When was the first time you heard At40?

[Hervard]

Very occasionally, I listened to bits and pieces of AT40 in late 1984, when WNDU (South Bend) added the show, and a few times in 1985. But the first AT40 show I listened to in full, as I've stated several times in other topics, was the one from December 6, 1986. Number one on that was "The Next Time I Fall" by Peter Cetera & Amy Grant. From then, until October, 1992, when WNDU dropped the show, I listened to the show on a weekly basis.

As for the first countdown show I listened to, that would be Countdown America, which I happened upon in February, 1983. Number one on that was "Shame On The Moon" by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band.

[pandy]

I believe that I'm the oldest listening person to hear AT40 for the first time. I do not have Pete's book on hand right now to find the exact call letters of the station, but it was the week ending 2/13/1971 that I first heard AT40 from a station in Wichita Falls, TX. while I was stationed in Fort Sill, OK. In October 1971 WDRC-FM was my prime station for recording the shows on Sunday nights and playing them endlessly throughout the week.

[Mike Schwartz]

Jun 15, 2009 0:34:15 GMT -5 pandy said:

In October 1971 WDRC-FM was my prime station for recording the shows on Sunday nights and playing them endlessly throughout the week.

That is a very interesting story Pandy and you may very well hold the title as far as this board is concerned. I have to admit, as an AT 40 fan since 1973, that I have been amazed at how recently many of the other Fun and Games posters have been with the show. That to me, speaks volumes on how that program spaned generations and other demographic boundaries to be truly embraced by a large group of people.

What was interesting about your post was your reference to having taped the show off of DRC-FM in the 70's. I have read and reread Pete's reflections of an AT 40 enthusiast in his book, more times then I can recall. He spent a great deal of time explaining how he was able to record most of the shows from the 70s (several of which are extremely entertaining). I would love to read your accounts of taping the show as well-when did you start-how long did you maintain this level of interest and involvement in the show-do you have any funny taping stories like Pete did, etc, etc.

[secretman]

I remember well: it was 1982 when i heard “somebody's baby” by Jackson Browne

[snarfdude]

Mine is probably different then most......

I discovered an episode at a used record store and really didn't have much of an idea about it. I paid $15 for the show, a US version, # 833-9, 8-27-83, where the # 1 was every breath you take. no cues, so I played it to figure out the show. I thought this was neat, as this was the first time I realized syndicated shows were shipped on vinyl. Here I was, a 16 year old kid, and the show these days has seen better days as I played it quite a bit.

I wrote to ABC watermark directly, heck the address was on the show discs. I got a few responses from the international sales rep
some nice letters as answers to my questions, a demo show, brochure, even a custom autographed publicity photo of casey, they were real nice.

I then happened to find out through an acquaintance of the time that a station in my province actually ran the show. My city never ran AT40, and the only time casey has been heard in my market was a year or so with CT40 in the late 80s. 2 stations in the province ran the show at eithier end of the province. I wrote to one, and they sent me one they had kickin around, from 1981, the other, the PD was nice enough to put up with me periodically over about 2 or 3 years, sending me 1 or 2 every couple of months.

When I got them, it was a big deal, as I'd spend 4 hours running them.....I had my small mixer, so I was my own board op. LOL!

I would occasionally try to get the out of town stations in to hear it actually on the air, but it was difficult on the ears, as there could be a lot of noise, depending on the AM skip. funny to hear local rural radio...one sttaion would run funeral announcements, or fire notices within the show breaks. kinda weird.

I'd also buy shows from collectors in the US through goldmine magazine now and then....

Around the same time I'd go to work for a station in town who ran "Soundtrack of the 60's" and "Robert W Morgan" also part of the Watermark family and saved those from the trash..literally, as stations really don't have much space to keep that stuff too long.

AT40 actually started my respect and collection of syndicated shows....I still have all my AT40's.....and plan to keep them for awhile yet.

[jedijake]

Jun 12, 2009 19:37:33 GMT -5 jdelachjr2002 said:

You know Dr. Sean? Wow! I've seen every season of "Survivor" (too many to remember everybody that appeared over the years). Aplogize for veering off-subject there.

Yep-we lived 2 houses away from each other and graduated together.

[pandy]

Pete and I had so much in common on taping the shows each and every week. I used to record each show from 1971 until late 1972 on an open mike using a Sony TC630 tape deck and a portable AM/FM radio with one speaker.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChbJPWz4Tu0

With a little money in my pocket, my next step was to purchase a AM/FM-stereo tuner. My weekly ritual of taping and preseving just the specials and yearenders countinued into 1978. Pete was envious when I mentioned to him that I got an weekend gig of running AT40 until 1982 in eastern CT.. Also the station would allow me to take the 'special' shows home and dub it to tape and then return it the following week.

[BrettVW]

Wasn't it just a thrill to board-op the show? I know it was for me. I was the last board op for the show at our station before we started to dub it in automation. Even though we had the ability all along, we ran AT20 from CD up until mid- '06. There was something special about having the cue sheets out, following along the tracks and then inserting the commercials.

Anyone else board op the show out there? I also had the privledge to board op Bob Kingsley, Bill Cody, and for one week, Backtrax USA.

[BrettVW]

It was also a huge thrill during my air shift to be able to sell the show. It surely got more plugs from me than anyone else

[Shuckatoom4Life]

The first time I heard AT40 was in March of 1978. I was 17 at the time, cruising and hanging out with good friends in Winston-Salem NC. Z93 (WSEZ-FM) ran the show Saturdays 7-10pm and Sundays noon-3pm at the time. The first number one I heard was Andy Gibb's Love Is Thicker Than Water.

