March 1998

[BrettVW]

I couldn't agree with you more Scott. Although the Clear Channel/Premiere contract pretty much guarantees Casey to be on X number of stations as long as he is doing the shows-- it would have been nice for Casey to have kept ownership of the brand he and Don created.

While AT40 and AT20 may not have made it on as many stations, I think the show would have been as good, if not better if it was truly still a 100% Casey production.

But, alas, here we are in 2005, and things *could* be a lot worse. I mean, American Top 40, as a show, is going better than it did since the glory days of the late 70's and 80's. And with Casey approaching age 73, he does fit the AC and Hot AC shows much better than AT40. As much as I still cringe to say it, Casey and AT40 were becoming a bit of a culture clash in those last few years. Hearing Casey announce songs like "In Da Club", "Get Low", and "Shake Ya Tailfeather" was definately strained at some point, and without question, very few besides us die-hard Casey fans continued to ignore the fact that Casey, while still a great broadcaster, couldn't keep playing today's CHR/Pop music with his style forever.

And now we have a good mix. A "new" American Top 40, and two excellent shows still with Casey as host with AT20 and AT10. Just keep thinking.....yeah AT40 and Casey should always be together, at least we still have six new hours of Casey Kasem radio programming each weekend.

[Scott Lakefield]

Couldn't have said it better myself, Brett.

Your list of song titles made me think of the song at #40 on Casey's last AT40 show..."What Da Hook Gon Be?" by Murphy Lee.

[Deleted]

Scott said:

Couldn't have said it better myself, Brett.

Your list of song titles made me think of the song at #40 on Casey's last AT40 show..."What Da Hook Gon Be?" by Murphy Lee.

I always thought it woul dbe funny if Casey walked into a restauraunt and had heard "In Da Club" playing and said something like "what the heck is this crap?!" and someone (Liberty) would have to tell him, this is the song you announced at #1 last week Daddy.

[Deleted]

Actually, I think Casey if not in 04 would have in the next few years stepped down as host. It wouldnt mean he would have to sell the rights to the show, but as we discussed previously, AT40 was not a desirable type program in its Casey Kasem form in this new millenium. And I cant see a Casey Kasem show with sound effects in the background or anything either.

[jlbass]

I hope to do the Casey's Top 40 equivalent of what Ev is doing for the Shadoe AT40 years and am working to obtain all the CT40 shows. I received the March 21 1998 show, the last of the Westwood One, Casey's Top 40 Shows(although without the name "Casey") a few months ago and from what I can hear, the only difference is that Jeff Wyatt is counting down the hits instead of Casey and the jingles simply block out Casey's name. The request and dedication does not mention the name "Casey", in fact, Jeff simply reads the letter without quoting "Dear___" at all.

From listening to the show, there are no hints that this is the last Casey's Top 40 and Jeff even mentions that they will be back the next week. All they wanted to do at the time is to forget that Casey ever existed.

[cdman71031]

I Remember the Change in Charts Very Clearly. Heres my Story. I was 17 and in September of that year started getting every single from the top 40 of the BB Hot 100 each week (I now have every one or at least a copy of every one since 1980 and that includes the download only songs). I knew about the chart change in advance but thought Shadoie would contiue to use the Hot 100 even though the chart format changed. I was spending the weekend at my Girlfriends house and woke up to try and find a station that carried the show. I stumbied upon what I though was a song leading up to the show Housecall By Shabba Ranks and Maxi Priest and was very upset to find out it in fact was the AT40 show with a new chart. After that I contiued to listen to the show every so offten until my local station WPLJ in new york Butched it in the Spring of 1992. at that ime I chose to listen to Casey everry so offten because I loved hearing the worng songs debut Until Z-100 dropped him in 1994. Meanwhile still getting all the top 40 hits each week from the hot 100. I never can forgive Shdow AT40 or Casey for not using the hot 100 they had meny chances to change charts and use it again. I understand Bb wanted a lot of money for use of the chart but couldn't they somehow make a deal. When The chart changed in 1998 that's when I started to agree that the hot 100 should not be used anymore. Just last year Billboard started a new chart the Pop 100 and until Ryan or somebody else does a show using that chart you will not se me listen to the show anymore on a regular basis. I listen to ryan's show just once in while and only all the way through for his first show but I just can't forgive the wrong chart. Ryan does a great show Much Like Shdoe but without BB there is no American Top 40 to me. At Least Shadoe used a Bb chart not the right one but a BB chart never the less. By the way where does he get his info. I notice you can prove your BB info but not the info ryan is using and there are way to meny Recurrents. Does anybody know if there are still as meny? Until A BB pop 100 show is made I will get my top 40 hits each week and be forced to listen to the old shows at least they used the right chart!

