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American Top 40 Turned 56 Yrs. Old This Weekend
There aren't many radio shows in North America that last half a century, but on the countdown to a milestone, American Top 40 remains #1. The show, whose first broadcast was on July 4, 1970, was hosted by Casey Kasem for years, before Shadoe Stevens and later Ryan Seacrest took over. The latter still fronts the program today.
It's now become a radio staple, but it wasn't always that way.
"You remember, at the end of the '60s, Top 40 was not the most popular format," Casey Kasem told NPR in 1982. "And here we were coming along with a show called American Top 40, and people said, 'You must be nuts!' "
Its first show only aired on 7 stations, but it's since become a weekly ritual for many. The show still airs on several Canadian stations, but it's not what it used to be here.
50 Years Ago, Casey Kasem Began Counting Down The Hits On American Top 40
- mace
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Re: American Top 40 Turned 56 Yrs. Old This Weekend
I stopped listening to AT40 when they replaced the Hot 100 with the Billboard Airplay Chart and later the Mainstream Top 40 Chart. This was done to eliminate the Rap music that had begun to climb into the upper range of the Hot 100.
- Guerrilla Radio
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Re: American Top 40 Turned 56 Yrs. Old This Weekend
I heard Seacrest give a tribute to the first show while listening to Dream 105.7 over the weekend. He referenced Casey, but also that the first #1 was by Three Dog Night. A fun clip of Casey saying the band's name was "weird", and how they came up with it. "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)" is a great first #1, now sounding unusual for what I think of as a mostly pop program/chart since the 80s.