Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd back on the air soon
July 3rd, 2010 at 11:50am
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.
Entry Filed under: TV/Radio/Media
