Casey's Top 40

Features

• Last Week's Top 3: As he had done on American Top 40, Kasem would begin each countdown a rundown of the top three songs from the previous week's survey, often playing the previous week's chart topper to begin the show. The first of these was "Two Hearts" by Phil Collins, which had reached the top spot the week before Casey's Top 40 premiered and would retain its #1 spot that week.
• Jingles: A new set of jingles was recorded for Casey's Top 40 by JAM Creative Productions, which included the usual song-number and title bumper jingles as well as the trademark "Casey's coast to coast" jingle from AT40 recorded in a different rhythm and key. JAM also composed the show's opening theme, which included singers counting down from ten over the music, something that would follow Kasem for the rest of his career. His mainstream AC spinoff Casey's Countdown also had its slogan jingle created by JAM ("Casey Counts Them Down"), which would be later used on his other countdown shows. Initially, some of these jingles refererred to the show as "CT40", but ABC Watermark won an injunction preventing this reference for being too similar to "AT40".
• Droppers, Biggest Movers and Longest-Charting Song: For each song that debuted on the countdown, one had to fall out of the top 40 to make room. Kasem referred to these as "droppers" and would identify the songs that the show had to "say goodbye to" that week. He would also identify the song making the largest leap up the chart and the longest-charting song still in the Top 40.
• Request and Dedication: Kasem continued to take requests from fans requesting songs dedicated to others who affected their lives. Since he could not use the AT40 title "Long Distance Dedication", these became known as "Requests and Dedications", with typically three of these segments airing per show. Originally, these requests were received entirely by postal mail, but listeners were later provided the ability to fax in their requests. Beginning with the countdown airing the weekend of July 8, 1995, listeners could also submit requests through an America Online email account created specifically for Kasem's program.
• Request and Dedication Update: Later in the show's run, the producers began reaching out to the listeners who had their Requests and Dedications fulfilled. Those same people were encouraged to follow up with the show by sending postcards to the producers with their telephone numbers if they had updates on their situation. If one was selected, Kasem would phone that person and conduct a brief interview, of which a snippet would play during the following countdown.
• Affiliate mentions: Another AT40 staple included in Casey's Top 40 was Kasem's hourly recitation of the call letters and cities of some "great radio stations" carrying his show.
• Other charts: Kasem continued his AT40 tradition of announcing the songs topping other Radio & Records charts during the final hour of each countdown. He usually made mention of the R&B (originally Black) and country charts, later adding the adult contemporary chart and the alternative rock chart once those launched. If any of those songs appeared in the top 40, Kasem would make note of it before playing the song.
• Special reports: Usually at least once per episode, Kasem would break from the countdown to report on an item of relevance, such as a snippet of music news, or field a listener question.
• Trivia Quiz: Once per episode, Kasem would lead into a commercial with a music question with three multiple-choice answers. After the commercial played, he would give the answer.
• Casey's Top 40 Concert Calendar: Unique to Casey's Top 40, Kasem would give a rundown of prominent bands with upcoming concerts.
• Closing: The final segment of each countdown featured the top two songs on the survey, just as Kasem had done on AT40. After playing the #1 song of the week, Kasem would read the show's credits and sign off with his trademark "keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars". He would also usually add "and keep your dial/radio tuned right where it is" to encourage listeners to keep listening to their Casey's Top 40 affiliate.

Casey's Biggest Hits

As a further promotional tool for the show, Westwood One added a weekly strip of interstitial segments featuring past chart hits to the countdown package shipped to the affiliates. Five segments for each week were produced, each usually longer than five minutes, with Kasem offering a teaser for the past hit. After a 60-second commercial break, he would return with the story behind the teaser and then play the song.

Year-end Top 100

As with AT40, each December, Kasem presented a two-part, eight-hour, 100-song countdown of the past year's hits. These episodes were usually aired around Christmas and New Year's Day, with the first 50 songs comprising one episode and the rest airing the following week. Kasem did a total of nine of these year-end countdowns, with the last airing over the weekends of December 27, 1997 and January 3, 1998.^[2]

Below is a chart of the songs that finished the year at #1. For the first year CT40 was on the air, only a Top 40 list was compiled.

Negotiations with Westwood One

As this was going on, Kasem was nearing the end of his second contract with Westwood One, which he had signed in 1993. Casey's Top 40 was still a successful property for Westwood One as it continued to be carried across the nation and around the world. However, the ratings were not as strong as they once had been and the program was not even airing in some large American markets, including the largest of them all in New York. As a consequence, advertising revenue generated by the show was slipping.

Further complicating matters was a deterioration in the relationship between Kasem and his employer. In 1993, the same year Kasem renewed his contract, Westwood One became a subsidiary of Infinity Broadcasting. This resulted in Kasem being added to a talent lineup that included Howard Stern, Don Imus and several other high-profile personalities who got more promotion than did Kasem. Following a merger between Infinity and CBS Corporation in 1997, Kasem felt that cross-promotion opportunities for the show were missed.

