Has The Fan, Once a Sports-Talk Radio Ratings Winner, Dropped the Ball?

Denver Sports Radio 104.3 The Fan is on fire — but not in the sense of a quarterback who's hitting every target or a basketball sharpshooter downing twenty shots in a row. More like burning to a crisp.

The Fan had been the most popular sports-talk station in the Mile High City for so long that the designation seemed close to permanent. But over the summer, for the first time ever, it was surpassed in its key demographic (men between the ages of 25 and 54) by Altitude Sports Radio, the flagship signal of the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche. Like those championship-level franchises, Altitude is in the portfolio of billionaire Stan Kroenke, who can certainly afford to nab talent tossed aside by opponents — which his station has done regularly when it comes to The Fan.

In sports, one loss after an astonishing winning streak might not be a disaster. But The Fan's bosses treated the ratings defeat like an out-of-control conflagration that needed to be put out immediately. In September, five high-profile staffers, including one of the outlet's biggest stars, Darren "D-Mac" McKee, saw their employment go up in smoke. A new schedule was quickly installed in an attempt to make the earth seem less scorched.

It didn't work. Just weeks into the revised lineup, program director Raj Sharan, the man most associated with the changes, was given the ax, too. His successor, Amanda Brown, isn't eager to discuss the damage that The Fan's brand has suffered. On November 28, the Denver branch of Bonneville International, the station's Utah-based owner (it's affiliated with the Mormon church), announced Brown's arrival. When Westword asked to interview her about the job ahead, however, the request was rejected.

The leader of a talk-radio station refusing to talk? That's the sort of red-flag warning that hints at more fire danger ahead.

Granted, Bonneville spokesperson Madison McNett didn't say Brown would remain mute forever. In an email to Westword, she wrote that the new program director at The Fan "is not taking interviews at the moment as she has not started the role yet, and once she does, she is focused on the team and creating a smooth transition." McNett added that Brown, who officially began her gig at the station on December 4, might be more amenable to speaking at some unspecified date in the future.

Brown isn't the only one currently mum about the mess at The Fan. Also unwilling to chat on the subject are McKee and three former colleagues who received pink slips of their own: Nate Jackson, a past Denver Broncos tight end turned acclaimed author (his 2013 memoir is titled Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival From the Bottom of the Pile); Chad Brown, a CU Buffs legend who became a stalwart for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots; and Sean Brennan, The Fan's marketing director for nearly a decade (he was promptly snapped up by Altitude). Although none gave a reason for their reticence, most radio-industry severance packages contain non-disparagement clauses that void payouts if the designated recipient shares negative information about an ex-employer.

There's one exception to the silence: Orlando Franklin, another ex-Denver Bronco — he was a standout on the offensive line — who didn't sign a severance agreement after The Fan told him to clean out his locker. Still, Franklin limits his comments because he's considering legal action against the station; among other things, he believes promises were broken in October 2022 when Sharan and company chose Broncos wildman Derek Wolfe as McKee's new sidekick instead of him. But he does offer a handful of takes about what's gone wrong at The Fan, saying that Sharan was a hands-off boss more interested in splashy hires than in helping individuals new to the medium learn how to master it — even though the retired pro athletes he typically drafted were both accustomed to coaching and desperate to receive some.

Radio Daze

Back in 2008, when The Fan was founded, many pundits were already writing radio's epitaph. But the medium has proven to be much more resilient than doomsayers expected. In 2022, according to Nielsen Media Research, 82 percent of Americans ages twelve and older listened to terrestrial radio — a station that broadcasts using old-fashioned, broadcast-tower-oriented technology — on a weekly basis. Moreover, the radio industry generated approximately $15.47 billion in revenue last year, an annual increase of 4.5 percent.

The Fan has made bank over the years by attracting loads of male fans valued by advertisers, who are charged based on ratings — a measure tracked by Nielsen in which each point translates to 1 percent of the population as a whole or a given demographic. In the fall of 2020, for example, The Fan scored a 7.9 ratings share in the 25-54 male demo, finishing first in that category. And no wonder, since the ratings revealed that nearly 8 percent of the most coveted Denver-area men had tuned in the signal despite heavy competition from dozens of stations offering a wide variety of styles.

