If, like me, you missed some (or unlike me, all) of Casey and Heather’s first show on KDOX, then fear not because they have been kind enough to post it online for everyone to enjoy.
I personally missed bits of it because I was not at all well overnight and I’m still not feeling great right now…in fact I had to take my first sick day in many months today (arguably I should have done this a few weeks ago…but today was much worse than I was a few weeks ago). I did manage to hear most of the show though, and that which I heard was great…it’s almost as if they were never off the air as they really were firing on all cylinders. I was even pleased to note that there were no accidental half-mentions of their previous station’s call sign or phone number…something which tends to plague radio people for a few days when they start at a new station.
So, if you missed it, here it is, enjoy!
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The podcast URL is likely to change in the near future, so if you subscribe, please note that you may have to change URL soon.
Casey and Heather can be heard on Fox News 1280AM and 102.3FM KDOX, weekdays from 9am to 11am in Las Vegas, (Tuesday-Saturday 2am-4am Canberra time on the current time difference). Streaming at foxnews1280.com
Or for those of us on this side of the world, Tuesday at 2am. I’ll be up, and I hope that you will be too!
As noted last month, former KXNT hosts Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd have found a new home on rival station Fox News 1280 KDOX. Since then, the details of their new show have been announced. They will be occupying the 9am-11am timeslot Monday to Friday, up against Rush Limbaugh on KXNT and a tape-delayed version of Glenn Beck on KDWN.
Casey noted in a podcast last month that, while the competition will be tough as they are two of the biggest names in American talk radio, the duo are confident that they will be able to overtake at least one of their competitors in the ratings fairly quickly. The podcast makes for quite interesting listening if you’re interested in the state of the Las Vegas radio market.
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Casey also noted in the podcast that one of the reasons for him and Heather choosing to go with KDOX instead of some of the other stations which made them offers, is that KDOX have a viable plan to launch themselves to the top of the talk ratings. One of the parts of this plan came to life rather spectacularly yesterday.
Until yesterday, all talk stations in Las Vegas were on the AM band. In other markets, some talk stations have launched FM simulcasts which have helped to improve their ratings. KXNT announced a few weeks back that, from this coming Monday, they would launch a simulcast of their 840AM signal on 100.5FM, and have been promoting this as Las Vegas’s first FM talk station…well, very quietly, KDOX have been planning the same thing for a while and bought an FM translator a few months back for the tiny price of $100. Yesterday, they launched their FM simulcast on 102.3FM, beating KXNT by a matter of days, and making KXNT’s promotion of being the first FM talk station redundant.
KDOX promotional graphic featuring station personalities (L-R) Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Laura Ingraham, Jeremy Wayne, Roger Hedgecock, Rusty Humphries, Heather Kydd and Casey Hendrickson. It is the first time Casey and Heather have appeared in a KDOX promotional photo, having previously appeared at a handful of KDOX events and outside broadcasts. Image credit: Summit Media Broadcasting.
Having an FM translator is arguably more beneficial for KDOX than it is for KXNT as KDOX, being a Class D AM station, is virtually inaudible at night when its daytime 5,000 watt signal is reduced to a mere 28 watts. The FM signal will broadcast at a rate of 99 watts 24/7. KXNT on the other hand will be aiming to increase their weekend audience by running sport coverage on their FM station instead of their current programming, which will continue to air on their AM station.
The battle for dominance of the talk market in Las Vegas appears to be hotting up considerably…and I’m looking forward to Casey and Heather’s return to the airwaves from 9am-11am Monday (2am-4am Tuesday Canberra time) which, with any luck, will bring the majority of their existing audience with them. The show will stream live from the KDOX website.
Graham Cole, the actor who portrayed PC Tony Stamp in The Bill will be on Open House tonight. According to the Open House website Graham will discuss “the show’s highs and lows and share how his Christian faith has shaped his life”.
