Don Imus, a staple of morning drive for WFAN for nearly two decades, passed away five years ago today at the age of 79. Imus, who had a broadcasting career spanning more than 50 years, brought his irreverent and oftentimes controversial style to the New York City airwaves and is widely seen as a key contributor to the growth of the sports talk-formatted radio station.
One year after the launch of WFAN in 1987, Imus joined the radio station and brought his signature program, Imus in the Morning, to the sports outlet. Although the offering included elements of sports talk, including updates, the format centered more on news, entertainment and politics. Imus brought the audience he had built over two stints with WNBC as the station signed off the 660 AM frequency and concluded its 66-year run. WFAN moved to the 660 AM frequency in October 1988 after it had launched on 1050 AM during the previous July, and it quickly established a schedule featuring Imus in morning drive and the duo of Mike Francesa and Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo in afternoons.
Imus was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1989, and his show achieved massive popularity throughout its years on WFAN. After making racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers women’s college basketball team in 2007, Imus was fired by CBS Radio effective immediately. Imus joined WABC a few months later and continued broadcasting until March 2018, leaving early when Cumulus Media was in the midst of a restructuring under Ch. 11 bankruptcy. Imus passed away on Dec. 27, 2019 in College Station, Texas after he had been hospitalized a few days earlier.
Barrett Media recently asked about Imus’ legacy and his impact on WFAN with several executives who have or currently work at the sports talk radio station. Please note that answers are edited for length and clarity.
How important was Don Imus to the rise and growth of WFAN?
Jeff Smulyan – Chief Executive Officer, Emmis Communications
“Absolutely critical. I don’t think a lot of people realize that, and a lot of things came together all at once. Moving it to 660, [and] shortly after that, Mike and the Mad Dog, but Don really — I’ve always said Don was really the key because Don brought in a different audience and he was the darling of Wall Street, and he brought in a lot of male decision makers who sort of didn’t know they liked sports, but discovered it because they were listening to Don.”
Rick Cummings – Former President of Radio Programming, Emmis Communications
“EVERYTHING is the simple answer. He taught us the key to successful ‘sports talk’ was ENTERTAINMENT, not an endless stream of information and drivel.”
Mark Chernoff – Former Program Director, WFAN
“Imus just made [a] huge difference at the radio station because FAN, being an all-sports station, Imus is not all sports. Yes, he did sports, and we had Mike Breen doing sports on his show, but the priority was Imus to be Imus, and he brought people the radio station in the morning and allowed the station to grow immensely.”
Chris Oliviero – New York Market President, Audacy
“Imus was like the big free agent signing that an expansion team might make to bring instant star power to the club and send a message to the marketplace that they are serious about competing. That was Don in 1988.”
What did Don Imus do that specifically helped the brand elevate to a different level?
Jeff Smulyan:
“I think he gave it credibility. I always said one of my favorite bits of all time was his sign off, where he said, ‘This ends the entertainment portion of today’s programming. For the next 24 hours, you’re going to hear mindless drivel from morons about sports. Tune back in tomorrow morning for more entertainment,’ but everybody rallied around it. Everybody knew that he brought something the station didn’t have. He took his listeners and got them interested in FAN. The combination of the better frequency and Imus, and then the growth of Mike and the Mad Dog just put it over the top.”
Rick Cummings:
“His brand of irreverence and his humorous means of calling BS on all manner of things widened our appeal dramatically. You no longer had to be a Mets fan steeped in player stats to love FAN. NON sports fanatics loved the station too. Don taught us the formula, which we spread to other dayparts like Mike and the Mad Dog (more sports-centric but with that leading edge of entertainment).”
Chris Oliviero:
“First Imus bought WFAN much needed time and breathing room in the early days to figure out exactly what the rest of the 19.5 hours of the broadcast day should sound like for this new uncharted format of sports radio. And second, he helped make stars of his new teammates by shining a light on them to his audience, most famously Mike & The Mad Dog. In wrestling parlance, he put them over.”
Mark Chernoff:
“Before I got there, he did a switch with the Connecticut governor, Lowell Weicker, where Imus was governor for a day in Connecticut, and I think that set him up to understand and have politics becoming a part of his show. And in, I guess it was ’92 when Bill Clinton ran for president, Bill Clinton back then would even say Imus made a huge difference in his campaign. It humanized Bill Clinton, and Imus became an important person in the world of politics, and I believe it was in TIME magazine that Imus was voted one of the 25 most influential people in America, and a lot of it had to do with getting Bill Clinton on his show and making a name for himself in the world of politics. He started having guests from that world, besides the world of entertainment [and] an occasional sports guest.
“When Boomer Esiason came over, he was on with Imus back then as the Jets quarterback, but they could talk more than sports. But Imus became an important player, not just being a shock jock anymore, which is what many people thought of. ‘Oh yeah, Imus is a shock jock.’ Well, it’s not that he didn’t do comedy. He did, and he could be outrageous some of the time, but he also now had a different kind of a following or an additional kind of a following because he was so wrapped up in what was going on in the world as well.”
Looking back five years after Don’s passing, how should his legacy and connection to WFAN be remembered?
Jeff Smulyan:
“Don — and the way things ended, and of course, [that] was long after my tenure — but Don was an American original, and I thought the world of him. He was challenging. We always had a great relationship, but he was challenging to manage. I always kidded Randy Bongarten. Randy managed Howard Stern and Don, and he said, ‘Howard could do whatever he did on the air and cause you all sorts of problems, and at 10:00 in the morning, he could clinically discuss what he had done.’ He said, ‘Don was Don 24 hours a day. Sometimes good, sometimes challenging.’
“I was an Imus fan long before I owned that radio station, and I told the story when we were buying NBC and I met with Mike Lynn, who was his agent, and we laughed and I said, ‘Mike, let me see if I get this right. We’re talking about putting Don on the air, so we’re going to have a radio station which is losing record amounts of money, we’ve got an anchor of a baseball team that has more drug problems than you could imagine, and we got a guy who’s just come out of rehab, and we’re going to put them all together. What could possibly go wrong?,’ but it all worked, and I always thought that in any Hall of Fame of broadcasting, Imus is right at the top.”
Rick Cummings:
“Imus was supposed to be one of the original ‘shock jocks.’ But he morphed into the ultimate power broker in the tri-state area. When Bill Clinton campaigned, Imus was a mandatory stop. Every major banker and Wall Street decision-maker not only listened, they insisted on buying commercials (at very high rates mind you) in his show. If you wanted to be seen or heard, you HAD to have Imus.”
Mark Chernoff:
“He was a game-changer — very much a game-changer for the radio station. Even Mike Francesa and Chris Russo will say that without Imus, the station may not have grown to where it grew. Imus talked up Mike and Chris — he made fun of them some of the time and had fun with them some of the time — but by certainly introducing them, because they both had done sports on his show, not together, but he really helped them out because he had such a big audience back in those days, and he brought a lot of other people to the table. It also helped that we had the Mets, but much more important was how much Imus meant for the radio station.”
Chris Oliviero:
“You cannot write the history of WFAN without Don Imus. He was the foundational cornerstone that all the future decades of success was built upon. He also made WFAN a national brand from the cover of TIME Magazine to MSNBC to making his studio a must visit for the nation’s biggest political heavyweights. But you also must write the whole WFAN story, the beginning, the middle and the end, which of course was sad and painful for so many. Though not at WFAN, Imus did go on to try to rewrite a new ending of amends. Simply, I would say his legacy is complicated that needs to be studied in totality.”
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
