Amid the 19-year run of Mike Francesa and Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo hosting together on WFAN, the duo decided to start giving their opinions on the Academy Awards. The segments resonated with Bill Simmons, the founder of The Ringer and head of talk strategy at Spotify, and he recollected on the sports talk radio program during a recent episode of his podcast.
The conversation began with Simmons asking Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, his opinion about how the hosts would have reacted to the Game 2 loss by the New York Knicks against the Indiana Pacers. After doing an impersonation of Francesa and Russo, Simmons expounded on his memories pertaining to the Oscars segment.
“That was to me, that created podcasting,” Simmons said. “Mike and the Mad Dog decided they were going to weigh in. I feel like they created it when they weighed in on the ‘94 Oscars or the Emmys. I was like, ‘This is the mode for something down the road.’”
Stewart conveyed how influential the duo has proven to be for the broadcasting domain, highlighting how it is more Russo now than Francesa. In addition to his weekday SiriusXM program on Mad Dog Sports Radio, Russo also makes weekly appearances on ESPN’s First Take. Francesa is the host of a podcast through the BetRivers Network and has also been a guest on First Take for a special reunion episode featuring Russo alongside featured commentator Stephen A. Smith.
“I feel like a lot of the people that have huge platforms now, and I include myself, were massively influenced by that specific show because of the interplay back and forth with those guys is really what podcasting became,” Simmons acknowledged.
Stewart added that shows like First Take are directly from the ilk of Francesa and Russo’s radio program, and he concurrently reflected on the beginnings of WFAN when the station first took the air in 1987. In fact, he explained that the show lit up sports in such a manner that everyone kind of does their best impression of the duo today. Simmons then spoke about the current state of WFAN, describing some of the show as performative and admitting that the clips are really funny as well.
“The problem I have now sometimes with the FAN is a lot of the voices sound the same,” Stewart said. “The nice thing about Dog and Francesa is they were like Hall & Oates. Like one guy sang high blues and the other guy and every now and again with the – so that treble and bass really worked. Now you get shows that are like, ‘Treble, treble,’ and it’s you don’t know who’s talking and they’re all at the same pitch, and it’s just kind of cacophony and, like you say, pretty performative, pretty obviously takes with kind of holes in them. Still fun to listen to, but we’re also old heads.”
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