AT40: Your thoughts on Ryan's second year

[95-7 Ben FM]

Well, I admit I'm not Cerebro, but I'm going to try to do an AT40 year-round recap

2005

January-Optional extras are added, and there are now 3 commercial breaks per hour.
August-The "Out of the Box" segment was renamed to "Breakout", and there are two of them on most shows.

September
I move to a place where I can no longer listen to AT40. :(

[Johnser]

I personally think that the show continues to go downhill. Not so much because of Seacrest, but because of the quality (or lack thereof) of the music. Maybe I am just showing my age also. And the fact that the only shows that have any type of recurrent rule anymore are the Casey shows and the US Music Survey since they actually go by R & R charts. At least AT40 goes somewhat by Mediabase 24/7 whereas Dees probably uses a dartboard to figure out his chart.

[BillboardBoy]

I prefered AT40 in 2004. There were more stats and drops of old songs.

[richie]

billboardboy said:

I prefered AT40 in 2004. There were more stats and drops of old songs.

I much preferred it in 2003 when "Casey counted 'em down."

[jdmasta289]

I think several things need to be changed to restore AT40 to its glory days with Casey Kasem.

-First off, they need to follow the R&R weekly charts, with the 20/20 recurrent rule.  I'm still hearing 3 Doors freaking Down in November, one year after that song was released?  Give me a break.

-4 extras; 2 #1s from the week in years' past and 2 extras from particular artists...no recent songs...all ones we haven't heard much lately or are over 2 years old.

-1 week lag instead of a 2 or 3 week lag.  Rick's chart is, what, a full month behind the Monday Mediabase updates? In fact, I would be fine with getting rid of Rick Dees altogether. He manipulates the charts, excludes certain songs, and then debuts Sugar Ray when that song didn't even hit the Top 100 to my knowledge, which was completely uncalled for.

[Hervard]

jdmasta289 said:

1 week lag instead of a 2 or 3 week lag. 

I totally agree with that. It was bad enough when they were two weeks behind, which started sometime in the summer (I know that it was during Mariah's run at #1 with "We Belong Together", which explains how it spent twelve weeks at #1 instead of eleven, like on the R&R chart), but on the last week of the year, the chart was THREE weeks behind! I hope that was just a temporary thing, because, doing that, they're using info that's a month old. If they lag any further, they might as well call the show "AT40 Flashback"!

[Arson]

I agree with jdmasta289's suggestions. I hardly listen to the countdown anymore because the old songs (3 Doors Down is a perfect example) make it almost a chore to sit through. With Casey Kasem, I just liked to listen to him talk, and although I'm fine with Ryan Seacrest, I'm usually not too interested in the things he has to say.

About the lag time... would the staff have the time to come up with the show's script with only one week lag time? It would be great if they could do it, of course.

[BillboardBoy]

Another "new" addition to the show in 2005 was the mention of "this week's biggest dropper." I don't remember Casey saying that in the past (although it's possible) but I fondly remember Shadoe Stevens doing it.

[billme]

He added in '05 the "Ryan talks to studio crew" for the Incue. This features needs to bite the dust. If I was programming, I would remove this waste of time feature. Ryan tries to be fun and it doesn't work.

Did someone say Rick Dees, Jr. I would rather have Alyson come back than hear him carry on for the Incue. The "Alyson feature" was just a rehash of Dees' Candid Phone that he made so popular.

[BillboardBoy]

AT40 Sleaze was new in '05.

[billme]

Meanwhile back on the ranch, Seacrest is now selling AT40 Sleaze panties. It's just like the Dees version except they fit both males and females.

[Hervard]

billme said:

Meanwhile back on the ranch, Seacrest is now selling AT40 Sleaze panties.  It's just like the Dees version except they fit both males and females.

Ah, catering to dem male transvestites!