To say that Craig Carton and Evan Roberts don’t talk about sports on their WFAN afternoon show is inaccurate. What they do, on “Carton & Roberts,” is talk around sports.
Most of the conversation in the afternoons on WFAN is centered near sports, just not the meat-and-potatoes dissection of the intricacies of the local teams.
Carton, the leader of the show, treats diehard fan topics as if they are boring vegetables. Roberts lives in the daily minutia, but Carton sets the agenda. It’s Carton’s show, his radio ethos.
No segment encapsulates “Carton & Roberts” better than “WAG Wednesdays.” Every Wednesday at 5 p.m., the duo has a wife or girlfriend of a professional athlete on for an interview — and not to discuss whether the shift should be banned in baseball.
In the end, it is all about ratings — especially the main target of sports radio advertising, men ages 25 to 54. Carton is a “say-whatever, do-whatever” it takes host for the numbers. He’s a morning act, playing afternoons.
After losing the fall book to ESPN New York’s “The Michael Kay Show,” Carton and Roberts are in the midst of a comeback.
The duo took the first month of the winter book with a share of 6.1 to Kay’s 4.9, according to Nielsen Audio Ratings.
WFAN was third from 3-6:30 p.m., while ESPN New York was fifth overall. That initial month, however, is akin to the first period of a hockey game.
While the afternoon show receives the focus, because of its tenuous ratings position, WFAN is anchored by “Boomer and Gio,” which continues its dominance in the mornings, with a 9.1 share (second in the market). ESPN New York makes some dents in the morning from 5-8, when “DiPietro & Rothenberg” pick up a 3.6 share, which is eighth. (That includes ESPN NY facing the “Warm-up Show” on WFAN from 5-6, which ESPN beat by a full point this month.)
The national program, “Keyshawn, JWill & Max” doesn’t rate in New York, as it is 15th (2.7 share) in the market from 8-10 a.m.
From 10-2, WFAN has usually had an open lane to dominate ESPN, which has nearly always favored national programming. WFAN has seemingly upgraded in that slot, with the seasoned “Tiki & Tierney” replacing “Moose & Maggie.”
Tiki Barber, the former Giants running back, has what I call the “plus-3 effect.” If you were scoring a sportscaster out of 10, the fact that he or she had a tremendous playing career allows them to start with 3 points off the bat from the audience.
You have to build from there, and Barber does. He will take stands, especially when they hit home, as when the Giants were accused of being a racist organization.
The fact that “Tiki & Tierney” had been together for nearly a decade on CBS Sports Radio allows Brandon Tierney to go freely at Barber. The energetic Tierney has a lot of opinions. The next level is whether he can convince the audience to really care about them. He doesn’t begin with the “plus-3 effect.”
“Tiki & Tierney” picked up a 4.0 share (tied for seventh) from 10-2, which bested Mike Greenberg’s show from 10-noon and Bart Scott and Alan Hahn’s show, which runs from 12-3. ESPN New York had a 2.8 share (tied for 12th).
Meanwhile, ESPN New York is in the process of instituting a new ownership structure with Good Karma Brands coming in. The existential New York sports radio question is always the same: Will 98.7 ESPN New York ever go more local to really challenge WFAN?
The answer has always been no, which is why Kay beating “Carton & Roberts” in the winter book was such a story. WFAN has some built-in advantages in the afternoons, from its lead-ins to its history.
Kay’s show hits other topics, mixing in some pop culture, but really dives harder into the meat-and-potatoes of New York sports.
Meanwhile, Carton has brought Roberts into his “WAG Wednesday” world. For the first month of the winter book, the audience preferred Carton, Roberts, wives and girlfriends.
