For an NBA team thriving on the new (new coach, new mix of players, new horizons), the New York Knicks have been headlining a decidedly old medium: radio.
WFAN, which pioneered the sports talk format when it launched in 1987, has been aflame with Knicks conversation since April as the team has pursued its first championship since 1973. (New York can win the title Saturday night with a win over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.) Nearly 1 million listeners are tuning in each week, parent company Audacy says, with the 25-54-year-old demo rising almost 9% during the playoff run.
“The Fan,” as the station is known, is looking beyond the terrestrial towers and car tuners, of course, expanding into podcasts and YouTube shows hosted by on-air talent. The multi-platform approach is being deployed across the country by Audacy, the privately held audio giant formerly known as Entercom, which acquired CBS Radio in 2017.
“In every major market in the country, radio is every day,” Audacy Chief Business Officer Chris Oliviero told Deadline in an interview. “It’s a habit, it’s a routine. People get in the car, they turn it on. Sports is also every day. Each day is a new episode in that soap opera.”
Audacy is the largest U.S. sports audio provider, operating more than 30 sports stations. Its roster in the top 10 markets includes a Los Angeles version of The Fan, which launched last month at 97.1 FM. The company’s roster of 600-plus sports-related podcasts includes a newsmaking one by Golden State Warriors provocateur Draymond Green as well as one for morning WFAN duo Boomer & Gio.
As traditional radio was being upended by rapid technology shifts, Audacy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2024, emerging a year later with reduced debt and a revitalized outlook. CEO Kelli Turner, a former Time Warner executive and CFO at Martha Stewart’s company, took over after the bankruptcy and has made sports a central part of the company’s strategy.
“Relieving that financial pressure has been liberating,” Oliviero said. “We’ve got everybody swimming in the same direction. Linear broadcast, streaming digital and on-demand podcasts … they don’t compete with each other.” Instead, he added, “They all sing together, like a maestro with a band.”
After testing the concept with an NFL Draft watch party on YouTube featuring all of WFAN’s main hosts, the station added halftime and postgame YouTube shows dedicated to the Knicks. The livestreams are one reason Audacy estimates that it gets about one-third of revenue from digital sources. It has also looked to hitch its programming to smart speakers from Amazon, Google, Apple and others as well as major audio platforms like Sonos. Social media, once seen as a threat, has been embraced, with Audacy stations racking up more than 1.5 billion social views.
Craig Carton, who co-hosted WFAN’s morning drive show with Boomer Esiason for 10 years before returning to the station several years ago as afternoon drive co-host, says the YouTube shows strengthen ties with listeners. “They want to discuss what they just saw and process the emotions, good and bad, of basketball,” he told Deadline. “It’s been a really cool, unique way to tap into that fandom.”
Along with co-host Chris McMonigle, Carton reads comments from listeners as they also scroll by on the screen. On June 10, as the Knicks made history with a 29-point comeback win over the Spurs in Game 4, the YouTube show provided a memorable snapshot, swinging from resignation at halftime to jubilation after the victory. Swilling beers from sponsor Corona, the hosts marveled at the turnaround, expressing the same astonishment that Larry David, Ben Stiller and other fans were showing on the ABC telecast. (Jerry Seinfeld has been known to call the station, especially when New York mainstay Steve Somers was overnight host, to discuss his beloved New York Mets.)
Of all of the New York sports teams he follows, Carton says his passion for the Knicks is unequaled, and he says most New Yorkers feel similarly. If (or, he believes, when) the team recaptures the title, he adds, “It’ll be the single most important and biggest championship in the history of New York City.” The victory parade will draw millions to Lower Manhattan’s “canyon of heroes,” he predicts.
More than two-thirds of New Yorkers “were not alive the last time the New York Knicks won a championship, so it’s everything to us,” Carton said. After the record-setting comeback in Game 4, “to be able to share that moment, just the passion and emotion of it, with fans immediately after the game as opposed to having to wait till 2 o’clock the next day, was for me pretty special.”
That immediacy has always been a draw for Carton, who hosted a daily talk show on Fox’s FS1 cable TV network in between his stints at WFAN. The Knicks’ run has been a “microcosm” of the station’s role as the “heartbeat” of the city, he said.
“If you’re lying awake at 3 a.m., you can’t sleep because you keep thinking about that missed free throw, we are live and local at 3 a.m.,” Oliviero said. “TV doesn’t do that. TV will give you an hour postgame and that’s it. They’ll play highlights, they’ll break down the game, but that’s it. They don’t interact with their audience, they don’t engage the audience by letting them participate.”
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