Gregg Giannotti responds to Mike Francesa's comments that WFAN morning show 'stinks'
Boomer Esiason, left, and Gregg Giannotti co-host the "Boomer & Gio" morning show on WFAN. Credit: Richard Mitchell
Gregg Giannotti sharply responded to Mike Francesa on Thursday morning, calling his WFAN colleague an insecure narcissist after Francesa the day before said the station’s morning show “stinks.”
“What he is is he’s an insecure bully who thinks those things are going to affect me, affect us, and it just doesn’t,” Giannotti said on the air at about 7:15 a.m.
Giannotti also mocked the content of Francesa’s show itself.
The trigger was a caller at around 7:15 a.m. who referenced Francesa’s comments, in which he said he listened to the morning show for an hour and was not a fan.
Francesa said Giannotti is “short on ability” and urged him to stop doing his impersonation of him and get new material. He also referenced an argument Giannotti and midday host Chris Carlin recently had outside WFAN’s studios.
Regarding the argument, Giannotti said, “Carlin approached me in the street and he was angry about that [parody] song I wrote for James Dolan, about no one listening to ‘CMB,’ and we talked it out and hugged at the end, and it turned into ‘those two morons rolling around in the street in a UFC fight, two morons out there punching each other.’”
Giannotti then noted that Francesa insists he does not listen to the morning show yet admitted that he listened on Wednesday for an hour, then spent three minutes talking about it on the air.
“I know we’re sophomoric and we joke around and we do a radio show and can be immature at times,” Giannotti said. “Of course, I’m aware of that. But the thing that I’m proudest of the most about being with this group, is how we handle things like this. It’s radio. We have fun. We joke around. We mock people. We get mocked.
“I’m not getting upset about it. I was laughing at this yesterday more than anything else. What he is is he’s an insecure bully who thinks those things are going to affect me, affect us, and it just doesn’t.”
Then Giannotti switched into his mock Francesa voice and said, “Not everybody can have new material like me who’s been doing the same show for 30 years now, and listen, the guy is limited. He’s not talented. I’ll tell you, listen, I’ll show you talent. Talent is doing what I do, OK?
“Talent is doing what I do, where I open up the show, I make generic comments for five, six minutes, roughly, I take a break and I go out in the newsroom and eat some M&Ms. And I come back and I take calls for hours and hours and hours and then occasionally I put on a paid guest that I talk over the entire time.
“You couldn’t do what I do. You couldn’t do that. You couldn’t come on the air and be like, ‘Well, the leaves are coming and it’s November folks,’ and we’re back and then take a thousand generic phone calls and talk down to them and be condescending. That, right there, is talent. Seriously, because I’ll show how to do a show.
“What you do is stay at home and you sit there and take call after call after call and then occasionally have a woman in to talk about her book about Babe Ruth, that’s what you do. That’s how you do a show. You want to do an entertaining show, you do that. Take it from me because I know how to do.”
Giannotti then reverted to his own voice and said, “I’ve gotten to this point now where when I hear this stuff my first reaction is to crack up. Because I’m the opposite of what he is.
"A guy like Mike, who you would think someone like me would look up to him and say I’ll follow in his footsteps and that’s a mentor and he’s done it this way his entire career and this is the guy that I need to follow, and in way I have, but he’s shown me the path I need to go, which is the opposite of his path.
"Because I never want to be the person who has had all the success that he's had, all the money that he’s made, and be as miserable as he is and insecure and narcissistic and miserable and that’s what he is. I can laugh at this stuff, you [co-host Boomer Esiason] can laugh at this stuff, Joe and Evan can laugh at this stuff, Carlin laughs at this stuff, CMB, everybody laughs. But with him: Can’t laugh. Can’t do it. And it comes from that place, that place, that narcissism that’s driven by all his insecurities. It [stinks] that that's the way it is and I wish we could all be one happy family and just be able to laugh, but not everybody can be us, right Boomer?”
Upon being apprised of Giannotti’s comments early Thursday afternoon, Francesa said, “Not worthy of comment.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
