A few weeks ago Michael Kay was in two places at once, hosting the first hour of his radio show while simultaneously calling an afternoon Yankee game. On Tuesday, Pete Rose performed a similar trick as New York sports radio listeners were able to hear the all-time MLB hit king on two rival stations at once, WFAN and ESPN NY.
The New York sports radio war between Michael Kay and Mike Francesa has intensified as the ratings gap closed in the last year, but simultaneously broadcasting an interview with the same guest is a new battle tactic.
Francesa promoted the segment with Rose on Monday, touting it as the first stop on his new book tour, unaware that crosstown rival, Michael Kay had plans of conducting the same interview.
The Rose interview with Kay started at 3:30pm, with Francesa’s set to begin at 4pm, but Rose’s segment on WFAN was pushed to an earlier start time once YES and ESPN began broadcasting his interview with The Michael Kay Show. The ability to have an abrupt time change led many people on Twitter to assume the WFAN spot with Rose was prerecorded and Kay’s was live, when in fact it was Francesa’s show that had the live interview.
If watching the Kay Show on YES, the audience clearly saw the interview presented as “recorded earlier, but radio listeners might not have been aware Kay’s interview with Rose was the one on tape delay.
As Rose was sitting in studio with Francesa, Mike’s On producer, Brian Monzo was on Twitter, seemingly confused why he needed to prove to listeners the interview was occurring live. Newsday’s Neil Best clarified that Kay’s interview with Rose was indeed prerecorded, which caused the story to take an interesting turn.
Kay sarcastically called Best a “sleuth” on Twitter, triggering the social media account, @BackAftaThis to defend the longtime Newsday columnist.
For his next tweet, Kay referred to Francesa as a legendary broadcaster and directed his animosity toward @BackAftaThis, the Twitter account notorious for making fun of WFAN’s iconic host. @BackAftaThis has garnered a national following since Francesa unretired a year ago, by continuously sharing Francesa’s on-air gaffs. The account has yet to be shut down by Entercom and WFAN, consistently helping Francesa to go viral on social media, even if it’s due to people laughing at his mistakes.
Kay questioned whether or not the man behind the curtain of the @BackAftaThis account was working for WFAN. Although the account does bring Francesa a lot of media attention, it’s hard to imagine Mike allowing FAN to employ someone with the sole purpose of broadcasting his embarrassing mistakes as a full-time job.
What should have remained a battle between the two New York afternoon sports radio hosts, ended up as a fight between two Francesa foes, all while the Sports Pope pretended to have no idea what was going on.
Brandon Contes is a freelance writer for BSM. He can be found on Twitter @BrandonContes. To reach him by email click here.
