Top 40

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Top 40 is the list of the 40 most popular songs in a genre, and it’s also a radio format known as contemporary hit radio. It started in the early 1950s at Todd Storz’s Omaha station KOWH, when he noticed how often records were played on jukeboxes and built a weekly chart from that. Storz and his father then bought more stations to use the Top 40 format. The term “Top 40” as a radio format appeared in 1960. The original Top 40 tracked newly released songs and matched the rise of the 45 rpm single, which became the standard by the late 1950s. Over time, the Top 40 became a way to show which 45s were popular and getting airplay. Nationally syndicated shows like American Top 40 counted down the 40 top songs each week. Some publications listed more than 40 songs, but radio shows kept it to 40 because of time. Todd Storz is credited with helping to spark a radio revolution and the popularity of early rock and roll, as stations played artists such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino in the mid-1950s. From the 1980s onward, new formats like cassette singles, CD singles, digital downloads, and streaming challenged the 45 rpm record, and charts updated their rules. DJs in Top 40 and similar formats have sometimes faced payola scandals.