In 1992, Westwood One decided to launch a new adult contemporary countdown using the airplay survey data compiled by Radio & Records, the music trade newspaper that at the time was a subsidiary of the company and was already providing information to Kasem for his weekly pop countdown show at the time, Casey's Top 40.
In April 1994, Radio & Records added a hot adult contemporary survey to its tracking dossier and Westwood One launched another weekly countdown on November 5.
Kasem brought his countdown shows to what was then known as AMFM Radio Networks after a contentious battle with Westwood One over his contract status.
Just before he had left, Kasem had reacquired the rights to the American Top 40 name and branding from ABC Radio, which he signed over to his new employer.
Every week, Kasem would record five sponsored interstitial segments for affiliates with a chart topper from the past and a story behind it.
This was a continuation of a practice he began when he was hosting Casey's Top 40 for Westwood One and each segment was intended to air once per day during the week to come.
Instead of mixing in songs from the holiday seasons of the past with their normal playlist, they would switch to an all-holiday format from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
Although such a move made AT20 redundant, Premiere continued to offer Hot AC countdowns hosted by both Casey Kasem (AT20) and Ryan Seacrest (AT40) from December 2004 thru July 2009.
Other assistants to Crimi included Westwood One holdover Bill Strohm, Kasem's daughter Kerri, and Bobbi Kaminski.
Westwood One holdovers Michael Cooper, Sal Cocio, and Ray Hernandez served as the primary production engineers and were assisted by various others over the course of the eleven year run of the countdowns.
For the final two years of the program, Kasem's son Mike was the designated substitute, with ten appearances beginning in late 2007.
Ryan Seacrest, Kasem's successor on AT40, would substitute a total of three times in 2003 as he prepared to take over control of the primary countdown.
Other substitutes consisted of Steve Streit, the current CEO of Green Dot Corporation; former Access Hollywood co-anchor Pat O'Brien; voiceover artist Joe Cipriano; musician John Ondrasik, who performs as Five for Fighting; and Kasem's former colleague Charlie Tuna, who was the announcer for Kasem's former television program America's Top 10.
He was doing so despite the effects of what his doctors had originally thought was Parkinson's disease when he was diagnosed in 2007 (the diagnosis was later corrected to Lewy body dementia).
On June 4, 2009, Premiere Radio Networks informed the affiliates carrying Kasem's two countdowns that new episodes would not be produced following the Fourth of July weekend.
Both shows featured one final Long Distance Dedication from Adam, a longtime fan from Massachusetts thanking Kasem for all he had done over the years and requesting Andrew Gold's "Thank You for Being a Friend" as his song: Dear Casey, When the news recently broke that your shows would be ending, I along with many others were quite upset!
When the countdown on both shows reached its end, instead of telling a story about something connected with the song or the artist behind it, Kasem instead chose to use that time to offer a brief monologue on his thirty-nine year career in counting down the hits.
Over the years, musical trends have come and gone: from disco to New Wave, from punk to hip hop, from bubblegum to rock, we've been there counting them down.