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Post by brownjb81 on Jan 14, 2014 0:47:48 GMT -5
I don't know if anybody thought about this, but this past weekend marked the 10th anniversary of Ryan Seacrest hosting his first American Top 40 show as the new permanent host. That first show aired on the weekend of January 10, 2004. He did guest host AT40 a few times back in 2003, but this past weekend marked his 10 year anniversary of his being the new permanent host. It is hard to believe that Ryan has hosted AT40 for 10 years now. Like a lot of you, I wasn't sure that he would last this long but well, against all odds, he made it. I would like to congradulate Ryan on his 10th anniversary as the host of American Top 40.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2014 6:08:28 GMT -5
Disagree. The only people who thought he was fighting odds were a few people (like some on here) who think the show should have never changed. Everyone else realized the torch was passed, Casey wasn't coming back, and barring a renewed interest in chart positioning the format was never going back to what it was before either. It does not mean those of us who understood this LIKED the change initially or haven't had issues with it over the last 10 years at one time or another. Just we knew a new era had begun. I didn't like when Pat Summerall was ousted from the #1 Fox crew in favor of what was then going to be Buck, Aikman, and Collinsworth. But I understood change was coming sooner or later at Pat's age, so I accepted it.
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Post by your friend on May 27, 2014 15:07:46 GMT -5
barring a renewed interest in chart positioning the format was never going back to what it was before either. I keep hearing this thread that Casey's AT40 wouldn't have made it much longer because no one cares about charts and positions. This isn't addressed directly to you, but to this strain of argument I keep reading. I think this is a weak argument at best - we are currently living at the zenith of the Information Age. We have vast amounts of data at our fingertips and are living at a time where everyone from FICO Credit Scores and Google are making decisions based off our data. People don't care about data? Fact of the matter is, people care tremendously about data and how it is presented. Ryan Seacrest, however, has always been more of a celebrity-gossip type person prior to AT40, so we shouldn't be surprised that is what the show caters to now. I think it smacks of laziness to throw a countdown show together, and focus on the gossip instead of the numbers. But that requires data analysis and it is SOOOOOO much easier to regurgitate the same tabloid crap than it is to analyze and compile fresh and interesting data every week. |
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Post by BrettVW on May 27, 2014 15:59:07 GMT -5
For true fans of music charts and radio, like us, I completely agree with you.
But for the average listener in today's PPM radio world, The actual chart source is meaningless. Familiarity is key. Which is one reason why the charts only reflect what is played on affiliate stations. And PPM is also why today's shows don't have long produced pieces or extended opening and closing credit segments.
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Post by Deleted on May 27, 2014 17:09:34 GMT -5
barring a renewed interest in chart positioning the format was never going back to what it was before either. I keep hearing this thread that Casey's AT40 wouldn't have made it much longer because no one cares about charts and positions. This isn't addressed directly to you, but to this strain of argument I keep reading. I think this is a weak argument at best - we are currently living at the zenith of the Information Age. We have vast amounts of data at our fingertips and are living at a time where everyone from FICO Credit Scores and Google are making decisions based off our data. People don't care about data? Fact of the matter is, people care tremendously about data and how it is presented. Ryan Seacrest, however, has always been more of a celebrity-gossip type person prior to AT40, so we shouldn't be surprised that is what the show caters to now. I think it smacks of laziness to throw a countdown show together, and focus on the gossip instead of the numbers. But that requires data analysis and it is SOOOOOO much easier to regurgitate the same tabloid crap than it is to analyze and compile fresh and interesting data every week. The problem with what you are saying is ratings don't bare it out. AT40 under Casey was on fewer stations and many who carried it did so because they were forced to. When Ryan took over ratings went up and stations who before didn't want to air it or now had a choice of carrying Dees or this new AT40 with a host their audience could relate to chose to go with Seacrest. Ratings are up over what they were in 2003. At least that's what Premiere/CC says and I have no reason to doubt that. You say Ryan's celebrity gossip style show was his way before AT40. Ok, and? That was known to the brass making these decisions and that's what they went with knowing the show needed a format change to stay viable. Data or no data, most listeners don't care where a song charts. That trend has been growing for 25 years. When I'd tell people I did and I listened to Casey Kasem or Shadoe Stevens every week they'd look at me like I was an alien and I was in middle school then. That generation has grown up and given birth to a new generation who cares even less. My 9 year old listens to a station here that doesn't even have a countdown and doesn't care about them. |
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Post by OldSchoolAT40Fan on May 27, 2014 18:06:59 GMT -5
Since Ryan's 10-year anniversary had passed, I have to say this much, regarding AT40 in the 21st century...
