Most markets don’t have to deal with what New York sports talk radio hosts have to deal with. If you are a sports talk host, imagine knowing no matter which local teams you discuss, a large portion of the audience is not getting the content they want becuase those are not their local teams. You talk Yankees, they like the Mets and vice versa. You talk Giants, they like the Jets and vice versa. It’s the same with hockey and basketball and college sports. With it being a week where the Yankees won the division, the Mets were fighting for their playoff lives and the Giants playing on Thursday Night Football against the rival Dallas Cowboys, I thought it would be a good week to eavesdrop in on Evan & Tiki, the afternoon drive show at WFAN in New York.
Roberts first appeared on WFAN as a 10-year-old kid after writing a letter to the station asking for a job and saying he listened to the station with his dad. His goal was always to be on WFAN and after getting on at XM Satellite Radio and then The Fan in Baltimore, he was hired by WFAN as an overnight host at the age of 21 in 2004. At 23, in 2007, Roberts started in middays with Joe Benigno before the show was moved to afternoons 13 years later. When Benigno retired towards the end of that year, Craig Carton replaced him and worked with Roberts until July 2023, and that is when Evan & Tiki began.
Barber, the former 10-year member of the New York Giants who retired as the team’s all-time rushing and receptions leader, started his media career upon his retirement, initially with NBC. In 2022, Barber teamed with Brandon Tierney on a new midday show for WFAN after they had worked together doing a national show for CBS Sports Radio.
The hosts are joined by Shaun Morash and executive producer Tommy ‘Loogy’ Lugauer and the four of them entertain the New York audience each afternoon on radio along with the 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET portion of the program shown on SNY.
On the Friday Sept. 27 edition of the show, the topic of New York fandom actually came up in an exchange where Barber talked about being at the Giants game the day before in a suite with people from IBM and UPS.
“Someone said something about a Jets-Yankees fan,” Barber said. Roberts responded, “Yeah, they exist.”
Barber continued, “I thought there’s no way that exists.” Roberts jumped in and said, “Yeah, my former producer of the midday show, Ernie Acosta, a legitimate Jets-Yankees fan.” Barber asked how that happens, and Roberts pointed out that ‘Loogy’ is a Mets-Giants fan, to which Barber says, “There’s lots of Mets-Giant fans.”
“And you don’t think there’s a lot of Jets-Yankees fans?” asks Roberts. Barber simply says, “No.”
Barber finishes saying, “I don’t know. I just think I’ve never heard Jets-Yankees. I’ve heard Mets-Giants. I’ve heard every combination except for Jets-Yankees.” In the end it’s determined the majority of people are either Giants-Yankees or Jets-Mets.
That also happens to be what, generally, the two main hosts are considered, with Roberts a Jets-Mets and Barber a Giants-Yankees.
With the Giants coming off a loss on Thursday Night Football, the first 90 minutes of this particular show was dominated by Giants talk and they were deep into it mere moments after the intro music played. Barber started by giving great analysis of the game and went in-depth on Giants quarterback Daniel Jones.
Many have weighed in on Jones and Giants fans have not been happy with how he has performed overall. Add in the GM and head coach of the team being on Hard Knocks openly saying they want to try and find a better quarterback and you have a microscope focused on Jones at all times. Barber’s observations made for great radio as he summed up that he just doesn’t think Daniel Jones has ‘the it factor.’
As Barber broke it down and said, “it’s not terminal for his career, but he just doesn’t have it,” Roberts was quick to reply, “It may not be terminal for his NFL career but it’s terminal for his career with the New York Giants.”
As the conversation went on, nobody blamed Jones for the loss, the problem is more with Jones’ inability to make plays in big games and in big moments. They offered statistics to back it up and covered the topic, the game and the repercussions of it very well throughout the show.
