Craig Carton is on his way out at WFAN, having signed a lucrative deal to join Fox Sports full-time. While radio rival Michael Kay sends his best wishes, he’s still bothered by one aspect of their New York sports radio rivalry.
“That’s the only thing that bothered me about Craig Carton is how nasty he was toward me when I never did anything to him,” Kay said during a recent appearance on The Show podcast with The New York Post’s Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman. “Never fired back at him.”
The voice of the Yankees also hosts ESPN’s The Michael Kay Show, which has directly competed with WFAN’s Carton & Roberts for the last two years. Unfortunately for Kay, the other guys routinely won that battle. In January’s NYC ratings book, Carton’s show outperformed Kay’s show 7.7 to 3.1 in the coveted 25-54M demo.
At the time, Carton wasn’t above boasting about the victory and taking a shot at his rival.
“Can you come up with something that can compete? Just so they can write our names in the paper again? Our dominance is so continual, our names don’t exist anymore. … That must suck if you’re on the other side of that,” Carton said, per Elite Sports NY. “When your numbers are that low, it’s almost like you don’t exist. It’s like the wind blowing sometimes. Here’s the best part: Our commercials beat their best hour.”
Kay, who had Carton on his show following his 2017 arrest and gave him a platform to tell his story, added that he only wishes Craig was still in NY because he’d love the chance to try to beat him in the ratings one day.
“The narrative is Kay’s probably thrilled. No. I’d rather continue to get my butt kicked and try to win,” Kay said. “Let’s say we beat Tiki and Roberts, it’s still going to be ‘Well, you didn’t beat Craig at the end.’
“I wanted him to stay, I wanted to continue to try to beat him.”
Kay will have plenty of chances to beat his new rival show, Evan and Tiki, as he signed a multi-year deal to remain with ESPN Radio for “a good, long while.”
