As preparations were being made for the holiday edition of The Michael Kay Show on ESPN New York, longtime listeners were wrapped around the building weathering the winter chill. Situated beyond the glass panes fortifying the restaurant against the frigid conditions, the audience was ready to ring in the holiday season with joy and nostalgia. At the same time, there was a finality associated with this occasion that was a mere coincidence, representing the end of a consistent presence that had long permeated through the local airwaves.
The trio of Michael Kay, Don La Greca and Peter Rosenberg was preparing to host its final episode of the show and had the added benefit of witnessing the crowd ahead of signing off as a group one last time. Before attendees were admitted inside of the venue, Kay decided to bear the elements and stayed outside for an hour perusing the line. Shaking hands, taking pictures and signing autographs, he wanted to demonstrate his appreciation for the legion of fans who had adopted the weekday staple into their lives. The display of gratitude and appreciation was only the beginning of a day that struck a chord between poignancy and celebration.
“We really do look at the people that listen to our show and consume our show as part of the family, and there was just so much love in that room, and we really, really felt it, and you had to fight back emotions every now and then, but it was great to end it where you could actually see the people that make the show – the audience,” Kay said. “If it was just in a studio and you said goodbye, I don’t think it would have had the same impact, but the impact of doing it live was really, really, really special because it involved everybody.”
The outing proceeded with riveting sports discussion and debate with special guests and retrospection. As the show proceeded through its last shift, a decision that Kay had been considering for more than three years was suddenly becoming a reality.
Recognizing that his schedule involving hosting the radio show and broadcasting New York Yankees baseball on YES Network was becoming a physically and mentally exhausting task, he knew that in order to do justice to both roles, something would eventually have to change. A typical day at Yankee Stadium involved Kay arriving at 1:30 p.m. to prepare for the show and hosting inside of a shipping container on the ballpark loading dock until 6:30 p.m. From there, he would race up to the broadcast booth to pre-tape the game open, eat dinner for about eight minutes and then call a nine-inning baseball game.
“I kept thinking about an exit strategy because I love doing it, and during the winter, it’s great because there is no baseball, so it’s just like having one job, but for 6-7 months of the year, it’s just not,” Kay explained, “so I just said, ‘I’ve got to think of an exit strategy.’”
Before Kay signed his last contract for the afternoon show, he considered himself to be “as good as 95% gone.” Reflecting back on the situation, Kay articulated that Norby Williamson, former executive editor and head of event and studio production at ESPN, is the person who stepped in and ultimately convinced him to stay.
As he continued to host afternoon drive, the station endured several changes as The Walt Disney Company sought to lay off 7,000 employees and slashed $5.5 billion in operating costs ahead of a strategic reorganization. The ESPN Audio division suffered several key cuts, including ESPN New York program director Ryan Hurley, senior vice president Scott McCarthy and senior director of audio programming Pete Gianesini.
Two years earlier, longtime ESPN New York general manager Tim McCarthy was let go from the company, someone who was integral in the start of The Michael Kay Show in 2002. Kay did not see himself as a talk show host, and it was McCarthy who emphasized that he would be great and implored him to partake in the endeavor. The show originally launched in middays, where it eventually added La Greca on the air, and later moved to afternoon drive in March 2005.
“Just at the beginning when we’re on 1050 and there didn’t seem to be any traction, he said, ‘Turning ratings around is like turning around a battleship. It just takes forever, but then once you have it pointed in the right direction, it can really move,’ and he was so right,” Kay said. “It took a long, long time, and then obviously the move to 98.7 played a big role as well, [which] gave us more of a reach and an audience.”
Good Karma Brands purchased WEPN-AM as part of a larger transaction with The Walt Disney Company that closed in the first quarter of 2022. Under the terms of the deal, the company would also perform ESPN obligations under its local marketing agreement (LMA) for the 98.7 FM frequency, which was being leased from Emmis Communications under a 12-year pact. As Good Karma Brands became more implemented in day-to-day operations of the local station, Kay developed trust in chief executive officer Craig Karmazin and president Steve Politziner and recognized their perception of the future.
Over the summer, Good Karma Brands opted not to enter in a new deal for 98.7 FM and instead focus on distribution of ESPN New York through digital verticals and 1050 AM. In addition to the move away from the FM dial, Good Karma Brands stopped subscribing to Nielsen Audio ratings data for local markets, fundamentally altering the means by which progress against the competition was measured. The distribution plan changed a few weeks before the switch when it signed a new local marketing agreement with Audacy that moved the station’s programming to the 880 AM clear channel frequency.