As news began to emerge about the contract dispute, other radio networks began showing interest in luring Kasem away from Westwood One. In December 1997, Westwood One decided that despite the decline of Casey's Top 40, it did not wish to see Kasem employed by a competitor. The two sides struck a deal to bring Kasem back to Westwood One for a ninth year. It included a one-year renewal of all three of Kasem's weekly countdowns,^[4] contingent on an advertising revenue target of $6 million being reached. If this figure was not achieved, either side could opt out of the deal.

On February 21, 1998, Kasem hosted an edition of Casey's Top 40 that aired the weekend before the annual Grammy Awards. "Truly Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden and "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion, the two most recent chart toppers, were played in the final segment. Kasem signed off and told the audience to join him the next week for the next installment of the countdown.

A new syndicator lures Kasem away

On February 28, 1998, Casey's Top 40 listeners tuned in to hear Kasem's regular substitute at the time, David Perry, at the microphone. As noted above, Kasem's absence was unannounced. Unbeknownst to Westwood One, it was also not intended to be temporary as Kasem intended to try to find a way out of his newly signed contract.

In January 1998, Chancellor Media, a large station group that included Kasem's former New York home, had formed a syndication arm that has since become Premiere Networks but was originally called AMFM Radio Networks. Immediately, the company sought big-name radio talent and piqued the interest of the disgruntled 65-year old Kasem, who signed with the upstart network. Chancellor took over the AT40 branding and relaunched the show with Kasem as host.^[5]

Westwood One and its corporate parents Infinity and CBS responded by suing Kasem for breach of contract and filing to block the new American Top 40 from launching. Kasem, in turn, cited the continued broken promises Westwood One made to him and claimed the contract that he signed in December 1997 had vague language. Specifically, Kasem claimed that the contract's advertising-revenue clause only applied to 1997's final figures and not toward the current year; thus he was allowed him to seek a new syndication deal somewhere else.^[6]

Westwood One tries to go forward

Westwood One made an effort to continue CT40 and its spinoffs in Kasem's absence, making the following changes:

• After the March 7, 1998 editions aired, Kasem's name was removed from the three countdowns and they were given new names. CT40 became The Top 40 Countdown, while Casey's Countdown became The Top 20 Countdown and Casey's Hot 20 was renamed The Hot 20 Countdown.
• Ben Harris, a long time staffer, was named the producer for all three countdowns. Previous producer Lorre Crimi, who had joined Kasem in 1996, followed him to his new radio home.
• The interstitial segments sent to stations with the weekly countdowns removed Kasem's name from them and simply became known as "The Biggest Hits".
• JAM Creative Productions re-recorded the theme and jingles for all three countdowns to remove any mention of Kasem (they were otherwise unchanged musically).
• Requests and Dedications continued to be featured but no mention of Kasem accompanied them. Instead, the "Dear Casey" open was simply omitted as was any mention of his name in the body of the letter.

Despite the changes, Westwood One would ultimately discontinue the programs on March 21 after only two weeks. David Perry hosted all three countdowns the week of March 14, then was absent the following week; on March 21, The Top 40 Countdown and Top 20 Countdown were both hosted by Jeff Wyatt, the former host of American Dance Traxx for Westwood One, and The Hot 20 Countdown was hosted by John Tesh. Like Kasem's last show before his abrupt exit, there was no mention made of the cancellation of any of the three countdowns; in fact, on the former CT40 Wyatt continued to solicit Request and Dedication letters as well as updates on previous featured requests, and signed off encouraging listeners to join him on the next program.

On March 28, one week later, the new AT40 launched on AMFM Radio Networks with Kasem again behind the microphone of his creation. Many of his Westwood One staff would follow him there (including Perry, who continued briefly in his role as Kasem's designated sub host, and Merrill Shindler, who Kasem had brought over from AT40 when he left ABC Watermark). The legal wrangling between the two sides continued. However, Westwood One did not object to Kasem's continued use of the Radio & Records CHR/pop survey as its chart source. As such, Kasem's first and second #1 songs on the new AT40 were the same as his last two with Westwood One. That week, "My Heart Will Go On" finished its seventh week atop the chart. Three weeks later, "Truly Madly Deeply" reclaimed the #1 spot for a third non-consecutive and last week at the top. (The song that succeeded "Truly Madly Deeply" after its second run to #1 also proved to be a longstanding #1; that song, Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn", would become the longest running #1 of the year as it topped the chart for eleven consecutive weeks.)

Kasem's AC countdowns also found a new home at AMFM under the name American Top 20. These shows also launched on March 28, 1998 and Kasem continued to host them even after leaving AT40 at the beginning of 2004. The mainstream AC show would undergo a 2004 format change that would reduce it to a countdown of ten songs and add a special weekly spotlight feature to the chart extras and dedication segments. Both American Top 20 and the reformatted American Top 10 ended on July 4, 2009 after Kasem retired from broadcasting.