour programs, or just the last three.) Starting in 2012, whenever programs from 1970 to 1972 were scheduled to air, Premiere began offering affiliates the option of airing a later 1970s program instead (typically, a corresponding year from seven years later, or 1977–1979).
The 1980s version premiered on April 8, 2007, replacing the American Top 40 Flashback reruns. The shows are available in either their full original four-hour format, or an abbreviated three-hour version that omits the first hour of the show. To date, the latest program to air as part of the "AT40: The 80s" package has been August 6, 1988 – Kasem's last show with the original program. Because the rights to Shadoe Stevens-era episodes were held by Cumulus Media, no programs from August 13, 1988, to 1995 have been re-aired as part of this or any similar block.
To date, the only re-aired classic AT40 programs that featured a host other than Kasem are the shows of March 25, 1972, with Dick Clark as host; September 12, 1981, with Gary Owens as host; and May 13, 1978, and July 17, 1982, both with Mark Elliott as host. All were aired as tributes after Clark's, Owens' and Elliott's deaths, respectively.
Newly produced extra segments hosted by voiceover talent Larry Morgan are available for use at stations' discretion. Prior to Casey leaving Premiere Radio, these segments were hosted by his son Mike; when the series first began, these segments were hosted by one of Casey's former guest hosts, Ed McMann. These extra segments are also heard on the 80s show. KQQL was the first to sign on, airing programs beginning on December 30, 2006. Typically, the "optional extras" were songs that had yet to enter the top 40 of the Hot 100. However, some songs never reached the top 40 but had since become popular at classic hits/oldies/classic rock stations or certain novelty songs that were popularized by certain media events like the Who shot J.R.? cliffhanger (recorded by Gary Burbank) and the Chicago Bears 1985–86 NFC win and the team itself recording a rap tune about going to the Super Bowl, while others were tributes to performers who had just died. For early 1970s programs, some of the "optional extras" were actually extras (i.e., "oldies") that were originally a part of the original program; in this case, Kasem's original commentary and introduction of the song were kept intact, in lieu of Morgan's voiceover.
In March 2008, XM Satellite Radio rebranded the XM broadcasts with the "Casey Kasem's American Top 40" name and logo used for terrestrial broadcasts, although XM still aired the commercial-free broadcasts, while Premiere Radio carries edited and recut broadcasts with commercials. Following the merger of Sirius and XM, the AT40 shows airing on those platforms have occasionally been edited. In some cases, extras and LDDs have been cut from the original broadcasts.
Sirius XM 70s on 7 aired the inaugural AT 40 (which originally aired July 4, 1970) on July 4, 2013, as part of a special July 4 broadcast.
As of 2017, American Top 40: The 70s & 80s are produced by Toby James Petty and engineered by Shannon Lynn, both of whom had been members of the current AT40 production staff prior to Kasem's 2004 departure.
As of 2014, American Top 40: The 70s shows that were originally produced in mono are being converted to true stereo by Ken Martin, a program director and disk jockey for AT40 affiliate WTOJ in Carthage, New York. With some 1970s episodes featuring songs that were originally further edited by Watermark staff, Martin restored those songs to their original broadcast length; many of these extended editions were broadcast exclusively on Martin's station, WTOJ.
As of 2019, shows from the 1970s and 1980s are airing continually, without commercials, on the iHeartRadio station "Classic American Top 40". Most of iHeart's branded stations use an HD Radio subchannel in one of their markets to originate their app-only stations, and in this case, WMMX-HD2 in Dayton, Ohio, carries it over-the-air in that market.
As of December 2023, rebroadcast shows are currently aired on 200 radio stations in 5 countries and every U.S. state except Montana. Foreign rebroadcast shows are heard in four of the eastern provinces of Canada, as well as the American Forces Network, Australia, Berlin, Aruba, and The Cayman Islands.
In Late 2020, Sirius XM began airing an additional AT40 program on Thursday nights, presented as a random choice and not necessarily tied to the specific weekend. Included in this series were guest-host appearances from Dave Hull (a 1971 episode - the first AT40 to have a guest host - aired on November 12, 2020 to note Hull's recent passing) and Wink Martindale (a 1975 episode, airing on January 7, 2021).
Chart data used by American Top 40[edit]
Billboard magazine[edit]
AT40 used the top 40 songs from the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart from the show's inception in 1970 to November 23, 1991. The chart was widely regarded as the industry standard for tracking the popularity of singles, and was thus a natural choice to be used. Kasem would frequently announce during the show that Billboard was the only source for the countdown. While using these charts worked well for the first half of the 1970s, as music changed during the decade and disco became popular on the charts, some rock stations began to drop the show because of complaints from program directors that AT40 was playing too many songs not normally heard on their stations.