That should be interesting, so I’ll be tuning in to that…assuming that the Leaders Debate (about which I will be live blogging) has finished.
Thanks SBS for the great coverage. It’s been fantastic to listen to SBS radio while watching SBS TV. Go Holland! Lets prove that octopus wrong! Samuel, Canberra
Regular readers may remember that, going back to last year, I regularly posted my nomination for “Jerk Of The Week” on this blog. This was a segment on Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd’s afternoon drive show on Newsradio 840 KXNT in Las Vegas. Well a lot has happened since then, much of it in my recent hiatus…so to briefly fill you in…(for those of you who know the chain of events, just skip down to the paragraph above the YouTube video)
The segment was axed by The Powers That Be and eventually replaced with a copy of a segment from the station’s breakfast show, which is why the nominations stopped. Casey and Heather were still on the air and were continuing to out-rate every other talk show in town in their timeslot, and regular readers may recall that I still made the occasional reference to them, usually when I gave them credit for bringing a story of interest to my attention.
This year some strange things happened. Firstly, CBS Radio, owners of KXNT, blocked international streaming due to issues with music licensing…this was only ever intended to prevent international listeners from tuning in to the music stations, but somebody obviously decided that it was easier to just put a blanket ban in place…this is when my references to them stopped as it became quite rare for me to tune in due to the extra effort required.
A couple months later, KXNT’s program director was axed, a new program director was brought in, the local weekend shows were axed and replaced with infomercials (riveting listening…hours on end about how you should diversify in to gold investments), which was followed by the axing of Casey and Heather’s show, the shuffling about of some other shows (including moving some shows out of their live slots and on to a tape delay), and the introduction of a three-hour news block as the breakfast show…a format which by all accounts has been tried on a number of occasions in Vegas, and failed each and every time.
The station’s program director called the changes a “numbers game”. It probably was…I’m just not convinced that the numbers in question were the ratings…not that it really matters what I think given that I’m not even in the same country, let alone the same market as the station. Don’t get me wrong here…if they can make the format work, then that’s great and I will be happy for them, especially given that I have a lot of respect for a number of people who still work there…I just wouldn’t have made those same changes if I was in charge.
Anyway, I digress, where was I? Oh yes, that’s right…almost immediately upon Casey and Heather’s departure from the station, a new fan group popped up on Facebook for Casey and Heather, and started lobbying the local stations (and some of the out-of-towners too, I believe) to pick up the show which, as the May ratings demonstrate, was the top rating talk show of its time and was now looking for a new home.
Today, some good news the best news I’ve heard all week. A deal appears to have been struck. Casey and Heather will be back on the air soon. Where and when, I don’t know, but I’ll gladly keep you informed. In the meantime, make of this promo what you will:
Cryptic for sure…but I’ve thought for ages that these two need and deserve a larger audience than just one town. I suppose that, technically they had at least three towns, Vegas (broadcast), Canberra (me via the internet) and that person from Norway or Iceland or wherever they were from (also via the internet)…but they definitely deserve to be broadcast in to more than just one town.
I’m excited now…and so very happy for Casey and Heather. Congratulations guys! I can’t wait for whatever it is that is about to happen.
Samuel
Update: Links corrected…sorry about that. Not really sure what happened there.
It’s been covered extensively already, so I won’t bother to bore you with the details of ABC TV’s myriad of problems in getting the coverage of the breaking news of Kevin Rudd imminent demise to air, rather I will just send you to ABC TV’s Media Watch for coverage of the amusing details of what did (or to be more precise, “did not”) go to air on that evening. Suffice to say, it was a mess.
I wasn’t watching ABC News that evening, not for technical reasons, but due to the facts that:
1) There are better sources of news, and
2) I was being paid to watch another station anyway (one which did not have such problems covering the news in many more distinct broadcast areas than the ABC, I might add).
