Should Ryan revive the Long Distance Dedication segment?

[dth1971]

Do you think Ryan Seacrest could revive on his American Top 40 the Long Distance Dedication segment? That would be perfect to current AT40 listeners to pay tribute to friends or relatives who they lost to the COVID-19 pandemic with songs of their own. (Many past AT40 LDD's of the past paid tribute to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, the 9/11/2001 tragic events, and - for AT10 AC/AT20 Hot AC, the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans). 

[OnWithTheCountdown]

I doubt it'd be revived...but on the earlier shows, when he took over in 2004 for Casey, he would play song requests (usually sent in via e-mail), and would be an extra segment in between the end-of-hour and top-of-hour. Not all stations play those, however. Those extra segments still air to this day. The AT40 channel on iHeartRadio doesn't air the extra segments, however.

[mkarns]

Premiere puts "optional extras" at the end of the hour in Ryan's shows as they do with Casey's. Usually those are listener requests, and sometimes he'll give the reason requested. If someone wants to dedicate a song to someone with or lost to COVID-19 then it might well be played, particularly due to the current context.

But I personally don't favour returning Long Distance Dedications or something similar to a regular feature in the middle of the hour that all stations play, even though there's likely more than enough room for it given all the extras that they play (counting optionals, often at least 15 songs a week are played in addition to the 40 chart songs.) That was always my least favourite feature of the Casey and Shadoe countdowns, though I'm likely in the minority here.

[statenislandfan]

No LDD by Ryan because there will never be another Casey on how he read those letters on the air. Period.

[adam31]

Jun 20, 2020 7:21:32 GMT -5 statenislandfan said:

No LDD by Ryan because there will never be another Casey on how he read those letters on the air. Period.

Agreed. Casey is an impossible act to follow as he created the "LDD". You could tell how much he cared about the people who wrote by the way he would read the letters. He mentioned many times on the show that the staff read EVERY letter that came in and something to the effect of "if you ever wrote us for any reason, be assured, we heard you". Casey Kasem, what a class act, there will never be another like him.

[BrettVW]

He showed how much he genuinely cared when he talked about Snuggles.

He may have cared to a degree, but there was plenty of acting going on with those letter readings as well.

[palmer7]

I hate LDDs.