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Although the concept of the hit parade is older, the invention and naming of the Top 40 format is widely credited to Todd Storz , who was the director of radio station KWOH -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.
Other broadcasters who contributed to the development of Top 40 radio included Gordon McLendon , who introduced the idea of contests, games, disc jockey patter and jingles, and Bartell Broadcasters , who emphasized local variations in taste on their Top 40 stations.
After Storz, however, the most important innovators were probably Bill Drake, whose " Boss Radio" format put it all together in a powerful package that became the most popular form of broadcasting in the western United States from the late 1960s through the early 1970sMillennia: 1st millennium 2nd millennium 3rd millennium Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s Years: 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 Events and trends and Rick Sklar whose version of the Top 40 format at radio station WABCWABC is the callsign of the following broadcast stations in the city of New York: WABC AM, 770kHz WABC-TV channel 7 ( DTV 45) WABC-FM FM 95. 5 now WPLJ.-AM was also copied by many stations, particularly those in the eastern and mid-western United States such as WKBWWWKB is a radio station in Buffalo, New York that operates on an AM frequency of 1520. It is owned and operated by Entercom. WKBW was founded in 1926 as a religious station. The call letters stood for "Well Known Bible Witness". The station later broadcas and WLSWLS ("World's Largest Store") is the callsign two broadcast stations in Chicago: radio station WLS AM 890 TV station WLS-TV 7 ( DTV 52) TLAs. in the same time period.
Top 40 was a response to the rise of televisionSee TV (disambiguation) for other uses and Television (band) for the rock band Television is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over a distance. The term has come to refer to all the aspects of television p. Scheduled block programming could not compete with the new visual medium, so putting something on radio that wasn't available on TV became vital. Although hit music shows such as American BandstandAmerican Bandstand was a live dance music television show. It premiered locally as Bandstand on Philadelphia television station WFIL on October 7, 1952, and was hosted by Bob Horn. On July 9, 1956, Horn was replaced by Dick Clark. The show was picked up b occasionally appeared, television wouldn't attempt to directly compete with Top 40 radio until many years later with the rise of MTVMTV is a cable television network, originally devoted to music videos, especially popular rock music. MTV later became an outlet for a variety of different material aimed at adolescents and young adults. Since 1985, MTV has been owned by Viacom. Its name, the early incarnation of which was a cable television version of Top 40.
The Top 40 format placed less value on genres and artists and concentrated entirely on repetitive play of hits based on research which reported that listeners wanted to "hear all the hits and nothin' but the hits!". Although rock and roll and Top 40 radio grew up together, out-of-genre Top-40 hits include gospel songs ("Oh, Happy Day!" by the Edwin Hawkins Singers ), patriotic propaganda (" Ballad of the Green BeretsThe Ballad of the Green Berets is a patriotic song in the ballad style about the Green Berets, an elite special operations force in the U. The song was was written by Robin Moore and Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler, while the latter was recuperating from a leg wo" by S/Sgt. Barry Sadler, novelties ("The Thing" by Phil Harris), and even the " Battle Hymn of the Republic" as performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Top 40 also spawned the first generation of star disk jockeys, whose between-song patter and connection with the listeners became as important as the songs themselves.
According to Eberley (1982, p.219) "The driving rhythms of rock fit snugly into the unity and consistency of Top 40. For if it was one thing that Top 40 compounded, it was unity - all components (commercials, public service announcements, the excitement) were compatible with the music. The Gestalt was greater than the sum of the parts."
As a format, Top 40 radio waned in the mid- 1970s with the expansion of FM radio with its superior sound and more varied programming. Much of the popular audience moved to more sophisticated and targeted formats such as Album Oriented Rock. Radio stations began to specialize in particular types of music rather than playing current hits regardless of genre. The all-hits format has never completely died, however, and has experienced sporadic resurgences on the FM band, though seldom under the Top 40 name. However, the concept of a closely controlled overall sound for a station that originated with Top 40 radio is now dominant in all genres, basically unchallenged except by a few on-air broadcasters like WFMU and a number of World Wide Web Internet radio broadcasters.
For further details of the Top 40, see UK Top 40 and American Top 40.
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