The sticky bubble gum jingle “A-merican-Top-For-or-ty” is permanently embedded in my brain, as I’m sure it is for every child of the 70’s. Album-oriented as I was, I thought of Casey Kasem’s syndicated countdown as little more than a measure of bad taste. But of course I listened. Compulsively. Every Sunday at 10 a.m. on WTRY – Troy, New York.
It is with this bit of nostalgic nausea that I have long associated Billboard Magazine: Kasem’s data source. I thought of it, when I thought of it at all, as a relic of 45’s, payola and AM radio before talk.
But over the last several months, I’ve found myself turning to Billboard — in its old-school, dead-tree form — as one of my preferred curators of contemporary media and marketing information.
No one could be more surprised.
It’s apparent that Billboard is not willing to sink with broadcast radio and independent record stores. From Twitter to the cloud and a dozen social and tech topics in between, Billboard’s editorial content has, for me anyway, helped move thinking from the theoretical to the applied. Part TechCrunch. Part Wired. Part MTV. Billboard – it’s a hit with a bullet.