By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
August 16, 2016
Tomorrow, former WDFN and WXYT program director/host Gregg Henson will return to the Detroit airwaves as a permanent fixture on a sports talk program and, for the first time in 14 years, that home will be WDFN.
After holding back this news for awhile (the jig was up when I recently ran into Henson with the Grand Rapids iHeartRadio staff at a Tigers game) I am now going off the reservation and posting it based on a Bill Simonson Tweet from earlier this afternoon.
Starting on Wednesday at 3pm, AM-1130 will return to local PM Drive programming for the first time in years as Henson will join Droo McCarthy and Jim Costa on a simulcast that will be aired in both the Detroit market and on 96.1FM in Grand Rapids.
McCarthy and Costa replaced Sean Baligian at 96.1 when Baligian left the station for an opportunity at the now-defunct Detroit Sports 105.1. And like Baligian — who broadcasted his GR show from his home in Northville — Henson will be hosting the show from his office at 970 ESPN in Pittsburgh.
Henson will retain his program director duties in the Steel City as all three stations are properties of iHeartRadio.
I believe this will be the first non-Matt Shepard local weekday afternoon programming at WDFN since station execs ended the Eric Chase experience in December of 2012. You might remember that “Dance All Night” Chase was the short-lived PD at 1130 and also co-hosted the PM Drive show with local nobody John Kreger.
It was a mistake for iHeartRadio (then Clear Channel) not to bring back Henson in 2012 when they hired the former Allentown, Pennsylvania DJ and Batman fanatic Chase whose Detroit sports knowledge was embarrassing.
It will be interesting to see what kind of impact Henson will have in the Detroit market as broadcasting on the AM dial against WXYT–FM is basically a suicide mission.
Although the last time 1130 and 96.1 attempted a three-man simulcast — Baligian, the late Tom Kowalski and Ryan Terpstra — the station did attract a pretty decent audience considering the inherent disadvantage of airing on the AM dial.
The most interesting story for me will be the West Michigan matchup of WBBL’s Simonson versus Henson. And Simonson’s preemptive strike welcoming Henson back to Michigan isn’t going to stop what I believe will be a fierce battle.
I have already spoken to 3-G about this issue and I am pretty sure the plan will be to take the battle right to the insecure and tin-eared Simonson. I have already laid out my game plan for bullying the bully and I cannot wait for those sparks to fly.
And I am pretty sure Henson will do his best to tweak Mike Valenti and the rest of the thin-skinned staff at 97.1 as well.
I am not sure how long this experiment will last or if it will bring WDFN back to any sort of prominence whatsoever, but with Henson “back in town” I am sure there won’t be a dull moment.
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