WFAN's 'Carton and Roberts' nearly doubles ESPN's 'Michael Kay Show' in May ratings
From left to right, producer Tommy Lugauer, Craig Carton, Evan Roberts and producer Chris McMonigle in WFAN's newly redesigned studio for the "Carton and Roberts" simulcast on SNY on May 24, 2021. Credit: Corey Sipkin
WFAN’s afternoon program cruised to another comfortable victory in the monthly ratings period for May, nearly doubling its competition at ESPN New York.
Craig Carton and Evan Roberts finished second overall in the market with an average of 6.3% of men ages 25-54 listening to WFAN from 3 to 6:30 p.m., compared with 13th place and 3.2% for “The Michael Kay Show” on ESPN 98.7-FM.
The data, compiled by Nielsen Audio, was released on Monday and obtained by Newsday from an industry source.
Carton and Roberts won the full, quarterly winter ratings book over Kay and are on pace to win by a bigger margin for the spring, which still has one month to go.
Men ages 25-54 traditionally is the demographic by which both sports stations judge themselves, but if one includes all ages and genders, Carton and Roberts are ahead by an even greater margin.
WFAN’s morning show starring Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti finished second overall with 8.7% of the audience for May, and the midday show starring Brandon Tierney and Tiki Barber was seventh at 4.0. ESPN’s ratings were 2.8 and 2.1 for those time periods.
WFAN’s morning and afternoon shows both trailed only the Spanish-language music station WSKQ-FM in the overall market ratings.
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.