This gradually became a wide schism as rock splintered into several formats in the early 1980s. As a result, AT40's weekly playlist could be very diverse in the styles and formats of the songs played. Historians have noted that no one station actually played all of the songs on the Billboard Hot 100 list, because they represented overlapping formats, such as hard rock, mainstream rock, heavy metal, dance, new wave, punk, rap, pop, easy listening/adult contemporary and country. Stations tended to specialize in only one or two of these formats and completely ignore the others.
One solution for the AT40 producers was to air frequent specials (at least three or four times a year) that concentrated on the classic music of the past, such as Rock in the Movies and Top Hits of the Seventies. But as Top 40 stations evolved into CHR, they began to avoid syndicated shows like AT40, preferring to stick with their own special niche formats.
By the early 1990s, many singles, mostly of the rap, heavy metal or grunge genres, reached the chart based on strong sales despite low airplay; several were very long, others were too controversial or risqué for mainstream airplay (for instance, the sexually explicit "Me So Horny" by 2 Live Crew made it to No. 26 on the Hot 100 in 1989). These songs would generally only be aired in brief snippets during the show.
Because of this, American Top 40 switched to the Hot 100 Airplay chart (then known as the Top 40 Radio Monitor). These songs generally scored much higher radio airplay, and some were not even released as singles (such as "Steel Bars" by Michael Bolton). During this time, a few songs made very high debuts, including two that almost debuted in the No. 1 spot: "I'll Be There" by Mariah Carey, which entered at No. 4, and "Erotica" by Madonna, which entered at No. 2.
In January 1993, American Top 40 switched charts again, this time to the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream chart. This chart had more mainstream hits but fewer urban, dance and rap songs.
AT40 did not always use the official year-end Billboard chart during the 25 years in which the show used Billboard charts. In 1972, 1973 and 1977, as well as 1980–1984 and 1990–1994, AT40 compiled its own year-end chart. These charts were often close to Billboard's, but AT40 would use a mid-December to early-December time period while Billboard's survey year varied from year to year. AT40 matched Billboard's No. 1 year-end song every year except 1977, 1984, 1990 and 1993.
Radio and Records magazine[edit]
With the show's revival in 1998, a new chart was implemented, the top 40 portion of Radio and Records CHR/Pop top 50 chart, which was already in use on Casey's Top 40. This chart used a recurrent rule that removed songs below No. 25 that had exceeded 26 weeks in the top 50; these removals, if they occurred in the top 40, would be reflected on the appropriate week's program. In 1999, the rule was modified to further restrict long chart runs: songs falling below #20 with at least 20 weeks in the top 50 would now be removed.
On October 21, 2000, American Top 40 began using an unpublished chart on a weekly basis for the first time in its history. The chart seemed to be a variant of the CHR/Pop chart provided by Mediabase, the data provider to Radio & Records. The most noticeable feature of this new chart was its ambiguous recurrent rule. Songs would be removed regularly from within the top 15, seemingly regardless of the number of weeks they had spent on the chart. Additionally, the chart has resulted in songs that otherwise peaked at #41–50 on R&R's charts appearing on the AT40 charts. This chart lasted until August 11, 2001, when AT40 returned to the Radio & Records pop chart. The return coincided with another modification in the recurrent rule; songs would be removed below No. 25 after three consecutive weeks without a bullet (an increase in radio plays). This change would be short-lived, as in November 2001, Radio & Records returned to the 20 weeks/below No. 20 rule, which remained in place for the remainder of Kasem's tenure.
Syndication[edit]
In the United States, American Top 40 is available in almost every radio market in the USA. It had at least one radio station in every state up until December 2022 when New Jersey-based WHCY converted to country music. As of December 2022, New Jersey and Rhode Island are the only two states that don't have a local station carrying American Top 40. Rhode Island can pick up the show either from Connecticut's WKSS or Boston's WXKS-FM. North Jersey can still receive the show either from New York's WHTZ or the Lehigh Valley's WAEB. KKBT in American Samoa is the only radio station in an American territory that airs the show.
In Canada, more than 50 stations air AT40, most being owned by IHeartRadio and Golden West Broadcasting. The Move Radio stations air the show as Move Radio's Exclusive AT40 with some songs omitted and replaced with songs by Canadian artists.[41] In 2021, Ontario-based station CKPR-FM added a special Hot AC version of the chart that included contemporary Canadian artists that also airs on CIGO-FM and CHGK-FM. This is done to follow Canadian broadcast regulations. Other Canadian stations like CKIK-FM, and CKSY-FM omit the optional extras.
In addition to the United States and Canada, American Top 40 is also carried by more than several stations worldwide, including Hi FM in Oman, Amber Sound FM in England, Nile FM in Egypt, and Loud FM in Saudi Arabia.[42][43]
Some stations broadcast the program on its Hot AC version. The only ones outside the U.S. and Canada to do so are Antena 8 in Panama, and Black Star Radio in Australia.