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Post by briguy52748 on Apr 4, 2013 9:55:21 GMT -5
Without reading most of the comments in depth, when ABC and Casey Kasem were at their little impasse and unable to come to terms, does anybody think that the best thing to have done was to simply admit defeat and end the show?
I've said all along, the main reason I want to hear countdown shows on the weekend is because I want to hear the hits ... not necessarily who's doing the counting down. I mean, since they have never rerun a Shadoe Stevens episode, how do some of us really know what kind of a job he did? I've always wanted to hear the 1988-1989 shows just because we would get to hear the 1988-1989 music ... and after all, it is still "American Top 40" (the name).
Brian
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Post by mkarns on Apr 4, 2013 9:55:37 GMT -5
That's because I went to sleep after the Rays game and the Rays post game show. If you noticed when I posted what I did about KIIS originally I said DAY ONE of AT40. I put that there for a reason which was to head off the "Seacrest works there" response. Seacrest was NOT hosting the morning show then. Dees was. Dees's last day was 2/10/94 and it was only the day before he was notified he was no longer going to be on the air. And I can't remember exactly but it was another 2-3 weeks after that I believe before Ryan was announced and came aboard. Though admittedly, that part I could be mistaken on. I think you're mistaken on the 2/10/94 part; do you mean 2/10/04? Seacrest was 19 years old in 1994, a bit young for such a high-profile slot even on a CHR station.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2013 10:09:34 GMT -5
Argh I did it again!!!! Yes, 04. Sorry!! Going to correct it now!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2013 10:17:26 GMT -5
Without reading most of the comments in depth, when ABC and Casey Kasem were at their little impasse and unable to come to terms, does anybody think that the best thing to have done was to simply admit defeat and end the show? I've said all along, the main reason I want to hear countdown shows on the weekend is because I want to hear the hits ... not necessarily who's doing the counting down. I mean, since they have never rerun a Shadoe Stevens episode, how do some of us really know what kind of a job he did? I've always wanted to hear the 1988-1989 shows just because we would get to hear the 1988-1989 music ... and after all, it is still "American Top 40" (the name). Brian Absolutely not. The show was fine. No one expected the fragmenting to really affect radio the way it did. Don't kid yourself either, CT40 had clearance issues too. Not as bad but they had them. And unlike WW1 and others, ABC wouldn't pay affiliates to carry AT40. What AT40 should have done is when the Hot 100 went SoundScan in late 91 they should have left Billboard altogether. Why should they have kept paying (at least I assume they were still paying this much) $10,000 a WEEK for use of that chart? AT40 was dropping but it only got worse going forward. Maybe had to do with the chart, maybe not. But, a savings of $520,000 a year would have helped the bottom line. And as has been mentioned previously, even when the show died, internationally it was still doing very well. Shadoes early years of 88-91 I think AT40 was miles better than CT40 was then. And, at least when I was in middle school most anyone you talked to preferred listening to Shadoe over Casey in my market so again I say, absolutely no on pulling the plug.
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Post by woolebull on Apr 4, 2013 11:15:19 GMT -5
Without reading most of the comments in depth, when ABC and Casey Kasem were at their little impasse and unable to come to terms, does anybody think that the best thing to have done was to simply admit defeat and end the show? I've said all along, the main reason I want to hear countdown shows on the weekend is because I want to hear the hits ... not necessarily who's doing the counting down. I mean, since they have never rerun a Shadoe Stevens episode, how do some of us really know what kind of a job he did? I've always wanted to hear the 1988-1989 shows just because we would get to hear the 1988-1989 music ... and after all, it is still "American Top 40" (the name). Brian I think that's what they were banking on...that people would turn in for the hits. There was no way of knowing at the time the schism of music formats, so in 1988 they had a good thing going, had almost 500 stations domestically and over 1,000 including the world...no, I don't think they should have folded. They had the household name: American Top 40. What they missed the boat on was thinking that not having the household voice wouldn't make that big of a difference. Where they also missed the boat is in evolving with the musical flow, particularly in 1991. If they had handled it better, they would have been way better off.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2013 11:59:17 GMT -5
Briguy,
If you read Rob's book (not saying you haven't, just saying if you do), he makes a good point. ABC had burned a lot of bridges with radio stations already. When they started forcing them to run ABC commercials and other programming during the week costing the stations ad revenue some started to balk. KIIS was the major one. When ABC yanked the show, Dees created the Weekly Top 40. Other stations did too. That is why for several weeks in 82 I guess it was there were all kinds of new stations announced on AT40. This was because the ones originally carrying the show in these markets wouldn't bow to ABC's wishes. So, right there they've costs themselves one station, period. Now, when Casey left for WW1 a lot of stations opted for his show. Some did what happened when Bob Kingsley left ACC and carried both ACC and his new show for awhile. Ultimately, most are going to choose one or the other unless both had a high listenership because running two separate shows means some lost revenue in both slots as opposed to one. Even if you opt to run the same show twice a weekend, you only have to run national spots once. If you run two different shows, you dont have that option. There were also other shows as well. My local CHR station ran 3 for years. But that was when Top 40 radio was a cash cow and in the case of one of them, ran at a time when listenership was low anyway so it isn't like they lost a lot of ad revenue when it was on. Now, I've rambled about that part long enough...
Back to burning bridges. With one station telling ABC to shove it in a market (many of whom probably had Dees's show and it was doing fine so why bother changing), and the other now opting for Casey's show. That leaves AT40 out in the cold since I'm sure there were few markets with 3 top 40 stations. When radio stations fragmented it got even worse. When singles of top 40 music stopped being bought and even produced, the hot 100 became less friendly to those stations. Thus, the change in the Soundscan era. But the damage was done. So, if you are a pd you have 3 main choices: The show with the host everyone knows and has been around for over 20 years by this time and the network in many cases paying you to air the show, the show with the guy who at the time was really up with the times and was somewhat entertaining, or the show with the name recognition but was out there in terms of chart AND the one requiring more ad time during the week. Few were taking the latter.
I've said this before, when you sit back and think about it ABC caused their own demise in terms of AT40. There refusal to budge on the extra weekly spots costs them KIIS and gave birth to the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40, the show ABC would ultimately drop AT40 for US Distribution of. They also decided resigning Casey Kasem wasn't worth it, so he left and went to Westwood One and started Casey's Top 40. What if ABC had not been responsible for either of these happening? Might be a whole different story now.
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Post by woolebull on Apr 4, 2013 13:07:45 GMT -5
ABC first did network commercials, I believe, with the 4-3-82 show. And many stations left that week. Durkee also points out how at the top of every hour they were welcoming 5 new shows at a time...sometimes 15 stations a show in April of 1982. That wasn't because of popularity, that was because of stations pulling out of AT 40 because of having to work network ads, and stations in that market taking their place. Of course, as Paul said, KIIS eventually opted to just do their own Top 40, which led to the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 in 1983.
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Post by adam31 on Apr 4, 2013 20:26:22 GMT -5
Interesting thread, guess the name of it now should be Casey vs Shadoe vs Ryan I'll go ahead and admit it, turns out ABC was worse for AT40 then than Ryan Seacrest is now.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2013 20:37:28 GMT -5
Interesting thread, guess the name of it now should be Casey vs Shadoe vs Ryan I'll go ahead and admit it, turns out ABC was worse for AT40 then than Ryan Seacrest is now. In the long run yes, you are correct.
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