How WFAN made the big play
IF WFAN had been a pitcher, says Joel Hollander, it might not be celebrating its 25th anniversary this weekend. It might not have made it out of the first inning.
And then who knows what would have happened to the multibillion-dollar sports-radio and sports-talk industry, for which WFAN was the first and is still the strongest template?
When Suzyn Waldman officially put WFAN (660 AM) on the air, July 1, 1987, even many at Emmis Broadcasting, which owned the station, thought it couldn’t succeed.
“Talk sports all-day?” says Mark Chernoff, the current operations manager. “Who’d want to listen to that?”
“Then after we launched,” recalls Hollander, who was the sales manager, “everything went wrong. We couldn’t sell any advertising. And since there’d never been an all-sports station before, no one knew how to run it.
“By April [1988], most people have no idea how close it was to folding.”
But Emmis chief Jeff Smulyan brought in consultants who explained that it could work if it dropped the NASCAR reports and syndicated hosts and focused on what New York sports fans talk about: New York teams.
Bringing in Don Imus as morning host “was also a turning point,” says Hollander, who became general manager in 1991 and stayed until 1998.
WFAN lost $4 million the first year, and was turning it around by the early 1990s. That’s when Chernoff says the station hit the drama he most remembers.
“It was spring 1994,” he says. “The Rangers were making their run for the Stanley Cup and the Knicks were in the NBA finals.
“Basketball and hockey have never been as big as baseball and football, but that spring there was an electricity you could feel. We were sending hosts everywhere. The city was on fire, and we were right at the center of it.”
The FAN has generated stars of its own, starting with the afternoon team of Mike Francesa and Chris Russo, now at Sirius XM.
“Love Mike or hate him, he’s the standard for sports-talk radio,” says Hollander. “When he and Chris started, there was no competition, really. Today there’s ESPN and hundreds of radio stations, and Mike is still No. 1.”
But the broader success, says Chernoff, came from finding the pocket and staying in it.
“We’re live and local 24/7,” he says. “We know what New York fans want to hear.”
Hollander says that commitment extends beyond programming to the dozens of charities WFAN has helped support, going back to Dave Sims’ help for Tomorrow’s Children.
“No station has more social responsibility,” says Hollander.
WFAN has been marking its 25th anniversary all spring and will continue through the summer. It’s been running polls on the greatest New York athletes, top moments of the past 25 years and all the other things its hosts and callers have dissected for countless hours over those years.
To mark the actual anniversary date Sunday, Chernoff has invited some of the best-known hosts and teams back for — well, more an alumni day than an Old-Timers’ Day (see schedule below).
“Of all the jobs I have had in radio,” says Hollander, who at one point ran CBS Radio, “WFAN was the most fun.”