As such I did not get to witness the train wreck of ABC TV that evening, however I was rather amused to watch selected highlights of it later on and to hear all about it. Amused though I was, I most certainly was not surprised…and this is why:
Press Release
17 December 2009 Snell Morpheus Selected for Groundbreaking New ABC/WIN Playout Facility in New South Wales
[..]
READING, U.K. — Dec. 17, 2009 — Snell today announced that its Morpheus automation and control system will sit at the heart of Australia’s first playout facility dedicated to hosting multi-client, free-to-air broadcasters. MediaHub is a joint venture between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and WIN Corporation (WIN). The state-of-the-art SD/HD facility in New South Wales will offer automated playout through multiple Morpheus systems, as well as ingest, storage, asset management, monitoring, and headend systems with all applicable equipment and professional services provided through prime contractor Grass Valley™.
Control of ABC TV’s playout was transferred to MediaHub a couple weeks ago…and to put it frankly, Morpheus is one of the most horrifying pieces of software I’ve ever encountered. Its sheer horror can be reduced if half or more of the program is killed off, but in an environment where Morpheus is everything, I doubt that it would be operating in any mode other than its full and terrifying state.
Admittedly, as a pure “play according to a pre-defined schedule” system, it’s pretty good, but when it comes to dealing with an environment where stuff changes all the time, it’s not great. Apparently the latest version of Morpheus corrects a lot of the issues, but I’d be very surprised if MediaHub is running on the new version of Morpheus (I have reasons for this, I just can’t discuss them for legal reasons)…of course if it is running on the new version, then all of my worst nightmares have just come true and I should run away screaming right now.
The problem with this difficulty in handling sudden changes such as breaking news is obvious, as all TV networks in this country have to contend with urgent breaking news every now and then. WIN have a slight advantage over ABC TV in this regard as they generally don’t need to change source from their Nine feed to cover breaking news, so the change for them is relatively minor…ABC however need to change source from whatever program they are airing to whatever studio feed happens to be producing the news update. This could be fatal for ABC News 24, the new 24/7 news channel of which the ABC have just delayed the launch yet again in the wake of the recent debacle. It’s somewhat ironic that the centralised playout centre (and an unrelated but just as spectacularly dismal automation system in the news studios) was the reason for the cost-savings which were going to allow ABC News 24 to exist, and yet it is this same playout centre which is preventing it from going to air.
If regular old ABC TV can’t handle a few small changes to a schedule under the Morpheus regime, how exactly can anyone expect a full-on 24/7 news operation to handle many, many more changes to the schedule on a regular basis…that is the nature of news after all.
That said, perhaps if the problems of Morpheus can’t be worked out, ABC News 24 could be a market leader in an entirely new form of rolling news service. We’ve previously been told by ABC director of news, Kate Torney that:
“There are many hours of content produced by the ABC that does not make it to a national audience.
“This is about value for money and ensuring the audience has access to the full breadth of the content we generate every day.”
In other words, those awful Stateline marathons which used to plague ABC2 on the weekend will most likely make a comeback, probably along with each and every state’s 7pm bulletin screened back-to-back for a few hours each night, potentially interspersed with each and every state’s news updates. It is therefore quite possible that the ABC’s idea of a rolling news service which can work with Morpheus is one where breaking news is confined to a two-minute window at the top and bottom of each hour…at least until Communications Minister Stephen Conroy can legislate that all press conferences be scheduled two weeks in advance to fit in with ABC News 24′s schedule.
Samuel
Note: I really shouldn’t have to do this…but to cover all bases I’ll do it anyway. The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are, unless otherwise noted, my personal views and opinions and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of my past, present or future employers or associated entities.
Well now that’s a surprise. Geraldine Nordfeldt (ex-WIN Canberra and then Canberra Times) is working for Seven News now, and filed a report today on the Gillard ascendancy to the leadership.
