Sports radio generally sounds a bit different in every market. If you asked most people to describe what sports radio is or what it should be, most would describe something similar to what goes on weekday afternoons at ESPN New York. Good, old-fashioned sports talk radio is what I found when I eavesdropped in on the Friday, July 12 episode of The Michael Kay Show and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.
The Michael Kay Show team is led by 63-year-old host Michael Kay, who is also the television voice of the New York Yankees and a national baseball broadcaster with ESPN. The co-hosts are 56-year-old Don La Greca, who has also worked on New York Rangers and New York Jets radio broadcasts, and 44-year-old Peter Rosenberg, who also co-hosts the popular Ebro in the Morning show on HOT97 in New York and is involved with professional wrestling working on various broadcasts for the WWE.
The show has been ESPN New York’s lead show for over two decades (July 15 marks 22 years to the day), with Rosenberg having been added in 2015. They have great chemistry and collectively they’ve enjoyed a lot of success. All three bring different styles to the air, which allows them to produce compelling and entertaining content.
Earlier last week, Kay had an exchange with a caller who said, “Michael Kay will never criticize the Yankees.” Kay responded, in part, “I put myself in the crosshairs. I criticize this team to an extent that no broadcaster ever does. I’m in the unenviable — or enviable — position of having a talk show where I have to be honest and I’m also the voice of the team. Don’t tell me I don’t criticize the team.”
On this day, almost before the amazing “Michael Kay is on the radio today…” opening song finished, Kay and the team were off and running and the Yankees were naturally at the forefront of the conversation. Since the Yankees hadn’t won a series in eight tries, things were getting a little tight around the city. In a flash, the trio was in deep Yankees conversation.
“The Rays were giving the game to the Yankees, here take it, take this game,” Kay commented about Thursday’s game. “Yankees wouldn’t do it, Yankees couldn’t do it, Yankees didn’t do it…Judge couldn’t get the big hit. Judge in 8 games has not had an extra base hit and has not had an RBI. It’s a broken record…I gotta be honest, they aren’t playing fundamentally sound baseball.”
Sounds pretty critical to me. And over the next couple of hours, the conversation leaned a lot on what was going wrong with a team that had been the best team in baseball during the first 70 games of the season. Since that time, the team has won about 1/3 of its games.
When a team is winning, everything is right with the world, but when it is losing, fans and broadcasters alike tend to nitpick everything to try and find the answers. They also find humor in things happening such as when Kay points out a Yankees player was recently put on the 10-day IL with the stomach flu. “I haven’t heard of that one…that is some flu,” Kay said.
Sometimes sports radio truly does imitate real life. I was reminded of this as Kay, La Greca and Rosenberg discussed the Yankees-Orioles game on Sunday only being available on Roku. “I think you have to be subscribed,” Kay said to Rosenberg who uses a Roku device but still wasn’t sure if he could watch the game or if he had the actual Roku channel.
La Greca added, “It’s bad form man. I’ll take the hit if I am the only yo-yo that didn’t know. But I have a feeling this is flying under a lot of people’s radar and that’s not a good thing…You can’t have things like this flying under the radar.”
A message came in to Kay to tell him that you can access the game for free, but none were exactly sure how it works between the Roku device and the Roku channel. “Strange, very odd,” Kay said as Rosenberg quickly replied with, “Strange times, Michael.”
Like you would expect with this type of sports radio, the takes and the passion can be off-the charts. After all, Kay, La Greca and Rosenberg are New York sports fans, too. While many stations have backed away from taking calls, Kay and company take plenty and as someone who is not from the New York-area, I found some of the callers rather stereotypically hilarious.
The way some of the fans ripped into Yankees manager Aaron Boone, you would think the season has been an absolute disaster. Fortunately, in this case, you have veteran sports talk show hosts who realize these opinions are a bit ‘prisoner of the moment’ and don’t play into them.