The strength of the 2020 numbers was especially impressive in light of turmoil involving The Drive, the station's weekday afternoon anchor and money magnet. Starting in 2010, the show was helmed by McKee and NFL veteran Alfred Williams, and the combination had proven to be a ratings winner year in and year out. But on the last day of February 2019 — the same month Sharan was promoted to program director, replacing Armen Williams, who'd just split to take charge of a station in Houston — the outlet tweeted, "Sports Radio 104.3 The Fan announces that Alfred 'Big Al' Williams has chosen to leave the station effective today. We thank Alfred for his many contributions during his years with The Fan and wish him the best in his future endeavors."
Williams's exit was paved with gold: He signed a mammoth contract to jump to KOA, a heritage station nicknamed "The Blowtorch" for its 50,000 watts of power on the AM dial. KOA is also the broadcasting partner of the Buffs and Broncos, for whom Williams played, creating the sort of natural kinship that the station's brain trust hoped would result in a ratings bonanza. (Spoiler alert: It didn't.)

First to step into Williams's enormous shoes as D-Mac's partner was Broncos center emeritus and Empower Field Ring of Famer Tom Nalen. But Nalen lasted only from his introduction in April 2019 until October of that year, when he decided to move back to his home state of Massachusetts.

The Fan then tried to double its chances for success by signing up two more members of the Broncos fraternity to keep D-Mac company: Nick Ferguson and Tyler Polumbus. But management ultimately decided that the studio seemed too crowded, essentially cutting Ferguson but keeping Polumbus around.

The move appeared to be a wise one: Polumbus grew in his role, and his chemistry with McKee seemed built to last. But while the pair maintained their popularity lead over Altitude and KOA in The Fan's main demo, they didn't have the sort of cultural impact that Williams and D-Mac achieved.

Against this backdrop, a new option arrived in the imposing form of Wolfe, a hero to Broncos loyalists owing to his no-holds-barred success as a defensive lineman during a seven-year period that included Denver's triumph in Super Bowl 50. Suddenly, Polumbus was out (he was quickly snared by Altitude, where he was recently reunited with McKee) and Wolfe was in.
Like so many of his predecessors at The Fan, Wolfe was a novice as a radio host — and there were early indications that he had other priorities beyond mastering the sports-talk art. His debut on the air was delayed for around three weeks, near the start of football season, to accommodate a hunting trip. And in an interview with Westword published in early November 2022, he peppered comments about his first forays on The Fan with enthusiastic hype about a completely different project: a hunting-centric YouTube channel called Wolfe Untamed that positioned him for the sort of fame achieved by rocker/Second Amendment zealot Ted Nugent.

On The Fan, Wolfe lauded hunting whenever possible, and he was engaged when dishing about football as well. But he was less enthusiastic when talk turned to the Nuggets and Avs, obviously a specialty of Altitude Sports Radio; on occasion, he didn't even bother to watch their games. And then there was his tendency to slip in right-wing political observations that alienated a portion of the audience. One example: When Broncos strength-and-conditioning coach Loren Landow was being blamed for so many players getting hurt last season, Wolfe suggested a possible link between the injuries and the COVID-19 vaccine. "I don't think a vaccine should be political at all," he told Westword. "It should be your choice if you get a vaccine or not. It shouldn't be a mandate. This is supposed to be a free country, where we have free will to make our own choices. And I just wanted to bring out a different point of view."

Medical experts offer zero support for this theory, but Wolfe didn't back away when asked about it. "I love that radio is opinion-based," he maintained. "I can't really be wrong, because it's just my opinion.... I'm always going to speak my mind, and if you get offended by it, fine, but it is what it is. You can't keep everybody happy."

Wolfe definitely gave The Fan a ratings boost: Nielsen stats from February for all listeners ages six and above saw the outlet landing in Denver's top ten, and the numbers for The Drive, the program he shared with McKee, were a big reason why. Still, the controversies continued. In April, Wolfe happily posed for a photo with a golfing foursome that included former president Donald Trump and conservative poster boy Kid Rock, even as he missed more shows in order to hunt.