Geraldine was a great journalist at WIN, covering the local political rounds in a way which was so good, that the government pressured (and sadly succeeded) WIN management to get rid of her before the last election. I wasn’t as enamoured with her work at The Canberra Communist Daily Times, but it’s good to see her back in broadcast journalism. Hopefully she will do her best to keep The House On The Hill honest.
Ever since just before 2GB sacked David Oldfield so that they could replace him with his predecessor Jim Ball, the rumour mill has been on overdrive with news that Oldfield would simply be switching with Jim and be taking over 2UE’s overnight show. As usual with this kind of rumour, it was half true. David is indeed coming to 2UE, but not to take over their overnight show which is now quite comfortably being anchored by Mike Jeffreys, but rather to bolster their fill-in roster.
This was confirmed within the last day without dates by the emergence of a Facebook group dedicated to David’s emergence on 2UE, and I have now received this information from an anonymous but reliable source. It reads like an extract of an internal memo, so I’ll copy and paste it verbatim.
I’m pleased to announce that David Oldfield will be joining us for several weeks in May, filling in on Drive and Nights.
David will step in for the holidaying Two Murrays from Monday May 3 – Friday May 7. He will then move to nights for two weeks filling in for Stuart Bocking.
Most recently David was 2GB’s overnight host – prior to that he had an extended stay in both state and federal politics.
Could a permanent shift be on the cards for David in the not-to-distant future. Given his performance on 2GB overnights, and pending a decent performance in his fill-in roles, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen.
According to The Daily Telegraph earlier this week, John Laws will be on ABC Local Radio across the country for the last hour of Australia All Over with Ian McNamara. This airs between 9am and 10am in eastern Australia.
I was saying last night that I would love to hear Rex Hunt and Eddie McGuire calling AFL together now that Rex has found a home at Eddie’s station of Triple M in Melbourne, and that I was surprised that Eddie wasn’t calling football.
My prayers have been answered this afternoon. Rex Hunt and Eddie McGuie are both calling the North Melbourne V West Coast match right now.
This year, with a lack of the annoying Brian Taylor and the addition of Rex Hunt and Eddie McGuire, it’s more than fair to say that Triple M rocks football!
This year’s first radio ratings have been released and are as follows:
1st: FM 104.7 20.2% (up from 18.3%)
2nd: 666 ABC Canberra 18.5% (up from 16.1%)
3rd: Mix 106.3 16.9% (down from 18.0%)
4th: JJJ 8.0% (down from 13.5%)
5th: ABC Classic FM 7.6% up from 7.4%
6th: 2CA 6.8% (up from 4.1%)
7th: Combined unlisted 6.6% (up from 5.4%)
8th: 2CC 6.3% (no change)
9th: ABC Radio National 6.0% (down from 7.5%)
10th: ABC NewsRadio 3.1% (down from 3.4%)
I don’t really have time to do any analysis of this at this very moment, however I intend on doing so this evening. Stay tuned!
The first radio ratings for the year for Canberra have been released to radio stations, with the public release expected tomorrow.
Jock’s Journal have received some figures which I’m unable to confirm at this stage. They have published the following figures:
FM 104.7: 20.2% (up from 18.3%)
666 ABC Canberra: 18.5% (up from 16.1%)
Mix 106.3: 16.9% (down from 18%)
JJJ: 8% (down from 13.5%)
ABC Classic FM: 7.6% (up from 7.4%)
2CA: 6.8% (up from 4.1%)
2CC: 6.3% (no change)
This doesn’t cover every station in the market, so I can only be sure that the top four are indeed the top four. It’s also interesting to note that with the exception of 2CC, most of the stations have jumped back to their approximate ratings share in last year’s first survey.
I’ll publish a more comprehensive summary tomorrow when the official figures are released.
3MTR’s launch today confirmed a number of things, with some of the more interesting things being bits of information which 2GB haven’t confirmed for Sydney yet.
