Is Top 40 a Thing of the Past?

The dominance of throwbacks at Top 40 is not a new development. 

Well before COVID or the TikTok takeover, I wrote about WHTZ (Z100) New York playing “No Scrubs” by TLC in 2016. Even then, it was a commentary on the state of the available product. 

In 2020, with “Throwback Weekends” proliferating, and radio now looking for any “feel-good” to offer listeners, I suggested that “gold-based CHR” could become a format. WKCI (KC101) New Haven, Conn., the station that prompted that observation, didn’t have any reason to fully transition. But 18 months ago, WFLC (Hits 97.3) Miami did, getting out of a three-way CHR war of attrition in that market. Last year, we saw the launch of KZIS (Kiss 107.9) Sacramento, Calif.

Three flips in two years is hardly a groundswell, but WBBM-FM (B96) Chicago’s segue to a hits-and-throwbacks approach has ignited a lot of industry chatter, in part because B96 was a heritage station and part of CHR’s early-’80s comeback. B96’s move came in a week when there were some great CHR success stories. It also happened on a New Music Friday dominated by “flips” of ’90s dance songs, and a few days after the Luke Combs country remake of “Fast Car” went to pop radio.

Beyond the symbolism, B96’s 50/50 mix of older and recent titles isn’t all that different from what’s happening at those stations that are staying in Mainstream CHR. A lot of Top 40 gold libraries go back at least 25 years now. I recently came across a CHR playing Jennifer Lopez’s “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” — not the oldest song being played now, but one that felt particularly like AC radio. 

I’ve always appreciated when CHR stations used gold creatively. I have also felt for a while that the first goal for Top 40 radio is to reclaim adult women. Daughters won’t likely come back to CHR unless moms can enjoy hearing it in the car again. I constantly tout such stations as WIXX Green Bay, Wis., and WKRZ Wilkes-Barre, Pa., which lean adult and constitute some of CHR’s biggest current successes.

But I understand the concern. “No Scrubs” might still beat all comers 24 years later. But if “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” is stronger than any new song CHR can play, there’s a problem. There are also both radio and label people who envision CHR’s future as an alternate-universe Mainstream AC, driven by gold-based variety, but also playing the hits 119x a week to satisfy radio’s nine-minute listening occasions.

The dominance of older music and older sounds has been bolstered by a credible belief that new music fans in any format have been siphoned away, leaving only those who want “radio’s greatest hits,” as well as the glacial pace at which songs develop in callout research. So must Top 40 radio be a “thing of the past”? Are its only weapons throwbacks, remakes, and “new” songs like Miguel’s “Sure Thing,” which at least had 13 years to marinate at three other formats back when radio could still set the agenda? 

If Ross on Radio has anything to offer, it’s perspective on a CHR doldrums, and how it might end.

The landscape is different. The vibe is familiar. It is certainly possible that streaming and TikTok have so changed listener usage that CHR and other current-based formats cannot rebound. I can only tell you that the situation seems hopeless during every doldrums. That includes soft charts. I didn’t see callout at the time to know whether, say, “Love Sneakin’ Up on You” by Bonnie Raitt became 80% familiar in 1994, but it’s one of many doldrums top-20 chart records that now feels like it never happened. 

There will be other format changes. Stay calm. B96 made a logical move for B96. Even when Top 40 began to rebound in the mid-’90s, there was traffic moving in both directions for a while, and respected programmers telling the trades that we would never return to “all the hits” Top 40 as we know it again. It was 1998-99, the very peak of the comeback, when most CHRs felt comfortable getting rid of their oldies weekends or not augmenting the gold library with “Brick House” or “When Doves Cry.” 

The real issue is the stations that stay. I talk to a surprising number of people who look at CHR as it is now — too many three-share stations playing “Anti-Hero” in power for seven months owing to a lack of other choices — and aren’t concerned. Any existing CHRs that aren’t trying to fight their way out of the doldrums are making it harder for all the stations that are trying. Stations that don’t take a full-fledged B96 or WFLC approach have an opportunity to foster excitement about current music. They should probably also look at that throwbacks category and decide which of those songs are truly still exciting.

Better is better. Fixing the product is no guarantee of a rebound, especially given the changes in radio’s competitive landscape. But at no time during the doldrums of the early ‘80s, ‘90s, or ‘00s did programmers ever look at CHR and say, “Our music sounds great. I don’t understand why we aren’t winning.” Instead, stations like KKBQ (93Q) Houston, WXKS (Kiss 108) Boston, and KFRC San Francisco tried playing something other than the hits of 1982 as accepted by most other PDs.

There are stations winning with new music. Those stations are in Country, and they’re a relative handful, but they are stations that have leaned into the excitement created by streaming. I’ve cited WPAW (The Wolf) Greensboro, N.C., several times, but KSOP (Z104) Salt Lake City is the most aggressive PPM market station in the format, and is easily winning a three-way Country battle. It helps that streaming’s new stars are developing personalities in a way that few CHR acts have. It also happens that, even with consolidations, Country labels remain engaged with Country radio and there are still concerns about too much viable current product, not too little.

When I flip, you flip, we flip. My feeling about having a half-dozen new releases that are “flips” (or remakes or interpolations) of ’90s hits is similar to my recent thoughts on Country crossovers. They’re better as part of a balanced diet. They’re better when CHR programmers have 28 viable and more varied songs to play and not 14. As with the original Eurodance boom in 1986-87, they’re contributing fun and energy for now.  If programmers want some other records, they should help break some.