Three months after joining forces in middays, Sactown Sports 1140AM hosts Kevin “Whitey” Gleason and Chris Watkins are being split up to complete the station’s daytime lineup.

Effective Wednesday, The Drive Guys featuring Gleason and Sacramento Kings studio host Kyle Draper is going to be taking over afternoon drive, airing from 2-6 PM. Watkins remains in middays. He had been hosting the Chris Watkins & Co Show in a fill-in capacity from 10:00 AM-2:00 PM since April.

“We are excited to continue to elevate the Sactown Sports brand with the addition of The Drive Guys,” Bonneville Sacramento SVP and market manager Steve Cottingim said. “Kevin has been a fabric in the Sacramento community for four decades now and pairing him with Kyle Draper, who is a familiar voice to our listeners through the Sacramento Kings broadcast, just highlights our commitment to Sacramento sports.”

Gleason confirmed the move on Monday evening, and Watkins chimed in expressing his thanks to Kevin for all he had done these last few months. Watkins joined Bonneville Sacramento in 2018 and went from assistant promotions director to producer and podcast host to midday host in that five-year span.

The full daytime lineup for Sactown Sports begins at 6 AM with The Carmichael Dave Show with Jason Ross and concludes with Gleason and Draper.

Gleason is no stranger to Sacramento listeners. He has been regularly featured on the air in town for more than four decades, primarily as a part of The Rise Guys morning show from 1999-2011. He also hosted on ESPN 1320 for five years with Mark Kreidler.

Draper has been hosting for NBC Sports California’s Kings coverage since 2020. Before arriving to California’s capital city, he served in a similar capacity for NBC Sports Boston for 11 years.

The lineup on Sactown Sports 1140AM has been shuffled around several times over the last six months. It followed the departure of several other station personalities in that span, beginning with Dave “Deuce” Morgan and Morgan Ragan in April, followed by the exit of Nick Cattles and Ramie Makhlouf over the summer.

If you think the discussion on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce is going away in sports talk anytime soon, you’re sorely mistaken. Swift was in attendance at MetLife Stadium for Sunday Night Football as Kelce and the Chiefs took on the New York Jets. And as Shan Shariff and RJ Choppy noted on Shan & RJ on 105.3 The Fan on Monday, NBC and the NFL couldn’t avoid making Swift’s presence at the game a part of the SNF coverage.

“They went all in,” Shariff said. “NBC, the National Football League, going all in on Taylor Swift.”

Choppy responded saying when arguably one of the biggest celebrities in the world suddenly takes an interest in your product, you embrace it.

“She’s taken over, she really has,” Choppy said. “And the NFL putting her on their Twitter page, I mean she is bigger than the NFL. Like she’s more popular globally than the National Football League.”

Taylor Swift sports 273 million Instagram followers and 94.5 million Twitter followers. The NFL only has 33.7 million followers on Twitter and 28.4 million on Instagram.

Shariff pointed out that while Swift is a massive superstar with a massive superstar following on social media, it doesn’t compare to the followings of soccer stars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Regardless, the NFL is going to milk it for what the league thinks it’s worth.

“Everyone is looking at her as the golden goose. She craps success,” Shariff said. “It’s just gold flowing out of her veins. Attach yourself to it, and you will make money.”

The NFL is a massive player on network television. The ratings show routinely the league taking up the overwhelming majority of the top 25 most-watched television programs every year. But according to a new study, the NFL on Westwood One also reaches a massive audience.

56 million people will be reached by the primetime radio broadcasts each season, new research reveals.

The study reveals that 7 million alone in the season’s debut weekend consumed play-by-play broadcasts, with that figure expanding to 18 million for the duration of September.

Additionally, 10 million more listeners will accumulate throughout the football season, culminating with Westwood One’s coverage of the Super Bowl.

The Nielsen Scarborough data also suggests that 55% of Thursday Night Football viewers on Amazon Prime Video are not Amazon Prime subscribers. The numbers suggest a total of 64 million Americans will watch some portion of Thursday Night Football this season.