If “Mike & the Mad Dog” was at its peak a fine restaurant in Little Italy – one that serves a 5½ hour meal with just the right combination of sauces and spices for a unique taste – ESPN radios “Mike & Mike “Were Applebee’s.
This is a compliment to the duo, which was once the spokesman for the restaurant chain. They worked across the country, the prototype show for their time with a polished transmitter and an ex-player.
You didn’t have to hear what they said, but when you did it was comfortable and easy. For what ESPN wanted to be for so long, they were ideal for a 20-minute commute from the suburbs.
“Mike & Mike” broke up three years ago and ESPN Radio has lost its anchor. It tried to replace Greenberg with Trey Wingo and it didn’t work.
It’s a different time now, and ESPN has added a sledgehammer to its schedule to bring Greenberg back into a new window and leave Golic without a chair.
In the morning, a trio of Keyshawn Johnson, Jay Williams, and Zubin Mehenti put it together as a new show that starts in mid-August. It hopes it will do better than “Golic & Wingo”, whose final program will be released later this month.
Wingo failed to deliver the same energy as Greenberg. In a world with so many possibilities, “Golic & Wingo” didn’t give you enough reason to choose it.
In New York, it was surpassed by the program’s main competition. While “Golic & Wingo” had a rating of 1.4 in the spring book published on Tuesday (20th on the market). “Boomer & Gio” were fourth (5.5) with streaming and no sport.
Golic and Wingo both have end-of-year contracts. Your future is unclear.
Keyshawn, Jay and Zubin are far from a slam dunk. As ESPN demonstrated in Monday Night Football, it is difficult to find chemistry in front of a national audience. The network will try again when it presents its new morning show.
Johnson and Williams are ex-players who are asked to get up early and be happy in the morning. It is a challenge.
Golic made it sound easy for two decades, while Wingo wanted to take a nap soon after the big job landed and quickly asked.
Mehenti is not a well known “SportsCenter” anchor, but his reputation in Bristol is a very nice guy and a workaholic.
The radio is about personality, and although he has to be the one who gets the best out of the two ex-athletes, he has to connect with the audience. It is not a “SportsCenter” – and if you do Talk Radio at the highest level, you have to be an entertainer.
Nobody can really say what Keyshawn, Jay & Zubin will sound like, which is probably the first edition of the program, but maybe they will overcome it.
In the meantime, ESPN managers have cut Dan Le Batard & Stugotz’s midday show out of the network, but the band aid hasn’t been fully ripped off, as was discussed. Le Batard and his ensemble can be entertaining and work in the subscription world, but you have to get involved with the joke.
They’re kind of anti-Mike & Mike, a fine Miami crab stain if I haven’t made you hungry enough, but it’s not for everyone. In the past two years of his contract, Le Batard’s dance with ESPN on the way to Spotify or another podcast company will be an interesting waltz. The executives just nudged him.
After minimizing Le Batard, Greenberg opened from 12 noon to 2 p.m. and Max Kellerman from 2 p.m. to 2 p.m. Both were successful on the radio and both will continue their morning TV shows.
In the meantime, the program with perhaps the greatest potential is Chiney Ogwumike and Mike Golic Jr. from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. It could be a young, fresh listening experience. The two started with a big advantage after working together and being friends.
Ogwumike and Golic Jr. are young, former athletes and are hungry. It could work.
Even in a rapidly changing media landscape, radio is still of great value. It may not make as much money as television or it is the hot new thing like podcasts, but when you think of ESPN, radio is a touch point for so many. It also has a live component that is difficult to reach, and it has a close relationship with its audience that creates stars.
For two decades, the morning meant “Mike & Mike”. They were the Stalwarts.
Now it’s neither Mike nor Mike. It is true that not everyone likes Applebee’s, but it is difficult to work in so many markets. You did it. It is the end of an era.
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