[Deleted]

First off, as long as Premiere is the primary source for radio nowadays, and/or as long as BB wants to charge the ungodly amount they do to use their chart, you will never hear a BB chart used in a countdown show with the exception of Bob Kingsley's ex-show....the one you can still loosely refer to as American Country Countdown if you would like. However, I heard even they f'd with the charts the first few weeks after Bob started his new show.

Now to answer your question about what chart Ryan uses, he uses the new chart methodology that several others do to. His chart is based solely on his affiliates using . However, I do not see this as necessarily a bad thing. It isn't like Ryan's show only has 10 affiliates or anything. Charts nowadays are based on airplay, and that airplay would be those same stations simply tabulated by a magazine of some sort and you would have pretty much the same show regardless.

Also, while I sympathize with you and the few others not getting your wish and having BB used for the show. The fact remains, the show HAD to change. If you look at the chart from even 1-2 years later, it was less like the mainstream top 40 aired on stations then it was in 1991. And I have already alluded to why the shows won't use it now.

[jlbass]

The reason that AT40 changed charts had to do with the fact that radio stations were dropping the show at an alarming rate. The Billboard Hot 100 worked fine throughout the 1980s but when record companies stopped putting singles out with the same intensity as in the past, single sales did not reflect what was going on as adequately as in the past and several rap and heavy metal songs, that radio stations were being criticized for playing would have been played on AT40 and would have resulted in a much quicker demise than had been the case.

I can understand how betrayed people felt when AT40 dropped the Hot 100-I was one of those people. The AT40 staff had to change charts to keep radio stations playing the show. No radio stations playing the show would have meant no show being heard by fans.

[robert]

I've been listening to AT40 with Casey Kasem since the early 80s on Blue Danube Radio broadcasting from Vienna, Austria because the city isd only 60 km away from Bratislava, Slovakia, where I'm living. They aired the show every Saturday from 7 to 10 pm as here in Europe they always scoped either intro or outro jingles and play thw whole show non-stop, though in the early to mid 80s there were occassional commercial breaks from time to time, mostly with BDRs local campaign 'Don't drink and drive'. Then in the summer of 1987 Blue Danube Radio stopped carrying AT40, and I don't know exactly if already at that time there were any rumours of Casey's leaving the show. So I started to listen to AT40 on VOA Europe network airing on AM frequency. In January 1989 Blue Danube Radio (BDR) brought back Casey on the air with his new WW1 show Casey's Top 40 and they carried the show until the end of February 1998 in FM Stereo. One funny thing for me was that even I didn't know anything about AT40 rebirth at the time of airing of Casey's last WW1 show, I put my tape recorder on just for fun and recorded what later became the last CT40 show ever hosted by Casey. I was listening the next week with David Perry sitting in for Casey and got stuck only the next weekend when David Perry was at the mike again filling in for Casey. That forced me to find out, and I did, about AT40 return on March 28, and it was excitement that it's impossible to describe. I quickly called my older brother to let him know as we both still are big fans and were growing up, as many others, with Casey. However, it wasn't that easy to listen to reborn AT40, because BDR transformed itself into more alternative rock sounding FM4 at that time, and I wrote several e-mails to them when I found out that they didn't jumped on the new AT40 bandwaggon. Only about after two months after the show's rebirth I received the answer that they had a new PD (isn't it ironic that for the first time ever an American woman) who decided the show didn't match their format. Could you imagine how I was crazy about that when I was hearing all day long playing them exactly the same songs as charting on AT40 and they argued IT DID NOT MATCH their format... Finally, it turned out that I was not the only disappointed and they put Casey with new AT40 back on the air som time in early summer of 1998 and had him on for about two years. Then new Austrian Krone Hit Radio jumped on the show and they had it on along with AT40 Flashback. By the way they aired Flashback at probably some of those earliest time slots, on Fridays from 7 to 10 pm and it wasn't week behind the original air date. Today I have only internet to listen to AT20 and AT10 with Casey, as I don't know of any stations here in Central Europe who'd be airing the shows. But the fact is that the radio formats are not so fragmented here in Slovakia as in the States. Oh, I forgot that for about six months Casey was on Slovak Rock FM Radio with the AC version of AT20 from about summer 1998 until January 1999. Then they dropped the show and as their PD told because it was too slow and soft sounding and didn;t match their format. But can somebody explain me why they had chosen the softest version of the show when they had a choice from three and they aired a local version of AT40 with Shadoe Stevens from 1990 until about 1994. So they dropped Casey's AC show on jumped on Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 and later on the World Chart show.