I never EVER cared for AT40 after Ryan Seacrest took over (that explains the red circle with a slash through Ryan's face in my signature). Plus my taste for new music was slowly in decline since the 1990s at that point (it did rebound by 2002, but had fallen in the years since). But I realized, having been around to experience the Casey/Shadoe transition in 1988, Casey wasn't going to be hosting AT40 for as long as he did between 1970 and 1988. I knew Casey's second tenure as host of AT40 was going to be a lot shorter, but I do admit, the Casey/Ryan transition came out of nowhere.
The show had quickly changed for the worst when Ryan took over. Casey-style number jingles, replaced with a sound byte with a female voice followed by a computerized voice announcing the number of the song about to be played. And the first intro of Ryan's era had a snippet of Neil Armstrong's famous moon landing, and other snippets from America's history, and then a chorus singing "Am-er-i-can Top For-ty" in an upbeat style to a more rock-sounding beat for a new generation. And no more long distance dedications (then again, Ryan may have rebranded them as a different name, but limits the dedications to material no earlier than, currently, possibly 1994). Plus there were songs that had dropped out of Casey's episodes many months prior to Ryan's debut because of the chart format change - "P.I.M.P." by 50 Cent was on AT40 when Casey hosted in the summer of fall of 2003, and when Casey handed the baton to Ryan, "In Da Club" - a song that had fallen off AT40 many months beforehand - was suddenly back on AT40!
That said, because of the host change, and more because my taste for newer music having hit rock bottom by the mid-2000's (or closer to it), I have never devoted my Saturdays and Sundays to AT40 in first run after hearing the first hour of Ryan's first show. If I want my AT40 fix, I'll take the retro rebroadcasts any day.
At least some elements from Casey's era were retained after Shadoe took over.
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Post by mkarns on May 27, 2014 18:47:10 GMT -5
And no more long distance dedications (then again, Ryan may have rebranded them as a different name, but limits the dedications to material no earlier than, currently, possibly 1994). Some AT40 extras are chosen by requests from listeners, by e-mail, Facebook, or whatever. There are usually at least a couple of these per show (Premiere makes some optional); generally the song will just be generically announced as an AT40 extra and at the end Ryan will note the listener/s who requested it and briefly acknowledge the reason, if any, for the request and say something about the artist played. Most current AT40 extras are from 2000-14, and none (except for drop-pieces) predate the 1990s. I actually prefer this over the LDD/R&D's, especially in later years when some songs were chosen too many times. |
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Post by your friend on May 29, 2014 11:04:25 GMT -5
Ratings don't exactly bear what you are saying out, either. There is absolutely no proof whatsoever that de-emphasizing chart positions is what caused AT40 to get better ratings. It has to do with the host. Ryan is a puppet, and I HIGHLY doubt the ratings would suffer if his script included a bit more data about where songs on the chart are.
Not exactly true. KDWB (St Paul-Minneapolis) dropped Rick Dees in favor of Casey Kasem in the late 90s. When Dees and Kasem were on the same network, KDWB could've easily switched shows at anytime whatsoever. If anything, it was Rick's show that was being forced upon stations.
Not gonna argue there. I believe the ratings are up. But it doesn't mean the quality of the show is better. It means a youthful host is more appealing to a young audience. But a Top 40 that barely mentions anything about the Top 40? While we are at it, we might as well build train stations without trains and pools without water.
Yes, the show needed a format change to stay viable -- new host, new imaging, new features. It did NOT need a mission change.
Anecdotal evidence. When I was in high school in the early 2000s, everyone knew who Casey was - he was on KDWB on between 8-12 Sunday mornings. I remember overhearing girls talking about the Long Distance Dedications and it was playing in friend's cars, on the speakers of neighbors backyards, etc. I never got any odd attitudes for being a fan of the show.
As far as "most people not caring where a song charts" do you have evidence beyond anecdotal evidence? We live in a data-obsessed society. If people don't care where a song charts, why does nearly every article about pop music stars mention their biggest hit, current hit, and where on a chart (generally Billboard or iTunes) it landed?
Fact of the matter is, people do care about data. They may not listen to the radio in the same way they once did (people tune in casually instead of for specific programs these days), but it doesn't mean people don't like hearing where their favorite songs are in comparison to the other songs on the chart. If no one cares about this data, then there wouldn't be a CHR format. It has nothing to do with the inclusion of the data and EVERYTHING to do with how the data is presented.
