Top 40

Top 40 is both a record chart and a radio format based on frequent repetition of songs from a constantly-updated list of the forty best-selling singles. The term is also used to refer to the actual list of hit songs, and, by extension, to refer to pop music in general. The term has also been modified to describe Top 50; Top 30; Top 20; Top 10; Hot 100 (each with its number of songs) and Hot Hits radio formats, but carrying more or less the same meaning and having the same creative point of origin with Todd Storz as further refined by Gordon McLendon.

Key contributors

Todd Storz

Credit for the format is widely credited to Todd Storz, who was the director of radio station KOWH-AM in Omaha, Nebraska in the early 1950s. At that time typical AM radio programming consisted largely of blocks of pre-scheduled, sponsored programs of a wide variety, including radio dramas and variety shows. Local popular music hits, if they made it on the air at all, had to be worked in between these segments. Storz noted the great response certain songs got from the record-buying public and compared it to the way certain selections on jukeboxes were played over and over. He expanded his stable of radio stations, purchasing WTIK-AM in New Orleans, Louisiana, gradually converted his stations to an all-hits format, and pioneered the practice of surveying record stores to determine which singles were popular each week. In 1954, Storz purchased WHB-AM, a high-powered station in Kansas City, Missouri which could be heard throughout the midwest and great plains, converted it to an all-hits format, and dubbed the result "Top 40". Shortly thereafter WHB debuted the first top 40 countdown, a reverse-order playing of the station's ranking of hit singles for that week. Within a few years, Top 40 stations appeared all over the country to great success, spurred by the burgeoning popularity of rock and roll music, especially that of Elvis Presley.

Related Topics:
Todd Storz - KOWH - Omaha - Nebraska - Radio drama - Jukeboxes - WTIK - New Orleans - Louisiana - WHB - Kansas City - Missouri - Rock and roll - Elvis Presley

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Gordon McLendon

Although Todd Storz is regarded as the father of the Top 40 format, Gordon McLendon of Dallas, Texas is regarded as the person who took an idea and turned it into a mass media marketing success in combination with the development in that same city of PAMS jingles. McLendon's successful KLIF in Dallas, which went Top 40 around 1953 or 1954, soon became perhaps the most imitated radio station in America. It was the combination of Top 40 and PAMS jingles which became the key to the success of the radio format itself. Not only were the same records played on different stations across America, but so were the same jingle music beds whose lyrics were resung repetitively for each station to create individual station identity. To this basic mix were added contests, games and disc jockey patter. Various groups (including Bartell Broadcasters), emphasized local variations on their Top 40 stations.

Related Topics:
Gordon McLendon - Dallas - Texas - PAMS - Disc jockey - Bartell Broadcasters

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Rick Sklar

In the early 1960s Rick Sklar also developed the Top 40 format for radio station WABC in New York City which was then copied by stations in the eastern and mid-western United States such as WKBW and WLS.

Related Topics:
1960s - Rick Sklar - WABC - New York City - WKBW - WLS

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Bill Drake

Bill Drake built upon the foundation established by Storz and McLendon to create a variation called Boss Radio. This format which began at KHJ Los Angeles on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960s, was further adapted to stations across the western USA and then by American disc jockeys as a hybrid format on Swinging Radio England which broadcast from on board ship anchored off the coast of southern England in international waters. Other noteworthy North American top 40 stations that used the "Drake" approach included KFRC in San Francisco; CKLW in Windsor, ON; WRKO in Boston; WHBQ in Memphis, TN; WOLF in Syracuse, NY; and WOR-FM in New York City.

Related Topics:
Bill Drake - Boss Radio - KHJ - Los Angeles - 1960s - Swinging Radio England - England - International waters - KFRC - CKLW - WRKO - WHBQ - WOLF - WOR-FM

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Mike Joseph

Mike Joseph's "Hot Hits" stations of the late 1970s and early 1980s attempted to revitalize the format by refocusing listeners' attention on current, active "box-office" music. Thus, Hot Hits stations played only current hit songs - no oldies unless they were on current chart albums - in a fast, furious and repetitive fashion, with fast-talking personalities and loud, pounding jingles. In 1977, WTIC-FM in Hartford, CT, dropped its long-running classical format for Joseph's format as "96 Tics"; by the end of the year, the station was rated in the top five, having jumped from fourteenth place. The first Joseph station to use the term "Hot Hits" on the air was WFBL ("Fire 14") in Syracuse, NY, in 1979. Then WCAU-FM in Philadelphia switched to Hot Hits as "98 Now" in the fall of 1981 and was instantly successful. Other major-market stations which adopted the Hot Hits format in the early 1980s included WBBM-FM Chicago, WHYT Detroit, WMAR-FM Baltimore, and KITS San Francisco.

Related Topics:
WTIC - WFBL - WBBM-FM - WHYT - WMAR - KITS

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Don Pierson

Don Pierson took the formats of Gordon McLendon, Boss Radio and PAMS jingles to the United Kingdom and Europe and subsequently revolutionized the popular music format of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC Radio).

Related Topics:
Don Pierson - BBC Radio

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