After Wolfe and The Fan parted ways in late July, ending a run of only about nine months, rumors arose that he'd been given the heave-ho for his love of the MAGA movement and planned to sue the station for discriminating against his version of free speech. But he denied such whispers in a text to Westword, thumbing, "No, idk where you heard that but it's definitely not true."

For his part, Sharan portrayed the parting as Wolfe's decision. "We were very pleased with Derek's performance," he insisted.
Sharan certainly didn't need another chore to tackle, given that he was also the point person for Denver Sports, a revamped website positioned as a digital powerhouse built on The Fan's foundation. He portrayed Denver Sports as a Colorado variation on concepts pushed by Bonneville in other cities where it owned radio stations, including Salt Lake City, Seattle and Phoenix. "It's a big initiative across our entire company," Sharan stressed. "We're trying to create strong radio brands, but digital brands as well — and Denver Sports is more of an umbrella brand we've created for different audiences. ... The way I describe it is like Meta is for Facebook and Instagram."

Bonneville was exerting more influence behind the scenes as well as online. Since the mid-2010s, its Denver properties — The Fan, plus country juggernaut KYGO, easy-listening staple KOSI and ESPN 1600, which simulcasts the national sports channel's content on the AM dial — had been managed by Bob Call, a Denver broadcasting giant; he was KYGO's first program director and oversaw the station for more than forty years. But after he retired in late 2021, he was replaced by Katie Reid, who had previously served as vice president and general manager of Cox Media Group's radio stations in Jacksonville, Florida. None of those outlets deployed a sports-talk format.

In the beginning, Reid mostly left the running of The Fan to Sharan. But the firm's fingerprints were all over the September firings — a reaction to its 4.5 summer ratings share, a drop of more than 40 percent from the fall of 2020. Jeff Clewett, the person who took over as director of sales from Brennan, his ousted predecessor, came from Bonneville's cluster in Phoenix.

After the canning of McKee, Jackson, Brown and Franklin, Sharan explained the move in corporate terms. "I love D-Mac, and his contributions to this radio station are amazing, as are Orlando's and Chad's and Nate's, as well," he said. "It's just that we had the opportunity to look at the entire picture and make strategic moves while making sure we were in sync with Bonneville's mission and values."

Prior to September, The Fan's front-rank weekday shows were three hours in length, but the tweaked schedule expanded them to four hours, thereby eliminating an entire program — and the need to pay another set of hosts. In denying this move was economically motivated, Sharan again cited the mothership: "Going with three four-hour shows rather than four shorter shows is something we're doing at some of the other sports properties at Bonneville. I think it's going to create a more consistent listening experience."
Fanning the Flames

But more dubious personnel moves simply created a more confusing listening experience. Most puzzling, the station broke up Zach Bye and Brandon Stokley, a receiver who ended his playing career with the Broncos before becoming half of The Fan's finest sports-talk duo. Stokley is now coupled with Josh Dover, who jumped over from Altitude — a switch that's a wash at best. Bye, meanwhile, was moved into the afternoon driver's seat alongside Phillip Lindsay, another alum of the Buffs and Broncos who is beloved in these parts. Unfortunately, Lindsay is struggling to come up with interesting things to say and isn't meshing with Bye, rendering their airtime all but unlistenable.

Another issue on the horizon could be possible discomfort at Bonneville over the sharp tone that's long been a hallmark of The Fan. In September, Sharan said that Lindsay and Dover had "a positivity to them" and stressed that "our purpose at Bonneville is to build up, inform, connect and celebrate families and communities." And while Sharan got the boot, that emphasis on positivity remains.

Brown, Sharan's successor, is now tasked with finding a way to simultaneously achieve Bonneville's kinder, gentler goals and lure back listeners. She's also a newcomer to Denver, moving here from Los Angeles, where she oversaw that city's ESPN affiliate. That makes her another out-of-towner put in the position of needing to act like a homer in a sports-crazy town — which means she won't have an easy time returning the station to its former glory.

And while she's currently keeping her turnaround plans for The Fan under wraps, her first step is clear: Someone needs to find a fire extinguisher.