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2014 14:08:23 GMT -5
So let's see if I have this right. I'm going with anecdotal evidence because going back as far as middle and high school most people didn't care and going by my 9 year old not caring yet you reference people listening to LDDs and that's hard facts? Btw, in your above example they talked about the dedication....not the chart and not whether they cared about chart stats, rankings, etc. Here's where I am with this. I know Premiere is part of Clearchannel which is a billion dollar entertainment company that didn't get that way being stupid. I'm going to assume they did research to determine what people wanted in a show before this new AT40, one that's existed now for over 10 years, came on the air. If it was a failure, he'd be gone or the format would be back to what it was when Casey Kasem was host. There are also years of changing methodology, different charts being used, Ricks own dartboard charts....and through all of this, FEW IF ANYONE BATTED AN EYE!
Radio stations consider countdowns as filler programming to take up a few hours on the weekend they don't have to have someone voice track for. There are errors in programming them on occasion and almost no one does anything about it. I've told this story before, when I lived in Jacksonville the local Rick Dees affiliate would go a week with the show fine, the next week somewhere between half and the whole thing would be a repeat, the following week it'd be fine, the next week....problems. Finally I inquired after several weeks of hearing this and come to find out there computer that downloads the show was messed up and the PD fixed it. Jacksonville isn't a city of 2000 people. It's a city of close to 1,000,000. Now if this was happening when I first started listening to the show, how long did it go on before? If anyone cared, they'd have reported it. That's yet another example of how these shows and their charts don't matter to most anyone. Brett worked in radio in the last several years and HE is telling you that too. It doesn't matter whether people are data obsessed. They are not chart and chart statistic obsessed.
Now why do music execs talk about their song being #1 on something? Because it sounds good. It's a marketing gimmick and takes all of 5 seconds to add to the material. I am not saying this song was #1 on ITunes "fun for milking cows at sunset chart" doesn't make anyone take notice. What I am saying is no one is going to say "well hey, let me go listen to this great show and hear the other 39 songs below it and hear some great info about the chart's past." People now don't care that much. They will tune in though to hear what stars have to say about whatever. Why do I say that? They have been for 10 years. Plus, if people cared so much about that Hot 100 radio stations wouldn't have been dropping the show in droves back when AT40 used it and it would have some presence on radio. And if people really thought ITunes was all important it would have a show too. I know it did at some point but don't know if it still exist and if it does, on how many stations. Apparently not a lot.
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Post by your friend on May 29, 2014 15:24:15 GMT -5
To boil down your post:
AT40 is filler material that people don't actively listen to. Ergo, let's remove the facts about the Top 40 from a show titled American Top 40 that listeners don't care about.
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This begs the question, if it's filler material that people don't care about anyway, why not throw in a few some nuggets of data for the people who aren't apathetic? This is a win-win situation.
But let's be honest with each other. Either it's a Top 40 program or it is not. Since your argument is essentially that people don't care about the Top 40, then Clear Channel should stop using the name "American Top 40".
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Post by Deleted on May 29, 2014 16:20:22 GMT -5
Ok, whatever.
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Post by your friend on May 29, 2014 22:26:41 GMT -5
It's a serious question: why have a show called "American Top 40" that de-emphasizes both the "American" and the "Top 40" part of the program? Does that make sense to you - because it's f**king ponderous to me, man.  Someone recently posted this on the AT40 wall: "Aaron Kohn Yes!!! "Not A Bad Thing" went from #4 last week, to #3 this week on the American Top 40 music charts. Almost to #1. Like · · 27 May at 00:57" Also, scroll down a bit to see the post by Robin Baral Buendia. She even posted a photo of the notebooks where she writes down the Top 40 list every week. Goes to show that the new generation still does care about the chart data... But whatever, right?  |
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Post by beegee3 on May 30, 2014 8:37:58 GMT -5
I can only address the chart-watching angle of this thread. I think the argument you use about the amount of data out there and people's interest in it is the very reason why countdown shows no longer hold their appeal for some. When I first started listening to AT40 in the early 1980s, it was mainly for the chart positions, and there was one chart as far as I knew--the Billboard Hot 100--used by THE countdown show--AT40. And it seemed the rest of America followed their lead. Even today, if a news report mentions an artist's chart position, like following Michael Jackson's death, it generally uses Billboard's chart history. When our newspaper prints the top songs and albums each week, it's Billboard's Hot 100 and Top 200. Liner notes of "greatest hits" albums reference Billboard Hot 100 positions. When Entertainment Weekly does their chart flashbacks, they use Billboard's rankings. So does Rolling Stone. I recently saw Jimmy Fallon do a bit on the Tonight Show about the week's top songs, and the positions he used were the Billboard Hot 100's. So, as a listener in the early 1990s who had been conditioned to follow the Hot 100 as gospel, to read news reports that Boyz II Men had broken Elvis's record of weeks at #1 with "End of the Road," then listening to AT40 and not only NOT hearing anything about it, but not having the song spend 13 weeks at #1 was troubling. Reading how Nirvana cracked the Top 10 of the Hot 100, ushering in the sound of grunge to the mainstream, and not having the song even appear on AT40. Reading about the big jumps Kris Kross and Sir Mixalot made into the Top 10 and then hearing a countdown where they maybe move up one spot somewhere in the 30's, it made the countdown seem out of touch with what was "true," especially since in those years those were the acts and songs everyone in my circle of friends was buzzing about as "popular," moreso than the Jon Secada and Charles & Eddie songs that seemed to linger on AT40 for months. In Rob Durkee's book, there's a blurb where someone on AT40's staff (it might have even been Shadoe) talked about how the listener questions about chart history started fading out in the 1990s, and he couldn't tell why. Well, mostly I think it was because the chart was "meaningless" as far as history. It was "a" Top 40, but not "the" Top 40. And that was the time when I went from moving heaven and earth to make sure I had four free hours each weekend to listen to American Top 40 to listening if I got the chance, to eventually barely listening at all. For me, it became a show that played some popular songs, but whether Toad the Wet Sprocket was ahead of Counting Crows or Celine Dion climbed more spots than Janet Jackson, it really didn't matter, because they didn't use "the most authoritative chart in the business," they used "the chart that fits our format best so radio stations will play it."