“It just made us feel, ‘Okay, we’re continuing to be in the game,’ and all the new metrics really, really do count, but we also know that we’re on a strong signal, which we could tell advertisers as well that their ads, their content is going to be hard on this great signal,” Kay said. “I don’t know if I would have gone up this hill without those two guys explaining to me exactly what we were doing, but my utmost belief in them made it worthwhile for me to continue in the battle with them.”
Williamson departed ESPN this past April after working with the company for nearly four decades, and a few months later, the network announced a sweeping restructuring of its content division. David Roberts was subsequently named an executive vice president and the executive editor of sports news and entertainment and has oversight over ESPN Audio content. There had been discussions about Kay’s future in afternoon drive before this time, but the structural alterations at the company added layers and cultivated ambiguity.
“It went from one hand to the next and to the next, and everybody was kind of frozen on what they could do,” Kay said, “and we talked parameters with money and stuff like that, and finally, I just said, ‘This is silly. No matter what I get paid, I’m not going to do it the right way’ in terms of my age and the length of time that you have to commit to it because if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right.”
With Roberts overseeing the audio division, he asked Kay what it would take and what he would be able to provide about a month and a half ago. Within two weeks of these questions being posited, including a subsequent discussion with Karmazin and Politziner, he reached a new multiyear deal with the company. A two-hour show featuring Kay had been talked about towards the end of the baseball season, and it was now slated to become a reality in middays. Even though he will be hosting solo, Kay believes it will be beneficial for his co-hosts to move on from The Michael Kay Show and have their names on an afternoon drive program.
“I think a two-hour show for me doing it alone, this way I’m not weighing anybody down with my schedule or anything like that, and it started out with me alone a long, long time ago before Tim slid in Don, so it’s kind of going back to the future a little bit,” Kay said. “But leaving those two is very, very difficult, and leaving the bulk of afternoon drive is difficult because that’s the prime real estate in radio – morning and afternoon drive.”
Once it became public knowledge that The Michael Kay Show was ending in its current iteration, fans reached out to the hosts to divulge their gratitude through social media, phone calls and direct messages. Making the adjustment to the new schedule, which takes effect in full on Monday, Jan. 6, will take some time for Kay as he prepares for this new challenge.
“I want to engage with the listeners a lot, take phone calls and just be creative and clever,” Kay said. “I’ve been going over a lot of things in my head that I want to do, which I haven’t quite nailed down specifically, but it’s going to have the same fun vibe, I hope, because I’m still out of my mind.”
During the baseball season, Kay will host editions of the midday program from home or at a hotel depending on the schedule and will usually have a four-hour gap until the start of the game. To demonstrate his commitment to the vision at ESPN New York, he signed a multiyear contract with the outlet, coinciding with new agreements for Rosenberg and Hahn as well. On top of that, Kay’s deal to call Yankees baseball on YES Network is not yet finished as he approaches his 34th year broadcasting games for the team.
“I believe that this is more sustainable over the longer haul than doing afternoon drive and going right to a Yankee game,” Kay said. “So yeah, I’ll be around for a while. We’ll see how it works out. We’ll see if they want me.”
After the final show came to a conclusion from Tommy’s Tavern + Tap in Clifton. N.J., Kay and his colleagues stayed at the restaurant for two hours to speak with the fans, signing autographs and taking pictures. Even though the program had officially ended its 22-year run, Kay wanted the fans to know how important they were to the show and thank them for their support.
As Kay makes the transition to the new timeslot, he is grateful for everyone involved in his broadcasting career and looks forward to the shorter runway. ESPN New York remains widely accessible to listeners through terrestrial and digital platforms, and he is optimistic that everything will work out. Kay, who is one of the longest tenured voices at the station, remains dedicated to serving the audience and bringing his nuanced opinions and analysis to the airwaves.
“[The show] was great – it really was – and it didn’t feel like 22 years,” Kay said. “It felt like we started it, I don’t know, a couple of years ago. It went by so fast, and there are a lot of highs [and] some lows like with anything in life, and I’m pretty proud of the work that we all did. So 22 years, it seems like forever, but it didn’t feel like that when you were in the middle of it.”
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Derek Futterman is an associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, email Derek@BarrettMedia.com or find him on X @derekfutterman.
