The Day The Music Died

On July 1, 1987 the world changed forever. The first all sports talk radio station was launched, WFAN, in New York.

At first no one thought this gimmick could be sustained, but now there are 500 24 hour sports talk radio stations throughout the country. A lot of them have some nationally syndicated programming, but what makes WFAN unique is that it's all New York, all the time.

The two keys to the station's survival were getting Imus in the Morning to anchor the station, expose it to a new audience and bring in advertisers. The other was teaming up Mike and The Mad Dog in the afternoon drive time.



As much as I hate their pomposity, their ridiculousness sometimes, and their feeling that they are never, ever, EVER wrong, I do have to give them their due. They are the originals. Everyone else is copying off them. They are the best.

I have so many great memories from listening to WFAN over the last 20 years. Many of them involve staying up too late with Master Bates listening to Jody McDonald do the "Jody Mac, do we a favor" and the "McStats" half hours. In retrospect I find it hard to believe that we stayed up til 2am to listen to a guy read us the box scores from the newspaper, but this was in the days before the internet.

And of course there was Steve Somers. He's a little better now, but if you can remember him 10-15 years ago, he knew almost nothing about sports. One time before the Jets played the Oilers in the playoffs he did his little gimmick "The Fearless........................Forrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre-caster" and on two different nights he said "for the Jets, THAT's a loss" and the next night said "for the Oilers, THAT's a loss." We also loved his Captain Midnight intro "you'll never want to miss a single broadcast of Captain Midnight, and you'll want all your friends to enjoy it too."

The man who paved the way for Mike and the Mad Dog (by getting himself fired) was Pete Franklin. He was the most obnoxious, ornery sonofabitch, but he was so much fun to listen to. He called people scumbags and idiots, and every other name he could get away with. He also once got reprimanded by management for not giving out the call letters, so he yelled at a caller and said something like this, "if you don't like me, don't listen to this station, WFAN, WFAN, WFAN, don't listen to WFAN!"

Papa Poop used to drive around in the car just so Master Bates would have to listen to "Pigskin Pete Predicts" (pop the Ps really hard).

Maybe my fondest memory of the station came in the early 90s when Ed Coleman and Dave Sims ("Coleman and the Soul Man") had Fax Fridays. Papa Poop sent in a fax that was read on the air. But he was misidentified as a female. You can imagine our laughter when we heard later on the radio, "Thank you for reading my prior fax, but you called me a She. I want to assure any friends or family that might be listening that I have not had any operation."

And what about those few times I called in to Joe Beningo's show. I remember one excited call after Bobby Jones had beaten Pedro Martinez.

And of course the callers, so many famous callers, Jerome, Miriam, Eli, but the best, the most famous was Doris from Rego Park. "Thank you cough-cough for your time choke and courtesy." One day Master Bates was so frustrated by her inability to complete a sentence that he screamed out "oh Doris, would you just keel over already." Sadly, she did.

Beyond all those little moments of lightness, WFAN changed the world of sports. Every move by every manager, coach and GM was now dissected by angry fans who didn't necessarily have a brain, just a car phone. I directly associate the rise in sports talk stations to the decreased longevity of coaches.

The phenomenon that is sports talk radio started 20 years ago in New York, on sportsradio 66, WFAN, the Fan.