Big blogosphere/Vancouver sports media news has been unofficially announced this evening. According to Team 1040 morning show host Jason Botchford, the old Kurtenbloggers and current Pro-Hockey Talkers: Mike Halford and Jason Brough, will make a triumphant return to the Vancouver airwaves beginning on February 25th on the Team 1040.

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Again, according to Botch, the old Kurtenbloggers will be hosting a Saturday afternoon show (that will not be called KB Radio) previewing Hockey Night in Canada. The major re-acquisition is another in a series of big wins for the Team 1040, who recently re-upped their broadcast rights to Canucks games and posted a banner year ratings wise, successfully weathering the departure of long-time draw Dave Pratt. Obviously the return of a re-titled KB Radio show is sure to have Team 1040 listeners, hockey fans and compulsive gamblers pretty fired up.

As far as I’m concerned, from the summer of 2010 through to their last shows just this past summer, the team of Brough, Halford and Martinago were peerless for sports-talk radio in the Vancouver market. Their most regular guests included Greg Wyshynski, and Jason Botchford, who memorably yelled through many of his guest segments.

I interviewed Mike and Jason back in November, and asked them about their most memorable show on the Team 1040. They picked the show they’d done after the June 15th "Stanley Cup Riot" and talked about finding humour in an episode that the rest of the world was treating as if it were the most serious thing ever. Here’s what Mike Halford had to say about that particular show:

We just approached it the way we approach everything else. We thought “lets just have some fun with it.” Everything for the last 24 hours had such a gravitas about it, like “oh my god everything is so serious and so terrible!” And really, what can we possibly add to that conversation? We couldn’t, right… we realized “that’s not what people are listening to us for,” they want a different perspective."

The way I see it, that instinct to "play it light" is what separated KB Radio from other Team 1040 shows. It was just so different in tone from most of what the Vancouver Sports-Media scene had to offer. Since Mike and Jason left the Team 1040, and the Vancouver Province, to write 85 posts per day for NBC Sports, I’ve heard many Team 1040 listeners complain about the station’s need for a new "light-hearted, fan perspective," show to replace what KB Radio was. Well, who better to replace the KB, than the KB themselves!





