WFAN's program schedule revamp, sparked by Craig Carton's return to afternoons on January 5, remains unfinished: the station still lacks a permanent overnight host, drawing significant listener attention and questions.
Audacy New York market president and chief business officer Chris Oliviero told Newsday that the reaction to this gap has been surprisingly strong, even more than to Carton's high-profile comeback."
So it's funny," Oliviero said. "I think I hurt Craig's feelings when I said recently that we got more reaction for not naming an overnight host than for him. I said it tongue in cheek, obviously. But what I wanted to communicate was people are so passionate about this radio station, the fact that we did not announce a permanent overnight host got a lot of attention... We got a ton of questions on it. Which I love because, again, it's a metric of passion. People care about all 24 hours in the day."
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| Chris Oliviero |
"If you put FAN on now at 3 o'clock in the morning, you're going to have a live local overnight host," he said. "What we haven't done is declared a permanent full-time host. So you're hearing a few various people those shifts after Tommy Lugauer's shift ends... But the commitment to live and local overnights is there. We will see if and when—and it's a question of when, it's not a question of if—we feel we have found the right person to do that permanently."
Currently, fill-ins including Al Cintron, Gordon Damer, and Pete Hoffman rotate through the post-midnight/2 a.m. (depending on games) slot following Lugauer's "After Hours" show.
The overnight slot carries unique demands: fewer commercial breaks, no 20/20 sports updates (phased out last year except for mornings), and long stretches of talk between caller interactions. This setup has historically served as a proving ground, helping talents like Steve Somers, Joe Benigno, Tony Paige, Jody McDonald, John Jastremski, and Sal Licata sharpen their skills before moving to better shifts.
Former overnight host Chris McMonigle, now co-hosting "The Carton Show" in afternoons, described the relief of escaping the grueling hours: "It’s going to be a heck of a lot easier to find sleep now. I was pretty much a zombie."