The Michael Kay show will turn 20 years old in July. During the two decades the show has been on the air in New York City, it has had different time slots, a TV simulcast has debuted on YES and Kay and Don La Greca got a new partner.
La Greca was a guest this week on the Sports With Friends podcast, hosted by former BSM scribe Seth Everett. Everett asked La Greca to revisit the decision to add Peter Rosenberg to the show.
Rosenberg was not the first third mic Kay and La Greca ever worked with. He noted that in the past Bonnie Bernstein and Michelle Beadle were each part of the show. In 2015, ESPN New York General Manager Tim McCarthy wanted to bring in a lighter presence to balance the X and O sports talk Kay and La Greca did.
“I was not on board with it,” La Greca admits saying when he was told that the station was going to hire Rosenberg.
Everett said that when the addition was made, he feared that the station was going to begin phasing La Greca out of the afternoon show. While he did not say whether or not he had similar fears, Don La Greca did offer a glimpse into the meeting where the duo was told that Rosenberg was going to be joining them. He said that he loved working for McCarthy, but this particular meeting was a bit contentious.
“We did not agree on this particular thing and neither did Michael. He said ‘We don’t need a third person. We don’t like it’ and Tim said ‘Well, if you don’t like it, there’s the door.’”
A little over six years later, La Greca characterizes the addition of Peter Rosenberg as “one of the best things that ever happened to the show” and noted that you will not last long in the media if you stay resistant to change.
That is particularly true in sports radio. Don La Greca was the first voice ever heard on ESPN New York when the station launched in 2001. He told Everett that the sound of the station now is nothing like it was then. The station, and the format as a whole, has done a complete 180 from its first decade in business. That is why Peter Rosenberg is so important to The Michael Kay Show.
“Sports radio to me has changed and evolved in the last ten years from a medium where you informed people to know your job is to entertain people. Our audience knows as much as we do, because they have access to the information we have.”