[dougray2]

Jun 23, 2009 7:58:32 GMT -5 Shuckatoom4Life said:

The first time I heard AT40 was in March of 1978. I was 17 at the time, cruising and hanging out with good friends in Winston-Salem NC. Z93 (WSEZ-FM) ran the show Saturdays 7-10pm and Sundays noon-3pm at the time. The first number one I heard was Andy Gibb's Love Is Thicker Than Water.

That was the same station I listened to, Z93 on saturday nights and sundays at noon. Although I first heard AT40 on WBT AM in Charlotte in Aug 77, I soon found the show on Z93, which came in much better in High Point NC. Z93 was a great station. Besides AT40, they carried soundtrack of the 60s, cruisin America with Cousin Brucie, and on sunday nights they had a show called soul countdown when ErnieC counted down billboards top 30 soul singles of the week.

[Mike Schwartz]

Jun 23, 2009 9:58:39 GMT -5 dougray2 said:

That was the same station I listened to, Z93 on saturday nights and sundays at noon. Although I first heard AT40 on WBT AM in Charlotte in Aug 77, I soon found the show on Z93, which came in much better in High Point NC. Z93 was a great station. Besides AT40, they carried soundtrack of the 60s, cruisin America with Cousin Brucie, and on sunday nights they had a show called soul countdown when ErnieC counted down billboards top 30 soul singles of the week.

That was during a time when radio programmers could offer such a diverse group of offerings for the audience and the owners of the stations trusted them and allowed for such diversity. Sadly today, some would call this a train wreck.

[jaxxalude]

Debuting at AT40 Fun & Games Site with his first post, here's Portuguese user jaxxalude.

The first time I heard AT40 was in 1990, aged 10. I caught it by accident when I was flipping the dial on a Saturday afternoon on my boombox (remember those? ). The show aired on a nationally-broadcast station called RFM. I cannot pinpoint the exact date; but if I remember correctly, The B-52's "Roam" was the first song I heard. I also clearly remember that Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract" was the #1 song. Needless to say, I was hooked from that moment on, and rarely missed the show. The note-taking ritual wasn't that far either. Only later would I discover that the show was already being aired since May 1989. But whatever. So, as you can see, my introduction to countdown shows was, in a way, actually through Shadoe Stevens.
And why do I say "in a way"? Well, that's where the particularities begin. The show was broadcast with a local Portuguese DJ as the host, with some Shadoe bits here and there for good measure. Another thing was that, for a while, the show was actually being broadcast live and direct. And a good thing it was, for the DJ who did it was good at ad-libbing stuff on the spot. Yet another thing was that the show, at first, was broadcast in a three-hour format. This meant that some songs would just be mentioned, but not played - those usually being songs on their way down the chart. It also meant that the LDD's and the occasional extras were completely absent - but not the AT40 Flashback, the Music News or the Sneek Peek. And except for occasions where international mail service problems would stop the show from arriving in due time, obliging the staff to make shows made up of random music - yep, the days before the Internet! -, things went smoothly. Until one week in May 1992, when the show stopped broadcasting. The contract had reached its end, and there was no interest from both parties on renewing it. But listeners protested (I was one of them), inundating the station with phone-calls and mails, demanding the show would be put back on. By mid-August, back it was. And to top it off, the four-hour format was adopted, meaning that the LDD was finally part of the equation. And the best part about it was that, since the show was broadcast with a Portuguese host, the LDD's would also be by Portuguese listeners. And so the show went on, only ending on that fateful (or so we thought) last week of January 1995. Fortunately, Rick Dees was on hand to keep on providing us with a weekly dose of an American countdown show until somewhere in 2000.

As for Casey himself, I first heard him when another station - which doesn't exist anymore - in Portugal bought Casey's Top 40 for broadcast. This happened in September 1992, if I'm not mistaken. Contrary to AT40, Casey's show was broadcast in all-English, and no Portuguese host. The not-so-good part is that it was broadcast in a three-hour format. Things would always start on #40, and end up at #1. But with a three-hour format, this meant that some songs were entirely skipped. Well, this station was targeted to a 14-28 demo, with a strong emphasis on rock music, although healthy doses of rhythmic music (either urban or dance) would also feature on their daytime playlist. The song-skipping would be solved by always featuring the new entries and skipping the AC-leaning songs whenever possible. Needless to say, the R&D and Casey's Biggest Hits features would only be played on the very rare occasions where those songs actually fit the rock-leaning format of the station.
All fine and dandy, until January 1994. The show would be cut into a two-hour format. This meant that even some of the new entries would be skipped, in case they didn't fit the station's format. All that was left for the station to play were basically the rap, dance and rock songs, with the R&B tunes being skipped if those happened to lean too much to the ballad-side. I should have probably seen that this was a sign, as the station stopped broadcasting the show by April. By coincidence (or not), the last show was actually the one which featured the very last chart before the PPW era.

It would take almost four years until Casey would be listened to again on the Portuguese airwaves. This time, it was one the public stations airing his show, now renamed AT40, as it should have always been. The show was a two-hour format, but with a Portuguese host. This meant, of course, that not all songs would be played, but all of them would be mentioned. Needless to say, the LDD was once again absent.
The love affair with Casey lasted until somewhere in 2001, by which time Rick Dees would overtake him, also on a two-hour format with a Portuguese host. This lasted until October 2002. From then on, we've been privy of American countdown shows.

[BrettVW]

Very interesting. I would love to hear the locally edited Portugese version of the shows.

[vince]

The first show I heard was when "Night Fever" was #1 in the Spring of 1978. I am not sure of the exact week. It was on KYA in San Francisco. I listened to the show regularly until 1987 when there was no longer a top 40 station in the market and AT40 was no longer carried in the SF Bay Area.