The schedule is below, but a couple things of interest are that Jim Ball is the confirmed overnight host despite there still being no official word of his arrival at 2GB. Interestingly, Frank Crook’s weekend overnight show is being replaced by current overnight fill-in host Mike Williams, indicating that Frank may be on his way out. If I’m not mistaken, Mike covered the last weekend, so this wouldn’t be too much of a shock.
Andrew Moore’s Wake Up Australia program has been extended by an hour so that it now runs until 6am. Whether this means that Alan Jones will be on-air for half an hour less each day, or whether the latter parts of Andrew’s show will simply not be heard in Sydney are yet to be confirmed. Having Andrew on-air until 6am would open the door for competition to 2UE’s New Day Australia in the Syndication market, especially considering that many regional stations do not start their local breakfast show until 6am.
The 8pm-9pm block is listed as “highlights” which probably means highlights of local shows rather than the Jones/Hadley hour. 9pm-Midnight is covered by locally by Luke Grant.
Weekends are mostly syndicated from Sydney, with only the Midday-6pm block being local, hosted by TV personality Glenn Ridge. Glenn Wheeler’s Saturday night show is being extended by two hours and will start at 6pm in Melbourne. There is no mention of any broadcasting of the NRL, although I will be surprised if Melbourne Storm matches are not aired when 2GB are calling them.
3MTR will start broadcasting on 1377AM, replacing 3MP, in two and a half weeks at 6am on Monday the 19th of March with the following lineup.
Weekdays:
Midnight: Jim Ball
3:30am: Wake Up Australia with Andrew Moore
6:00am: Breakfast with Steve Price (local)
10:00am: Mornings with Steve Vizard (local)
1pm: Afternoons with Chris Smith (final hour local)
4pm: Drive with Martin King (local)
6pm: Money News with Ross Greenwood
8pm: Highlights (possibly local)
9pm: Melbourne Tonight with Luke Grant (local)
Saturday:
Midnight: Mike Williams
5am: The Fishing Show with Michael Guest
6am: The Gardening Clinic
9am: Mornings with Scott Cam
11am: Real Estate with Mark Moraza
Midday: Weekend Afternoons with Glenn Ridge (local)
6pm: Saturday Nights with Glenn Wheeler
Sunday:
Midnight: Mike Williams
6am: The Gardening Clinic
9am: Home Handyman with Simon Stevenson
11am: Health and Wellbeing With Deborah Thomas and Andrew Rochford
Midday: Weekend Afternoons with Glenn Ridge (local)
6pm: Medical with Dr. Graham Malouf (This show is called “Your Health” on 2GB)
8pm: Sunday Nights with Reverend Bill Crews
So we’re looking at 13, maybe 14 hours of local content per day during the week, and six hours per day on weekends. Not anywhere near the amount of local content on 3AW, but one would expect it to be enough on weekdays to be seen as a local station. The weekends worry me though. The interstate programs might be niche programs, but things like gardening and real estate are very local subjects, and it could be difficult to make these locally relevant in multiple markets.
And what is it with radio stations and weekend morning gardening shows? Can nobody do a proper weekend breakfast program, even if it’s only on Saturday? I’d rather listen to a simulcast of Channel Nine’s Today show than most gardening shows…I just don’t understand why they are so dominant on weekends.
I also wonder if 3MTR will use 2GB’s 131 873 for their shows, of if they will have their own number, and how this will work during overlapping programming in Sydney such as the first two hours of Glenn Wheeler’s show where 2GB and 3MTR will have different shows with call-in numbers on the air. One wouldn’t expect Glenn to suddenly change phone number at 8pm…so this could be interesting. Some telephone routing magic perhaps?
Incidentally 13 1377 is owned by Aussie Mastercard, so I can’t see 3MTR buying that. 131 687 (131 MTR) is answered by “NCP” so they probably can’t buy that either. 131 873 might have to suffice, although I’m sure that 3AW will instantly run with the “see, they’re not local, that’s 2GB’s phone number” if they do that.
