NYC Radio: WFAN's Carton Narrows The Gap With WEPN's Kay

WEPN's ESPN 98.7 FM New York’s "The Michael Kay Show" held off WFAN 101.9 FM / 660 AM’s new afternoon program for the first full month of the stations’ renewed drive time ratings battle, but Craig Carton helped WFAN significantly cut into Kay’s margin, according to Neil Best at Newsday.

For the period covering Nov. 5 through Dec. 2, ESPN ranked second overall in the market with 6.5% of the listening audience among men ages 25-54 from 3 to 7 p.m., while WFAN was fifth at 5.4, according to Nielsen data.

That was a smaller gap than in the prior month from Oct. 8 to Nov. 4, during which ESPN had a winning margin of 7.2 to 4.7 against WFAN’s Evan Roberts and Joe Benigno.

Craig Carton

Carton’s impact was even more evident when comparing WFAN to ESPN for the totality of Carton’s and Roberts’ 2 to 7 p.m. shift.

Over those five hours, WFAN averaged 5.8% of the audience, third-best in the market, compared to 5.7 for ESPN New York, which ranked fourth. (Kay’s show does not start until 3 p.m.)

For the full autumn ratings book, which covers Sept. 10 to Dec. 2, WFAN maintained its longtime dominance over ESPN from 6 to 10 a.m. Gregg Giannotti and Boomer Esiason were first among all stations in the market with 6.5% of the audience and ESPN finished 14th at 3.1 with a new national morning show featuring Keyshawn Johnson, Jay Williams and Zubin Mehenti.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., WFAN’s Maggie Gray and Marc Malusis ranked third with 5.7% of the audience. ESPN was ninth at 3.8%.