Maggie Gray’s journey through sports radio has contained many twists and turns, hosting both at the local and national level. Today, she is the co-host of the weekday afternoon program, Maggie & Perloff, on CBS Sports Radio.
Before returning to national radio though, Gray joined Bart Scott and Chris Carlin to form a new afternoon trio at WFAN. In an appearance with Brandon Contes on the Awful Announcing Podcast, Gray expanded on the pressure she felt in taking over WFAN’s heralded afternoon slot upon Mike Francesa’s initial retirement from the station.
“I don’t even know if I unpacked fully how much pressure that was because in the moment when you’re preparing for the show, it’s exciting and you’re getting to know your co-hosts and kind of the lay of the land at FAN and everything,” Gray said. “There’s almost too much going on for that to sink in. Like, ‘Oh boy, this person was with our audience for 30 years or whatever,’ and now we’re about to ask them to come along the ride with us.”
Gray expressed how the familiarity she had with her co-hosts and the chemistry they cultivated preceding its commencement diminished the ostensible pressure she believes she would have felt.
“You can’t think about the hundreds of thousands of people or whatever who are listening,” Gray said. “You’d lose it; it’d be impossible to quantify the audience. In the room, it always felt comfortable. There wasn’t a lot of pressure, but I mean on the outside, that was a crazy time.”
Looking back on the changeover in afternoons, Gray still is not sure if Francesa was having second thoughts about retirement. In the end, he made his return to the station less than five months later, which aligned with the launch of the Mike’s On digital products. Gray’s time slot was changed, the start of the program’s gradual denouement which included Carlin being fired from the station, Bart Scott leaving for crosstown rival ESPN New York, and Gray eventually being reassigned to host in the midday with Marc Malusis.
Gray still felt her program had the support of management at WFAN, with many hoping that they would prove to be an enduring, winning combination.
“I think there were a lot of people in this company who placed a bet on me and Carlin and Bart and wanted to be right,” Gray said. “[They] wanted to show like, ‘Hey, we can do this kind of transition; and we can do Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers; we can do Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck. Maybe we’ll find another hit, and we’ll just be able to go on seamlessly.”
She recalled a meeting with Francesa and former WFAN program director Mark Chernoff and received information on the best practices to effectuate success in the afternoons. Still, she would be curious to know whether or not Francesa knew at the time that he was mulling over an eventual return to the airwaves.
“I asked him if he would ever want to come on the show,” Gray said of Francesa. “He said, ‘Absolutely not.’ I think there was maybe a lot more going on than I was privy to. I’m not going to know everything – and that’s totally fine – but I think there might have been more going on behind the scenes with that transition than I ever knew.”
