WFAN maintains morning dominance in January ratings
WFAN morning show with Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti on Feb. 3, 2022, in New York. Credit: Brittainy Newman
ESPN New York’s move to an all-local morning show in January did little to change the sports talk radio ratings race.
WFAN’s Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti more than quadrupled the audience share among men ages 25-54 compared to ESPN from 6 to 10 a.m.
The January ratings, which cover Jan. 5 through Feb. 1, were released on Tuesday by Nielsen Audio and obtained by Newsday from an industry source.
They showed WFAN No. 1 overall in the market with 11.4% of the audience and ESPN’s Rick DiPietro and Dave Rothenberg with 2.6%, which was 16th overall.
Those numbers are similar to the autumn ratings, when ESPN still carried a national program from 8 to 10 a.m. WFAN ranked first in the fall and ESPN 15th.
Radio ratings traditionally are measured in full quarterly books, so the January data is akin to the first period of a hockey game.
WFAN continued to hold a commanding lead between 3 and 6:30 p.m., when the stations’ afternoon shows overlap, with WFAN at 7.7% of the audience among men 25-54 and ESPN at 3.1%.
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.