A friend of mine owns a game show as part of his mobile DJ business, and he used to include some chart questions (which group had the most #2's without hitting #1. What song spent the most weeks at #2 without hitting #1), and people in general could answer them, because they grew up with that same data experience of one chart on AT40 that everyone seemed to know. But he doesn't do chart questions anymore, because now if he asks who holds the record for most #1 hits in a row, well, is it per Billboard or per American Top 40 or per Mediabase or per Radio & Records or per iTunes, etc., etc., etc.
I don't doubt what you said about there being newer chart fans who follow AT40 positions, so maybe it's a generational or transitional thing and people who only know Mediabase don't have that conflict, but for me since none of the countdown shows use the Hot 100 (for the reasons spelled out in many many other threads) it's hard for me as a long time chart watcher to care where Pitbull ranks beside Shakira and Carly Rae Jepsin on American Top 40, because I know what the Hot 100 says, and that will always be more authoritative for me than what the radio countdowns say.
But that's just one man's opinion about why chart watching has diminished.
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Post by your friend on May 30, 2014 16:28:07 GMT -5
I totally agree with you there. I started listening to AT40 in the late 90s and was fascinated by both Casey Kasem and the methodology used to calculate the Top 40. I remember spending much time on the old R&R message boards, and even wrote a persuasive paper in high school about Billboard vs R&R methodology. I, too, consider Billboard to be the authoritative source.
I think that the new crop of chart fans may not realize what AT40 was when Casey was at the helm, or when the show used Billboard. But the fact that I see people on the AT40 cheering on their favorite songs and writing down the songs in notebooks (when it is soooo much easier to go online!) as proof that people still do care about the charts. I know for a fact that AT40 staff have tried to write more chart facts and history into the show, only to be rebuked by upper managers.
With the plethora of charts and data out there, I don't have so much of a problem with the fact that the show would choose to cater to the station that play it. What I have a problem with is simply removing data altogether. Clearly there are young fans besides just us old-timey "foamers" who would be delighted to hear who had the #1 song XX number of years ago this week, or some facts about songs that have hopped on and off the chart, etc.
It doesn't need to even reference Billboard or Mediabase. Just have Ryan say "This week on AT40 in 2002...." or whatever. But a show that is titled "American Top 40" shouldn't treat the Top 40 as if it was a mere coincidence they are playing the songs in a certain order.
I also think it was a mistake to drop the jingles. I was just listening to the Tom Barnard show today, and one of his advertisers was talking about how he didn't like jingles -- until everyone in town knew his business because of the jingle Tom persuaded him to have made. EVERYONE used to know the old AT40 jingles, and when the show was re-imaged in 2004 all it did was update the jingles to sound more modern. I'm not sure when the terrible KellyKellyKelly imaging was introduced, but it sounds out of place when KDWB St Paul-Minneapolis (not a small station or market by any means!) uses jingles to identify their station and then you hear a monotone/slightly beechy voice say "American Top 40".
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Post by jayenn71 on Jun 4, 2014 7:58:09 GMT -5
I Know for a fact that Ryan Seacrest is a fan of the original AT-40 more so than his current version. It's the style which he would have liked to have done the show.
It's so unregognizable from the original, I bet the young people listening to the show don't even know it's a countdown. They most likely don't even know or care about the concept of a countdown at all. It's become a "rag" of sorts.
This by no means discredits Ryan Seacrest in anyway! He is an amazing air talent, smart businessman and a great human being.
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