It’s a dog-eat-dog radio jungle out there, and WFAN has come face-to-face with the most vicious enemy yet.
Itself.
The Big Apple’s famed sports radio station was already dueling with challenges faced by every broadcaster — which is this cataclysmic media environment where content is being delivered in manners unimaginable years ago.
But now WFAN has to be saved from itself.
The Fan is reaching new lows with its own set of unique humiliations, with Craig Carton’s arrest on Wednesday, the ill-fated dalliance with Chris Christie this summer and the impending, not-so-gentle shove out the door of its biggest name, Mike Francesa.
That’s a lot to overcome.
It’s been an all-too-eventful year for WFAN, which this summer appeared to be close to hiring New Jersey’s term-limited governor to spike listenership.
Hail Mary publicity stunts are nothing new in sports media.
There was the two-year Dennis Miller experiment on “Monday Night Football” in 2000-01 and Rush Limbaugh’s brief 2003 gig on ESPN.
Those hires had more than a whiff of desperation.
Unorthodox long shots certainly can work — but Christie, with his scandal-plagued reputation and microscopic approval ratings, wasn’t going to be the answer.
Thankfully, both Christie and WFAN stepped aside before that train wreck could get rolling.
And while listeners bid a nostalgic farewell to Francesa, he’s another reminder of what WFAN was — with no clear vision of what it has to be, to survive.
The “Mike” of “Mike and the Mad Dog” had been slouching toward retirement for a while now.
Between his occasional bouts with drowsiness or failure to recognize modern language (“Asian Americans,” not “Orientals,” just to name a few flubs), Francesa has become emblematic of old — as in not modern — school WFAN.
Still, it’d be foolish to write WFAN’s obit.
The call letters alone make WFAN one of sports media’s most well-known brands. It’s still formidable in this, the nation’s most fierce sports media market.
But where do you go for this fountain of radio youth? Who knows?
It’s clearly not through a sleepy Francesa simulcast, Gov. Christie putting on headsets or investing in Carton’s ticket-industry connections.
Robert Thompson is director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University.