Spike Eskin takes pride in the WFAN he'll leave behind soon
Spike Eskin Credit: WFAN
Monday would have been a heck of a day to be a Philadelphia sports talk radio host, what with the Eagles plucking Saquon Barkley from the Giants and Bryce Huff from the Jets.
But Spike Eskin still was on the New York side of such discussions, working as usual in his office as program director of WFAN.
Eskin remains in a transition period since WFAN announced in January that he would leave his post after three years to be an on-air personality at WIP in Philadelphia, WFAN’s Audacy sister station, where Eskin was an executive before joining WFAN.
Chris Oliviero, market president for Audacy New York, told Newsday the search for Eskin’s replacement is ongoing and he hopes to wrap it up by the end of this spring, a timetable Eskin said would be “optimal for everyone.”
Regardless, Eskin’s term is coming to an end. How does he view it? “Really positively,” he said.
He said the challenge of New York was part of the initial attraction, “and as big as I thought it was, it was probably bigger than I thought it was. I think New York in general is more challenging than you could probably describe to somebody who hasn't experienced it.
“You can say it's bigger, but it's sort of like if you know how to lift 10 pounds, I could tell you that 40 pounds is heavier, but you can't really conceptualize that until you try to lift 40 pounds.”
But he said the payoff was worth the work, especially in his interactions with the staff, most of which seems to have positive feelings about his stewardship.
When Eskin took over from longtime program director Mark Chernoff, part of his mission was improving the station’s digital and social media presence.
He also has moved the station more toward non-sports talk – sometimes known as “guy talk” – as have many stations around the country, including WIP.
“I feel like we took a great maybe first and second step toward where the station needs to go,” he said. “It's really hard to adjust a radio station that already has such a great heritage and people who love it so much, because they don't actively want it to change. They want it to stay the same.”
With that in mind, he said it is important to make changes gradually and carefully.
“They have to be sort of slow, because they'll react to every shake,” he said. “Like on a cruise ship. It hits a big wave and all of a sudden everybody feels it.
“But I would say that I think the radio station is in a position to succeed now and I'm really happy. I'm proud of the job that I did.”
On Eskin’s watch, WFAN revamped its midday and afternoon shows, changes prompted by Craig Carton departing last summer. Eskin moved Tiki Barber from middays to afternoons with Evan Roberts, and Sal Licata from overnights to middays with Brandon Tierney.
Eskin said that in making changes at WIP and WFAN, “even ones that when you walk in everybody's saying this change needs to happen, then you make it and there was a contingent of listeners at both places that will tell you that you're an idiot for doing those things. So you sort of get used to that.”
But he praised the staff for buying in.
“My goal is to foster more creative energy and try to push things forward,” he said. “You can be a slave to whatever happened the night before. So your job just becomes talking about what happened the day before. That's so boring and passive. We can't survive that way.
“Our job is to look forward and push forward and how do we move everything ahead. You have to be really creative, or it gets really boring really quick. I think there are a lot of people here that responded to that in a positive way.
“It's challenging. It's different, but it's more fun, I think.”
Eskin was program director at WIP from 2014 to 2021. His father, Howard, is a prominent sports media personality in Philadelphia and was a longtime afternoon drive time host there through 2011.
Oliviero said he is “super-excited” for Eskin but added, “It's a loss for us. I jokingly said to Spike, ‘The previous guy who had the job held it for 30 plus years. I'm only getting three out of you.’
“But the highest compliment I could give Spike is what I've said to him: ‘Even if I would have known three years ago when I was going through the process that I was only going to get three years from you, I still would have hired you.’”
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.
