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AM 640 Unveils New Weekday 7 PM Show Focus - & A Familiar Title
The new 7-10 PM weekday show on AM 640 will be called "Let's Talk With Dani Stover." Hmm, "Let's Talk." Who else uses that title? Oh yeah, Bell for its yearly mental health promotion. Interesting choice.
The new show follows the demise of "On Point," which has aired in the time slot for a few years, originally hosted by Alex Pierson. Once she left for - ironically - her own mental health break, it began having a series of rotating hosts and the program was never the same. They did a way-over-the-top goodbye to the show on Friday, complete with a greeting from Stover as almost funereal music played underneath. It was definitely weird, although final sub Arlene Bynon handled the maudlin moment as well as possible.
So what will the new show be about? It was a bit confusing but Stover and her producer tried to explain that it would look at how certain issues (like homelessness, hospital backlogs and more) affect certain areas differently - namely, the three cities where it airs, Toronto, Hamilton and London.
It debuts Monday night at 7PM.
Let's Talk With Dani Stover
- RadioAaron
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Re: AM 640 Unveils New Weekday 7 PM Show Focus - & A Familiar Title
Dani is incredibly intelligent and talented, but this will be a difficult fit.
Should AM news/talk stations try to grow their base with a left-leaning millennial or admit that that's impossible and cater to the base?
My gut tells me it's the latter.
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Re: AM 640 Unveils New Weekday 7 PM Show Focus - & A Familiar Title
Here's how Broadcast Dialogue describes the new show, which sounds like it will recycle a lot of earlier material.
"...the “best of” show will be a deep dive into major news stories of the day. It will feature clips from 640’s coverage, as well as CFPL London and CHML Hamilton, where the show will also air."
Dani Stover leads new 640 Toronto evening show
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Re: AM 640 Unveils New Weekday 7 PM Show Focus - & A Familiar Title
OK, I listened to the first 90 mins. of the show and with the caveat that it's never, ever, fair to judge a program on its premiere, I have to say I'm really disappointed.
The entire first hour (and most of the second as I post this) consists of clips and segments from earlier AM 640 shows, including Greg Brady, Alex Pierson, Kelly Cutrara and John Oakley. I suppose that's OK if you were at work and missed something interesting.
But you know what's not there? Original interviews, any movement on developing stories and what unfortunately sounds like not that much effort - although I'm sure there's a lot of editing and scripting to put it together. It kind of reminds me of the old CFRB 7 PM reroll package, that consisted of John Moore, Bill Carroll and Elias Makos from their morning shows - except this one has a live (or possibly not - the thing sounds pre-produced) host to intro all the segments.
I can see the thinking - 'hey we've got all this great (?) material, why not use it?' OK, but if I've heard it before I'm not likely to want to hear it again. They're also using previous interviews done on CHML and CFPL. But nothing new. I wonder how many people will keep this on their must hear list? Especially if there is live programming over on 1010.
Again, not fair based on the first hour or two, so I hope it will improve as they feel their way through it.
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Re: AM 640 Unveils New Weekday 7 PM Show Focus - & A Familiar Title
The last half hour of the first show was a rerun of the first half hour. So if I get this right, they ran a show full of reruns and then reran part of that at 9:30 PM! Colour me disappointed. If this is the way it's going to go, I'll have to find something else to listen to. Again, I know it was only their first show, but that was awful.
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