After quietly flying out of the orbit of the Dan Le Batard Show over the course of 2025, Jon “Stugotz” Weiner finally revealed a move to Fox Sports Radio and iHeartMedia this week.
The announcement comes nearly two months after Stugotz suggested he would appear on The Dan Le Batard Show again and includes plans to expand his podcast and launch a network.
In his first comments on the hire, the longtime Miami-based host and executive came out firing on his Stugotz and Company show.
“I’m gonna build a f*cking empire, is what I’m going to do,” Stugotz said.
“We are partnering with the biggest and best digital media company in the world. I am grateful to them, grateful to Fox Sports Radio, for allowing me to do something that, quite frankly, I have missed dearly in my life. So I look forward to filling the void that was left when I stopped doing live radio.”
Stugotz started a station, 790 The Ticket, in Miami more than two decades ago, where he helped launch the legendary radio career of columnist Dan Le Batard. The pair’s local show came to ESPN in the mid-2010s, at which point Stugotz took on a far larger national profile and appeared across the network’s television platforms.
Since The Dan Le Batard Show left ESPN in early 2021, Stugotz has openly discussed his disappointment about leaving live radio behind. In recent months, the longtime Robin to Le Batard’s Batman has distanced himself from the show he started, taking his two podcasts independent and making regular appearances on Mad Dog Unleashed with Chris Russo while teasing bigger announcements ahead.
The host has also not-so-subtly taken shots at the Le Batard Show and Meadowlark Media as he split off from his colleagues. Now, Stugotz says that under his new deal with Fox and iHeart, he will be able to collaborate with Meadowlark as he “sees fit.”
“Naturally, people, on the heels of this, are going to have questions, rightfully so, concerns over what this means for me and Dan and the show that we have done for 20 years,” Stugotz explained.
“So all I can tell you on that end is, the people who I have partnered with, iHeart, Fox Sports, FanDuel, have all been incredibly flexible and understanding of a 20-year relationship between me and Dan,” he said. “They know how much that relationship means to me, they know how much that show means to me, they know how much that audience means to me, and they have all given me permission to continue doing Dan with work and for Meadowlark as I see fit. And so I’m excited about that, and I’m grateful for that opportunity.”
Stugotz added that he plans to appear on the Le Batard Show nine times in the New Year, apparently on one condition, which he did not reveal in his comments on Monday.
“To give our audience a reason to kind of relax, take a deep breath, this is not the end. Dan and Meadowlark have been nice enough to offer me nine dates in January to come in and do the show,” he said. “And I agreed to all nine of the dates with just one condition. And amazingly, that condition does not involve me asking for more money.”
Jokes aside, Stugotz finished his announcement with (another) cryptic shot across the bow at the Le Batard Show crew.
“If, for whatever reason, after the New Year, you do not hear me nine times in January on the show with Dan, that is a decision that was not made by me,” said Weiner. “There is one condition, and that decision is not a decision that will be made by me. That decision will be made by Dan and Meadowlark.”
As for why Le Batard might agree to the condition or what his role at Meadowlark might look like beyond January, Stugotz did not say.
Le Batard has largely stayed quiet on the split as it played out over the course of the year.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.