The staff at 97.1 The Fan were forced to evacuate their studios and office space and put ESPN Radio programming on the air on Thursday afternoon after a suspicious package was mailed to the TEGNA sports radio station.
After returning from a commercial break, Anthony Rothman — host of the station’s midday show — alerted listeners to the fact that he and co-host Matty “Ice” Hayes were being told to evacuate the building, along with the rest of the employees.
“In full transparency, this has never happened in all the years that we’ve been at the station, but I want to do this quickly and efficiently and not scare anybody here at our station,” said Rothman. “But when you work at a media situation, TV station, radio station, there can be some things that come about that have emergency situations.
“Evacuating a building for us is really not that convenient, because we’re on the air, and obviously we’re providing a service to you and our fine listeners here at The Fan, but Matty and I have recently been told that here in our building, that we have been issued an evacuation, out of cautiousness for something that might be here, might have arrived, and we’re not going to ask any questions.
“So what we’re going to do is we’re going to switch over to our national ESPN shows, and hopefully we will be back with you shortly, but we want to abide by this,” continued Rothman. “We want to choose safety overall, and we appreciate you having the patience with us, because this has never happened. So thank you very much for your patience. We hope to be back with you here before the end of our show, and, of course, before Common Man and T-Bone.
“Right now, we will do what we are being told to do, and evacuate our building. Hopefully, everyone is safe at this point and we will continue to be safe. So thank you for listening. Hopefully, we’ll talk to you very shortly.”
The station immediately began airing programming from ESPN Radio after the final comments from Rothman.
Police channel blotter from Columbus indicates a package was mailed to 97.1 The Fan that contained a powdery substance.
A statement from the station on social media reads “We are currently running ESPN Network programming due to a situation in our offices that has caused us to evacuate the building, temporarily. We plan to return to local programming ASAP. Keep an eye out on our social media for further updates.”
At 3 PM, the station returned to local programming, with its afternoon show — Common Man & T-Bone, hosted by Mike Ricordati and Jonathan Smith — broadcasting remotely.
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