DC Radio: Redskins Reportedly Not Happy With WJFK Parodies

Danny Rouhier

In the series of dead-on weekly parodies, which began last month, Washington sports-talk radio station WJFK 106.75 FM The Fan has fun at the expense of the Redskins and their radio broadcasters, Larry Michael, Sonny Jurgensen and Chris Cooley.

According to The Washington Post, the bits, performed by mid-day cohost Danny Rouhier (who has done standup comedy) and produced by Ajay Atayee, are a mock play-by-play of a Redskins game, voiced primarily by Rouhier (Roo-Yay) as a fake Larry Michael and fake Jurgensen. Actual clips of Cooley — like Jurgensen, a former Redskin — are included in the routines.

In addition to mocking the team’s poor play, the routines have skewered everything from long waits and high prices at FedEx Field (“This score means all fans in attendance can wander the parking-lot wasteland and sit in traffic. All that for 50 bucks!”) to Snyder’s occasional litigiousness (one segment is fake-sponsored by “Michaels, Michaels, Michaels & Michaels — official suing partner of the Washington Redskins”).

Actual Redskins games are broadcast on a network of stations headed by WTEM AM ESPN980, a station owned by Snyder himself. So WJFK’s parodies are triple-edged: a shot at the woebegone team, its owner, and a chief radio rival, ESPN980.

The parodies may have cut a little too close to the bone.

Team spokesman Tony Wyllie complained about them to WJFK’s Redskins beat reporter, Grant Paulsen, last week. According to station sources, Wyllie said the routines were malicious — so malicious that they could prompt legal action by the Redskins.

Read More Now