If anyone doubted whether Mike Francesa can still generate interest, the former WFAN host helped answer the question Thursday evening with a short video on Twitter.
Francesa has been mostly off the grid since he stepped away from his hour-long evening show on WFAN a few months ago. There has been no media tour this time around for Francesa, just quietly making a couple of guest appearances with Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo and Adam Schein. But on Thursday, Francesa proved his fans and longtime listeners are still interested in the content he creates.
Francesa posted a quick unedited two-minute video offering his picks for this weekend’s Breeders Cup. Not exactly a hot button issue amid the NFL season and the presidential election, two topics with a stronger ability to dominate the national conversation. Yet Francesa’s two-minute video on horse racing easily amassed 300,000 views in less than an hour.
That amount of interest for a Twitter video, shows Francesa is still a natural lightning rod for attention. Now more than three months removed from departing WFAN, supposedly for good, Francesa hasn’t announced a plan for any future content creation. The first time he left WFAN, the iconic sports radio host created an app to house his video and audio content.
Despite putting some exclusive audio and video on the app, it was hard for consumers to see value in paying $8.99 per month for the platform when he was available for three and a half hours a day on WFAN at no charge. For someone like Francesa, who needs to be heard and has a studio in his home, it’s surprising he hasn’t offered any content during the football season or ahead of the presidential election. But the reason behind his staying mostly quiet certainly isn’t for a lack of interest from his longtime fans.
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
