Contemporary hit radio (also known as
CHR,
Contemporary Hits,
Current Hits,
Hit Music,
Top 40, or
Pop Radio) is a
radio format that is common in the
United States,
United Kingdom,
Canada and
Australia that focuses on playing current and recurrent popular music as determined by the
Top 40 music charts. There are several subcategories, dominantly focusing on
rock,
pop, or
urban music. Used alone,
CHR most often refers to the CHR/pop format. The term
Contemporary Hit Radio was coined in the early 1980s by
Radio & Records magazine to designate
Top 40 stations which continued to play hits from all musical genres such as pop music splintered into
Adult contemporary,
urban contemporary and other formats.The term
Top 40 is also used to refer to the actual list of hit songs, and, by extension, to refer to
pop music in general. The term has also been modified to describe
Top 50;
Top 30;
Top 20;
Top 10;
Hot 100 (each with its number of songs) and
Hot Hits radio formats, but carrying more or less the same meaning and having the same creative point of origin with
Todd Storz as further refined by
Gordon McLendon as well as
Bill Drake. The format became especially popular in the sixties as radio stations constrained disc jockeys to numbered play lists in the wake of the
payola scandal.
Variations
CHR/dance
Playing
dance remixes of popular songs with perhaps some current hits from the dance charts. Pure dance-music radio stations (as opposed to CHR/rhythmic and
Rhythmic AC...
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