This is afternoon drive in market No. 1, so you expect the hosts are going to do their jobs well including things like teasing the audience to keep them tuned in. Early in the show, Roberts gives a strong take about how the Giants couldn’t run the ball against a Dallas run defense that has not been good, and that was really the difference in the game. He barely takes a breath and goes right into his tease for the next segment, saying, “…a very respected Giants voice said something fascinating about last night’s game that I’m not sure many Giants fans will agree with, but we’ll find out next.”
In a pro move, rather than coming right out of the break with what the ‘Giants voice’ had said, he set up the segment, teased it again and went on with the show before delivering the payoff.
Throughout the show you get a lot of emotion, especially from Roberts who can go from third gear to fifth gear pretty quickly when he has a strong take on a subject. Roberts is sports passion personified, the true representative of the sports fan who is yelling at their TV while watching the game.
Barber is much more mild-mannered although that isn’t to say that he doesn’t get excited about certain subjects, he just keeps things very controlled and tries to talk through subjects rather than wanting to scream and yell. He leaves that to the other members of the team and the callers who all have a tendency to go that direction from time to time.
Overall, I have to applaud the show’s use of callers that I heard. It is far from a caller-driven show, but they allow the callers to engage on the air with the subjects they are discussing. My guess is someone does a good job of screening the calls behind-the-scenes because it certainly appeared they only let good ones through. On this day, one caller who agreed with what Barber had said about Daniels, put it in a way that really did a good job of summing it all up when he brought up something Cam Newton had said about Dak Prescott and Tua Tagovailoa, “he’s a good game manager, but not a game changer.”
Later in the show, another caller reminder Barber that he worked for several years with Brandon Tierney who is a big Jets-Yankees fan going back to the earlier subject when he had said he had never heard of that before. And there was the caller who humorously called in and said, “I just wanted to apologize for calling Shaun Morash a lard-ass yesterday. He’s still a lard-ass but I wanted to apologize anyway.”
The callers added to the show and didn’t take anything away from it. Roberts and Barber brought the callers in, made them briefly a part of the discussion, but they didn’t let them drag on and one thing that stood out to me was when a caller would say something off the rails, the hosts would cut the caller off and say they disagreed and why.
Many hosts don’t do that and let a caller go on and on talking nonsense and then addressing it only when they stop talking. A few different times I caught the hosts putting a stop to it right away rather than letting outlandish over the top statements go unchecked.
Besides, if Roberts and Barber want over the top, they have Morash and Lugauer for that.
Not only do the hosts seem to enjoy when Morash and/or ‘Loogy’ go off the reservation every now and then, they especially like when the two disagree with one another. So much so, they have made a fun game out of it that also is a way they can control the show and not have things linger too long.
After ‘Loogy’ gave a long, passionate take that the Giants and head coach Brian Daboll are tanking to get a top quarterback in next year’s draft, Morash disagreed. As they started to go at it, Roberts called for a time-out, and they stopped to work it out in an orderly manner with a debate. Each person gets a minute to defend their side, then Roberts and Barber vote. In this case it was tied, so they brought a caller in who excitedly broke the tie. Caller Diego cast his vote by saying, “Without a doubt, the future of WFAN, Tommy Lugauer.”
After roughly 90 minutes of mainly Giants talk it was on to the Yankees who had clinched the American League East and had celebrated the night before. Morash was not a fan with how the Yankees celebrated, saying they overdid it since they had just celebrated when they clinched a spot in the postseason. He was somewhat out on an island on the take, but he defended it strongly throughout and had a great line when he said, ultimately the team shouldn’t have gone overboard celebrating on the mound when “you won a division you were supposed to win!”
Whether they were playing back their Malik Neighbors predictions from the previous day, talking about the ridiculous number of flags in the Giants-Cowboys game, breaking down the Mets chances of holding on to their wild card spot or revisiting the Giants loss, the four guys had great chemistry and kept the showing moving and entertaining.
Evan & Tiki delivers the goods with a mix of strong opinions, great producer and caller engagement, hosts who bring energy, insight and passion to the table with a fair amount of hilarity. A perfect lead-in to another New York Yankees broadcast on WFAN.
Unless of course, you’re a Mets fan.
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.
