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Premiere killing classic Kasem?

T

TheMinimumDose

About two weeks ago the news came down that Premiere Radio was ending the two countdown shows Casey Kasem still does with the July 4th weekend shows, ironically 39 years after the Detroit native first went national with "American Top 40." They stated in the same release that the reruns of 1970s and '80s countdowns, digitally preserved, would continue, though not saying for how long.

Ever since then, Preem has been progressively screwing with the classic shows. They'd already been letting satellite radio get away with plenty of unnecessary editing of their copies since late in '08; now with the over-the-air version, at least of the '70s shows that I've been able to get from their Boston affiliate as a podcast, they're cutting at least one closing-theme playing per show, and substituted the actual show closings with a slapped-together ending that always uses the "Shuckatoom" music (even for shows made before Oct 1975) and removes any references to Watermark or ABC-Watermark.

Is anybody who still likes these shows hearing what I'm hearing? Is this just a temporary thing until Casey does his last AT10 and AT20, or is it a deliberate move by Preem to weaken the classic shows?
 
I don't think the classic shows are in danger. They do some editing, of course after the show went to four hours there's some editing so the show can be 3 hours in the rerun. The Ed McMann/Mike Kasem extras are new, and sometimes covering up an AT40 extra that went back to the 50s or 60s. I do notice heavy editing of some songs that propably weren't edited that way in the original. (Revently "Undercover Angel" with the middle missing, and "Lucille" with the only the first verse and last chorus, making it about a minute and a half. If Premiere wanted to kill the show, they'd just kill the show. The contrast between the younger Kasem and Casey as he sounds today is striking.
 
The song editing, I've put up with since I first heard these shows new in '76 and '77; that's something the original staff did, and Premiere might still do in some cases.

They quickly stopped carrying the 1978 and '79 four-hour shows altogether (other than year-end surveys) rather than edit them down to three hours.

This is another topic entirely. Some people I know liken the thing with the ending to cutting off the last (sometimes great) line of a classic movie in favor of some plain-jane title with music made 40 years after the movie's release...would that have made sense?
 
I'm not sure I would go that far, other than people who really pay attention I don't know that it matters. I didn't remember how much editing was done to the songs on the originals, chances are there's even more now.
 
minor point of order.....Casey is a native of Flint and not Detroit. I can tell you first-hand that Flint residents get a bit grumbly whenever that happens (sort of like how people in Canonsburg, PA did every time that Bobby Vinton told a reporter that he was from Pittsburgh)
 
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