Top Forty
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In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast
popular music Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fu ...
.
Record chart A record chart, in the music industry, also called a music chart, is a ranking of recorded music according to certain criteria during a given period. Many different criteria are used in worldwide charts, often in combination. These include re ...
s have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or " contemporary hit radio" is also a
radio format A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when radio was compelle ...
. Frequent variants of the Top 40 are the Top 10, Top 20, Top 30, Top 50, Top 75, Top 100 and Top 200.


History

According to producer Richard Fatherley,
Todd Storz Robert Todd Storz (May 8, 1924 – April 13, 1964) headed a very successful chain of American radio broadcasting stations and is generally credited with being the foremost innovator of the Top 40 radio format in 1951. The selection of records t ...
was the inventor of the format, at his radio station KOWH in
Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...
. Storz invented the format in the early 1950s, using the number of times a record was played on
jukebox A jukebox is a partially automated music-playing device, usually a coin-operated machine, that will play a patron's selection from self-contained media. The classic jukebox has buttons, with letters and numbers on them, which are used to sele ...
es to compose a weekly list for broadcast. The format was commercially successful, and Storz and his father Robert, under the name of the Storz Broadcasting Company, subsequently acquired other stations to use the new Top 40 format. In 1989, Todd Storz was inducted into the Nebraska Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame. The term "Top 40", describing a
radio format A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when radio was compelle ...
, appeared in 1960. The Top 40, whether surveyed by a radio station or a publication, was a list of songs that shared only the common characteristic of being newly released. Its introduction coincided with a transition from the old ten-inch 78 rpm record format for single "pop" recordings to the seven-inch vinyl 45 rpm format, introduced in 1949, which was outselling it by 1954 and soon replaced it completely in 1958. The Top 40 thereafter became a survey of the popularity of 45 rpm singles and their airplay on the radio. Some nationally syndicated radio shows, such as '' American Top 40'', featured a countdown of the 40 highest ranked songs on a particular music or entertainment publication. Although such publications often listed more than 40 charted hits, such as the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, time constraints allowed for the airing of only 40 songs; hence, the term "top 40" gradually became part of the vernacular associated with popular music. An article in the Spring 2012 issue of ''Nebraska History'' magazine offered this comment as to Todd Storz' legacy: "the radio revolution that Storz began with KOWH was already sweeping the nation. Thousands of radio station owners had realized the enormous potential for a new kind of radio. When television became popular, social monitors predicted that radio would die. However, because of the invention of Storz and others like him, radio would be reborn". Storz is credited by some sources as helping to popularize
rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It originated from African-American music such as jazz, rhythm a ...
music. By the mid-1950s, his station, and the numerous others which eventually adopted the Top 40 format, were playing records by artists such as " Presley,
Lewis Lewis may refer to: Names * Lewis (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Lewis (surname), including a list of people with the surname Music * Lewis (musician), Canadian singer * "Lewis (Mistreated)", a song by Radiohead ...
, Haley, Berry and
Domino Dominoes is a family of tile-based games played with gaming pieces, commonly known as dominoes. Each domino is a rectangular tile, usually with a line dividing its face into two square ''ends''. Each end is marked with a number of spots (also c ...
". From the 1980s onwards, different recording formats have competed with the 45 rpm vinyl record. This includes
cassette single A cassette single (CS), also known by the trademark cassingle, or capitalised as the trademark Cassette Single, is a music single supplied in the form of a Compact Cassette. The cassette single was first introduced in 1980. History The debut ...
s,
CD single A CD single (sometimes abbreviated to CDS) is a music single in the form of a compact disc. The standard in the Red Book for the term ''CD single'' is an 8 cm (3-inch) CD (or Mini CD). It now refers to any single recorded onto a CD of any si ...
s, digital downloads and streaming. Many music charts changed their eligibility rules to incorporate some, or all, of these. Some
disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile ...
s presenting Top 40 and similar format programs have been implicated in various
payola Payola, in the music industry, is the illegal practice of paying a commercial radio station to play a song without the station disclosing the payment. Under US law, a radio station must disclose songs they were paid to play on the air as spons ...
scandals.


Music charts

Music charts and various radio programs adopt different chart formats including Top 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 75, 100 and 200 although radio formats usually restrict to the Top 40 wherever the chart contains more than 40 songs.


Radio format

Top 40 is also adopted to a radio format called Top 40 format, spinning mainly hits appearing in the official Top 40 charts of the country in addition to some upcoming hits that are greatly expected to get into the Top 40 imminently. The format is variously known also as CHR (contemporary hit radio), contemporary hits, hit list, current hits, hit music, top 40, or pop radio.


See also

* Contemporary hit radio * Mainstream Top 40


References


Further reading

* Pete Battistini, "American Top 40 with Casey Kasem The 1970s", ''Authorhouse.com'', January 31, 2005. * Susan Douglas, ''Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination'' (New York: Times Books, 1999) * * {{cite book, last=Fisher, first=Mark, title=Something in the Air: Radio, Rock, and the Revolution That Shaped a Generation, year=2007, publisher=Random House, location=New York, isbn=978-0-375-50907-0, url=https://archive.org/details/somethinginairra00fish * Ben Fong-Torres, ''The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio'' (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 1998) * Elwood F. 'Woody' Goulart,
The Mystique and Mass Persuasion: Bill Drake & Gene Chenault’s Rock and Roll Radio Programming
' (2006) * David MacFarland, ''The Development of the Top 40 Radio Format'' (New York: Arno Press, 1979) *


External links


Public Radio documentary featuring a history of Top 40
Pop music Record charts Radio formats