Another veteran move is a great tease to get your listeners to stay tuned. “I’m going to make all of your weekends when we come back,” Kay said as he wrapped up the first hour. “I’m going to give you something that’s going to give you such viewing pleasure, such goosebumps, the hair on the back of your neck is going to stand up and you’re going to thank me for it.”
Now, that is a tease.
Kay was referring to the new Netflix series, Receiver, and when they came back, Kay couldn’t recommend the series enough. “Soooo good and soooo well done,” Kay said. “I thought the Quarterback one was great, too.”
“It’s really good,” Kay continued. “I think you’ll really like it and I think you’ll come back and thank me profusely for making your weekend,” Kay quipped. “They do it very well.”
When the Yankees lineup comes out for that night’s game, Kay notes, “It’s an odd one,” as they get back to talking about who is or would be held responsible for a full Yankees collapse if it continued. After some callers give different opinions on who it should be, Rosenberg adds, “It would have to be someone significant that would have to pay.”
I thought the rest of the conversation was great as to how they broke it down. Kay finally said, “Only two people would be considered significant, [General Manager Brian] Cashman or [Manager Aaron] Boone.”
Kay adds that in his opinion if they fired Boone, they would “just hire Boone 2.0” and if they fired Cashman, “it would be someone from within” who would run the team and very little would change.
“It is a repeat pattern of every season the same thing,” Rosenberg said. “Expectation, great start, start sliding, stumble into the playoffs, no repercussions. It’s just over and over again.”
As with any good sports talk show, it isn’t just all sports. Successful hosts drop in talk about their lives and on this day, it was La Greca’s weekend dinner plans and how he handles the bill when he and his wife have dinner with another couple that got some fun chatter going. This turned into Kay trying to get La Greca to commit he would watch Receiver while relaxing in his pool over the weekend.
“I’m not going to watch your silly show while I’m floating in the pool,” La Greca said “I’m more intrigued now, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry, and if it’s 93 degrees and not too much humidity on Sunday, I’m out.”
This turned into one of those times on the show where two of the hosts gang up a bit on the other. In total, it happened a few times throughout the show, and it isn’t always the same two on one side. This is one of the great dynamics of the show.
In this case, Kay and Rosenberg went down a rabbit hole of talking about La Greca having beers in front of his kids, which turned into Kay painting a picture where La Greca drowns after having two beers while relaxing in his pool.
“Peter, how did this happen?” La Greca asked to try to get the show back on the rails.
Other than Yankees talk, the day was dominated by the report of Knicks player Jaylen Brunson taking significantly less money to sign a contract this year versus waiting until next year. While a very noble thing to do and something La Greca and Rosenberg thought was a young man making a great, long-term, big picture decision, Kay couldn’t fathom in what world it made sense for Brunson to do what he did. He said he believes Brunson was being taken advantage of. “There’s being a good guy, and then there’s being a guy that is getting taken advantage of,” Kay said.
The back and forth on the topic was outstanding. They didn’t agree on the topic and La Greca and Rosenberg challenged Kay on many points made. They all defended their points emphatically, and it made for great radio. It was one of those topics when you know people listening were yelling at the radio, television, phone or computer in support of one side or the other.
“You know how I know it is a big deal?” Kay asked about the Brunson story. “Because it has never, ever happened before. … It’s unprecedented – he is Gandhi. It is unprecedented what he’s doing. Tell me a player who has come anywhere close to doing this on any sports at any level. Who’s done it? That’s why it’s so startling is because it’s never been done ever…They should build a statue for him outside Madison Square Garden.” He would later add in order to show he was praising Brunson at the same time he was questioning the move, “If you designed him in a lab, you couldn’t come up with a more selfless, beautiful man.”
The Brunson segment was a great way to define The Michael Kay Show and to me, what the format is all about. Great, passionate discussion, smart takes, listener interaction, disagreements, discussion, facts and a bit of humor. I didn’t want the Brunson segment to end, and I didn’t want the show to end.
The true mark of any really good content.
Dave Greene is the Chief Media Officer for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting. You can also reach him by email at Dave@BarrettMedia.com.
