The Infinite Dial

I've commented in these pages before that for a number of us in the business, interest in music programming began with listening to "American Top 40" and coming to the realization that some of the hits around the country were different than the hits being played in your market. Whether it was "Rub It In" by Billy "Crash" Craddock in 1974 or "I'll See You In My Dreams" by Giant in 1987, "AT40" was often the only proof those records existed if you lived in a major market. (Conversely, if you lived in a more pop-driven market, it was often the only place to hear anything but the biggest R&B crossovers.)

These days, with the major markets often setting the agenda for the rest of the country, you're a lot less likely to hear more than a handful of songs not being played in your market on "AT40." But I'm listening to the Sunday afternoon countdown on Sirius Hits 1 (starting at 1 p.m. ET) and they've just gone for about 45 minutes without a single record that I'm likely to encounter on any of the four Top 40 buttons available to me on a regular day. The last hour has been full of Dollyrots, Wyclef Jean, Within Temptation, Yellowcard, the new Duran Duran, the new Linkin Park, Rascal Flatts, etc. And it very much feels like listening to "AT40" in the old days.

It has also been noted here before that Sirius Hits 1 is one of only a handful of stations that looks for their own reaction records as aggressively as the Rhythmic-leaning major-market stations (the others are the also previously cited WEZB [B97] New Orleans and WZKL [Q92.5] Canton, Ohio), but the countdown is perhaps the best showplace for that. Today's 16-year-old has a lot more places to hear new songs than sitting around waiting to hear them on a countdown, but I hope there's still somebody whose imagination is fired by this countdown (or AT40) like ours were.