LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- WHAS Radio 840 AM, owned by iHeartMedia, announced major changes Wednesday.
They are bringing back one of their most popular talk show hosts while at the same time canceling a mainstay evening program with a 30 year history.
Mandy Connell, who lived in Louisville for 3-years and hosted the WHAS Radio 9 a.m. talk show, will return at 6 p.m. on Monday May 18.
Her "Mandy Connell Show" will run until 8 p.m. every night.
This time she will not be in the Bluegrass.
Connell currently works for the iHeart station in Denver and will stay there.
Her show on WHAS will focus on local issues in Kentuckiana as she did with her previous program.
The news that upset many WHAS AM listeners was the cancellation of SportsTalk 840.
It was started by Van Vance and has had only two other hosts, Tony Cruise and currently Lachlan McLean.
The changes were triggered when McLean, who has a large following of radio fans, decided to leave for Charlotte, North Carolina on May 15.
According to host Tony Vanetti, speaking on the air Wednesday night, it gave WHAS the opportunity to rethink its mission and redefine the station as the news and talk station, while moving sports to its other AM stations in Louisville.
Vanetti did a brave thing and opened the SportsTalk airwaves to listeners who wanted to talk about the changes.
For the most part they let him have it, criticizing the station and the cancellation.
He acknowledged often the history of the program and its origin with Vance, and handled sometimes rude callers with honesty and bluntness about the shock of the change.
But other callers admitted they were, and still are, fans of Mandy Connell and will listen to her new show.
