American Top 40 (abbreviated to AT40) is an internationally syndicated, independent song countdown radio program created by Casey Kasem, Don Bustany, Tom Rounds, and Ron Jacobs.

[3][4] Now, on with the countdown!American Top 40 began on the Independence Day weekend in 1970, on seven radio stations, the first being KDEO in El Cajon, California (now KECR), which broadcast the inaugural show the evening of July 3, 1970.

The show began as a three-hour program written and directed by Bustany, counting down the top 40 songs on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart.

The show quickly gained popularity once it was commissioned, and expanded to a four-hour-program on October 7, 1978, to reflect the increasing average length of singles on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.

The producing staff expanded to eight people, some of them still in the business: Nikki Wine, Ben Marichal, Scott Paton, Matt Wilson, Merrill Shindler, Guy Aoki, Ronnie Allen, and Sandy Stert Benjamin.

Kasem's patience proved correct, as staffer Matt Wilson found such a letter while checking the show's mail in August 1978.

The listener asked Kasem to play the song "Desiree" by Neil Diamond, which he dedicated to his girlfriend of the same name who was moving to West Germany to live with her family on an Army base.

Long Distance Dedications were dropped after Ryan Seacrest became host in 2004, but they continued as part of Kasem's adult contemporary countdowns.

Industry trade paper Billboard magazine reported that the main disputes between Kasem and Watermark/ABC were over his salary (which Westwood One tripled upon his signing), because of declining ratings and a smaller group of stations airing the show.

In an attempt to win back an audience, AT40 tried new features, including interview clips, music news, top 5 flashbacks, and previews of upcoming chart hits (called the "AT40 Sneek Peek"[29]).

Later still, the countdown would use what was called a "No Nuttin'" gimmick that drew criticism; at various points of the show, a song would start immediately after the jingle for its position on the chart was played and Stevens would not offer any commentary until it concluded.

[30] ABC kept American Top 40 in its syndication lineup despite the continued lack of improvement in ratings, but in 1994 the network finally decided to cut its losses.

Radio Express, the show's international distributor, kept the program alive for the overseas markets that had not dropped the series after ABC's cancellation.

When Kasem left ABC Radio in 1988, the branding still belonged to him and show co-creator Don Bustany through their joint production company.

However, after the February 21, 1998, edition of his weekend countdowns, Kasem disappeared from the airwaves without notice and, unbeknownst to Westwood One, with no intention of returning to work.

In December 2006, the series' website was revamped, and the online song voting was discontinued in favor of publishing the Hot AC chart.

[39] In March 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Seacrest started to host AT40 from his house; the show also included pre-recorded messages from artists thanking healthcare workers and encouraging listeners to stay home, practice social distancing, and to keep in touch with loved ones.

Sirius XM "70s on 7" currently runs AT40 each Saturday at 12 pm with encore broadcasts the following Sunday at 9 am and at 12 midnight (Eastern Time).

Because the rights to Shadoe Stevens-era episodes were held by Cumulus Media, no programs from August 13, 1988, to 1995 have been re-aired as part of this or any similar block.

These songs generally scored much higher radio airplay, and some were not even released as singles (such as "Steel Bars" by Michael Bolton).

Although such a move made AT20 redundant, Premiere continued to offer Hot AC countdowns hosted by both Kasem (AT20) and Seacrest (AT40) from December 2004 thru July 2009.

Ryan Fox, who also works as morning DJ at KPLX in Dallas, took over hosting duties for Kix Brooks the weekend of January 4, 2025.

After Kasem left ABC, the network launched American Gold, a spinoff oldies countdown (featuring far fewer songs, and often focusing on a particular artist) hosted by Dick Bartley.

[42] In 2021, Ontario-based station CKPR-FM added a special Hot AC version of the chart that included contemporary Canadian artists that also airs on CIGO-FM and CHGK-FM.

[43][44] Kasem and Watermark's policy regarding putting American Top 40 together was to always play the forty most popular songs in the United States and never to ban a record from the countdown.

The first song to receive this advisory was in April and May 1971, with a spoken word piece, "The Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley", by Terry Nelson and C-Company.

[45][46] Some better-known songs which received this treatment included "Kodachrome" by Paul Simon, "Roxanne" by The Police, "Ain't Love a Bitch" by Rod Stewart, and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Meat Loaf.

In 1978, when Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young" (wherein Joel urged pre-marital sex by a teen Catholic girl, Virginia) was on the charts, AT40 had placed warnings in shipments to warn affiliates in highly Catholic populated areas along with a special break in the countdown for stations to substitute another song in its place.

According to Rob Durkee's book "American Top 40: The Countdown of the Century", Dave Morgan of WDHF (now WCHI-FM) in Chicago ghosted an edition of the program sometime in the summer of 1975.

But while the special was a stark departure from the contemporary sound of the 1970s, Tom Rounds in his press release reminded stations that it was the United States' "one and only bicentennial.