Craig Carton is leaving WFAN at the end of next week to focus on hosting his FOX Sports 1 morning television program on a full-time basis. During his announcement last week on WFAN, Carton spoke about radio ratings and referenced his competitor, The Michael Kay Show on rival ESPN New York 98.7. He said the show never provided palpable competition to he and Evan Roberts’ afternoon drive program, and that he takes great pride in having defeated the competiton for nine of ten ratings books.
“This was never a seesaw battle,” Carton said. “It burns me to my core that anybody can refer to the ratings battle between us and ESPN as ‘seesaw’.”
The winter ratings book awarded Carton and Roberts with a 7.7 share, good for third in the market among the male 25-54 demographic. Conversely, Michael Kay, Don La Greca and Peter Rosenberg attained a 2.9 share, good for 15th overall.
“Now that Craig is leaving to do TV full time, the narrative is, ‘Well, Kay’s probably thrilled,’” Kay said on a podcast appearance with Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman of the New York Post. “No – I’d rather continue to get my butt kicked and continue to win. Let’s say we beat Tiki and Roberts – okay, it’s still going to be, ‘Well, you didn’t beat Craig at the end.’ I’m an ultra-competitive person, so I would have liked to have gotten that done.”
Kay does not believe the radio ratings encompass a complete picture of listenership. He cannot comprehend how 500 portable people meters can effectively adjudicate an 11-million person footprint. Nonetheless, he understands that is how the score is kept and reflects back on the times when his show beat various WFAN afternoon programming – most notably when he defeated Mike Francesa by 1.9 shares and finished No. 1 in the market.
The part about Carton’s tenure at WFAN that perturbed Kay was in Carton’s verbose parlance towards Kay and his show. Before Carton was convicted in 2017, he was given a platform on The Michael Kay Show to tell his story to listeners and explain the course of events. Once he rejoined WFAN and took the air, Carton portrayed Kay as an ostensible antagonist. In reality, while Kay was surely cognizant about what was being said, he did not believe in engaging in a radio war.
“The discourse was so nasty and he was so personal and stuff like that,” Kay said of Carton. “I never did anything to him; that’s not the way I do my show. I don’t believe in doing it that way – maybe I’ve outgrown the world.”
