I’ve been hinting around that there is “Big” news involving the midnight eastern time slot and we can finally announce it. Big Kev’s Geek Stuff is not only returning to Sirius/XM radio, but will be sharing the midnight eastern timeslot with Weird Medicine.
The story behind this goes back to October 2007. Big Kev and Weird Medicine were the first “pest radio” shows on the Saturday Night Virus. If you recall, Gregg “Opie” Hughes made an announcement that any “pests” who had a good idea for a show should let him know…they were willing to put unique shows on the air. I immediately called and pitched “Weird Medicine”, and somewhere in there Big Kev did the same for his “Geek Stuff”, which was already popular on the internet. October 13, 2007 made history as Kev did 90 minutes and we followed him with another 90 minutes of our show. Both shows exceeded expectations and eventually we settled into doing regular shows for XM, for awhile at 7pm, then at 5pm, but we were always paired with BKGS. Once Sirius got into the picture and basically killed the SNV (remember, The Lazlow Show, Black Phillip, Uninformed with Bill Burr, and Bob Kelly’s “Eat My Ass”? All gone, sadly) Big Kev’s show was one of the fallen.
After 3 years of doing shows for Sirius/XM, a lot of changes have occurred…PA John and his wife PA Jill had a baby, Double Vasectomy Todd had a family tragedy that has rearranged his live forever, Jefferson’s law practice has heated up, Chest Pain Rob started having chest pains (hence the name), and I was working three jobs (two of them for free) and trying to hold down two radio shows (both of them for free). Something had to give, and our recording schedule for Weird Medicine was one of those things. We tried dropping down to recording two shows once a month, but that meant running replays twice a month and people were getting peeved at all the repeated content. So we went to a “two-shows-every-three-weeks” format so we’re doing two-on and one-off right now; even though 67% of the time we’re running new shows, that one replay hurts us.
I started thinking of things we could do and since we’d been paired with Big Kev since the inception of our show, BKGS made the most sense. Now, in the background, Kevin had been agitating to get back on Sirius XM for some time, so I can’t take full or even partial credit for this, but I did call him and ask if he’d be interested in sharing the time slot with us so we could both keep our feet in the door in case an opportunity presented itself (like, say, getting paid even a LITTLE bit for doing our shows) in the future. His reaction was positive, so we started lobbying Sirius XM from our side to add Big Kev and his group to the lineup. What was done from his side, I can’t speak to.
By the way, this was last DECEMBER when all this started. If you ever wondered if we’re lying about how slow things happen at Sirius XM, here’s a great example.
Anyway, it’s a reality now, and I see great things in this for everyone:
1) NO MORE REPLAYS at Midnight
Should be all-new content except on major holidays or if we have a kick-ass best-of to run for a specific reason.
2) MORE NEW BITS
Since we’ll have more time to prepare, there should be more interesting content on Weird Medicine. We already have approval for a couple of interesting bits with more to come.
3) BIG KEV WILL KICK THE GEEK SHOW ON 101’s ASS
Of course 101×2=202 so Big Kev’s geek show should be twice as good as the one on 101. Big Kev is twice their size, too. I bet his sleep apnea is twice as bad as theirs, as well. For 202/197 loyalists, this should be a victory. If you don’t care about stuff like that (and good for you) then you should enjoy hearing about new movies and television shows that you’d never hear about from the mainstream media.
I can think of other reasons, but I’ve squandered enough bandwidth on this. We are very happy to share the Midnight Eastern timeslot with Big Kev’s Geek Stuff and hope you all will enjoy it as much as we will. Will it cause confusion and consternation, both to Big Kev fans and Weird Medicine listeners? Maybe. I’m hoping people tuning in to hear Big Kev will give Weird Medicine a listen and vice versa. We are very, very different shows as far as content is concerned, but very similar in sensibility and “fit” with the channel.
Questions, comments? Call our voicemail at 423 343 8884, or leave a comment on our log.
your pal,
Dr Steve
