Posted on 04/02/2020 6:07:44 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Longtime update man John Minko announced Thursday on Mike Francesa’s Radio.com show that he will be taking a buyout from WFAN’s parent company Entercom because of the economic strain of the coronavirus pandemic. Friday will be the final day for the 67-year-old – nicknamed the “Mink Man” after being part of the fabric of the station for more than three-decades. He started with WFAN when it launched in 1987.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Interesting that a radio station that hasn’t missed a single minute of air time due to the outbreak is facing hard times. I guess their advertising revenue has plummeted in recent weeks.
Lots of places “going under” after such a short downtime. Really shows the mentality of the various owners. No rainy day fund, no plan B, no fallback, nothing. Just close the doors.
They may have been having hard times before this. They used to get big ratings from Francesa.
Wow! Always enjoyed his updates, he’s the one guy who could banter with Fransayso in a way that let him know he was wrong about something.
makes sense- the guys been at the station 30+ years and probably making a ton of $$$. Cheaper to give him a buyout and bring in some kid to do the job for a fraction of the price...
The media will shift into “turn the country back on” mode as soon as it begins to hit their pocketbooks.
Morning, noon and evening drive times don’t have the numbers they did with all the people staying home or working remote.
Good for them, good for John. I liked listening to him. I hope he does well in his next ventures.
He may still do bball play by play for the local colleges, not sure.
Also it’s an all sports station. There are no sports to talk about and no live play-by-play.
I believe a lot of this is the aftermath of a huge over-leveraging in the industry a few years ago, when the corporate radio giants like iHeartRadio and Cumulus were in bankruptcy after borrowing tons of money to expand their networks by buying up local stations. That was right around the time Don Imus retired rather than have his large contract reduced in a bankruptcy proceeding.
And there aren’t any sports events to talk about either. I knew things were bad on a trip to the NYC area a few weeks ago when they were giving reports on the Iditarod in their hourly sports updates. LOL.
I really don’t miss sports all that much.
I think people are going to be surprised when this is over the things people won’t go back to.
Last weekend I watched what was arguably the greatest hockey game ever played: Game 2 of the 1987 Canada Cup finals between Canada and the USSR. Canada won 6-5 in double overtime. Mario Lemieux had a hat trick. Wayne Gretzky had five assists and still calls it the greatest game he ever played.
I think Canada had 12 future Hall of Famers on its roster. You know it was a dominant team when you had perennial NHL All-Stars like Mike Gartner, Doug Gilmour and Dale Hawerchuk playing on the third and fourth lines.
6-5? Were the goalies drunk?
I was thinking the same thing.
The scores of those games were high because you had dominant offensive players on every line -- even the "defensive" lines. Imagine putting a defensive front line out to play against Russia's top offensive line, and your three forwards are all guys who routinely score 40-50 goals per season in the NHL.
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