July 3rd, 1970

July 3rd, 1970 - KDEO in El Cajon, California (just outside of San Diego) becomes the first radio station ANYWHERE to broadcast the brand new syndicated program "American Top 40," hosted by Casey Kasem.  (They actually jumped the gun, airing it a day earlier than originally planned) ...

More on this tomorrow in Forgotten Hits!

As we have been doing since our year-long salute to 1967 a few years back, our 1970 50^th Anniversary Calendar was written a full year in advance, finishing up Thanksgiving Week, 2019.  (Believe it or not, we're already written thru October for next year's look back at 1971!)

One of the highlight spotlight features of this year's tribute to 1970 was the 50^th Anniversary of American Top 40, the weekly countdown show hosted by Casey Kasem.

As that official anniversary is this weekend … (it was scheduled to start on seven stations on The 4^th of July but one station jumped the gun and ran it on the 3^rd, becoming the first station ever … anywhere … to run the countdown), it really doesn’t come as any surprise that Billboard Magazine is celebrating this anniversary this week, too.  American Top 40 is nothing short of a radio milestone ... it continues to run in syndication today, hosted by Ryan Seacrest.

But even though radio stations from coast to coast had been running their own local countdown shows for years ... and you could go all the way back to the early '50's to find programs like "Your Hit Parade" saluting the biggest hits of the week, the launch of American Top 40 was still considered pretty innovative.

With Joel Whitburn’s first Record Research book coming out the same year, all of a sudden EVERYONE knew what Billboard Magazine was … (even though it had already been the established “Music Bible” for decades prior!)  All of a sudden, we were being exposed to the biggest hits in the COUNTRY ... many of which were not featured on our local radio stations in Anytown, USA.

You can read Billboard's 50^th Anniversary coverage here …

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/radio/9412479/american-top-40-celebrates-50th-anniversary?utm_campaign=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_term=daily_digest

And then be sure to stop back tomorrow (Saturday, July 4^th) to see our American Top 40 salute, too!  (kk)