98.5 The Sports Hub continues reign atop Nielsen Audio Ratings
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But it is notable that 'Felger and Mazz' fell from an 18.4 share last spring.
Their ratings were also down in the winter, from a 19.8 from January-April 2024 to a 15.7 this year over the same span.
Summer ratings don't matter much, but if the ratings slip continues in the fall, when the Patriots are back, it will be a concerning trend for a show that has set the ratings bar staggeringly high for more than a decade.
In morning drive, The Sports Hub's 'Toucher and Hardy' took first with a strong 17.7, followed in second place by WEEI's 'The Greg Hill Show' (7.8).
In middays, The Sports Hub's 'Zolak and Bertrand' show claimed first with a 12.5 share, with WEEI's 'Jones and Keefe' program finishing tied for third at a 5.9.
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From 6-7 p.m., The Sports Hub's 'The Baseball Hour' tied for second with a 7.7. WEEI, which usually has Red Sox pregame in that hour, tied for 17th (1.8).
At night 7-midnight), The Sports Hub — with Joe Murray's show and Celtics and Bruins games — took third with a 6.8. WEEI, which has Christian Arcand's show and the Red Sox at night, was tied for 10th (3.7).
Chad Finn can be reached at
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Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
Is Mike Felger the most influential person in Boston?
To outsiders, it might sound absurd. In most cities, sports talk is drive-time filler. In Boston, it's emotional infrastructure. Anyone who's ever stewed in traffic on the Zakim, cursed a blown lead at TD Garden, or felt their stomach turn at a Red Sox trade deadline knows exactly what Walsh means. He wasn't listening for news. He was listening for the mood. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up And for more than a decade, the person setting that temperature hasn't been the mayor, a professor, or a CEO. It's been Michael Felger, cohost of 'Felger & Massarotti' on 98.5 The Sports Hub, the city's highest-rated radio show. Felger didn't invent the genre. He just adjusted the voltage. Since 2009, 'Felger & Mazz' — with cohost Tony Massarotti, a longtime sportswriter for the Globe and the Herald — has delivered a daily litany of complaints, forensic breakdowns, and gallows humor. Felger railed for years against Patriots owner Robert Kraft's frugality, arguing that the 'Patriot Way' was little more than a branding slogan for cutting costs during the Brady-Belichick years. He's hammered the Celtics' new ownership for hiding behind the 'second apron' of the luxury tax, calling it a convenient excuse to avoid spending what it takes to win. In March, Felger ranted on the air about how difficult and expensive it's become to watch sports on television. 'A lot of us have cut the cord, especially just this past year. NESN and NBC Sports Boston unfortunately jacked up the rates again, so eff you, I'm not going to do that,' Felger said. 'I'm going to cut the cord, I'll get YouTube TV. Ah, NESN's not on YouTube TV. So you get Fubo. Well, if I get Fubo, you know what I can't get on Fubo? TNT. So I can't see NBA nationally televised games, which is the best product going. I don't get that if I have Fubo. So eff you, Fubo.… Don't you get sick of getting digitally penetrated? Every time you want to watch a ball come across your TV screen.' Viewers Are Getting "DIGITALLY PENETRATED" When Trying To Watch Baseball - Felger In a city where politicians cycle out and owners stay hidden behind tinted glass, Felger has been the loudest, clearest, and most consistent voice. Not just in sports — in anything. For 15 years, no one has moved the mood of Boston more than he has. 'Felger & Massarotti' has long earned 25 percent of Boston's radio listenership among men 25-54. Walk into any bar and you'll hear echoes of Felger's monologue. He sets the agenda. He starts the fights. He gives people language to explain how they feel — often before they've figured it out themselves. Rawer, meaner, sharper Felger, 55, did not arrive with the local pedigree Boston usually demands of its sports media icons. Longtime Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, for example, grew up in Groton, while his rival Boston Herald columnist Steve Buckley grew up in Cambridge. Glenn Ordway — the former drivetime radio host of 'The Big Show' at WEEI — was raised in Lynn. Felger grew up in Milwaukee, a city whose relationships with its local teams are loving and pathologically polite. 'In Wisconsin, you're just kind of happy to be invited, happy to be mentioned, happy to be on the stage, but you understand you're not going to win it,' Felger told me in February. 'People back home don't treat sports that way I do. Here, it's different. That intensity, that whole thing, I liked better. It was refreshing for me.' He enrolled at Boston University, inhaled the cigarette cloud at the old Boston Garden, and felt something snap into place. He interned and eventually started writing for the Boston Herald, covering the Bruins and Patriots. As he rose in prominence among the city's sportswriters, he listened to WEEI, then the city's only sports radio station, which to his ear sounded suspiciously chummy. As Tom Brady and the Patriots turned Boston into Titletown in the mid-2000s, WEEI hosts were celebrating with team executives on the air and exchanging Christmas cards with general managers. The callers went soft on their favorite teams and were less critical. Felger went on Ordway's show, but he felt dissatisfied with the state of sports radio. Felger at CSN New England's studios in Burlington in 2017. Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe 'I wanted to do more of the stuff we weren't doing on WEEI,' Felger said. 'Classic sports talk radio has been critical, fast-paced, topical, and not drifting around and losing focus. Did I mention being critical? It's important for sports radio. It's a critical medium.' In 2009, when CBS launched 98.5 The Sports Hub, Felger saw the opportunity to do sports radio the way he thought it should be done: something rawer, meaner, and sharper. He teamed up with Massarotti — whom he'd met when they were colleagues at the Herald — who was then writing acerbic sports columns for The Globe, channeled his idol Howard Cosell, and pushed back against fans' instincts for constant celebration. 'I wanted to tell it like it is,' Felger said. 'I wanted to dip my toe into the fellowship of the miserable and the negativity.' As 'Felger and Mazz' producer James Stewart says, 'When sports radio started in Boston, the fans would call up and be like, 'This team's never going to win,' and [Ordway] would say, 'Well, don't jump off the Tobin yet.' But with Felger, it's like, 'Yeah, it might be time to jump off the Tobin.'' Massarotti keeps things from flying off the rails. If Felger is the accelerant, Mazz is the afterburn — grimacing, interrupting, pushing back just enough. He gives the show shape and rhythm, keeping it from veering into total cynicism. He's part instigator, part guide — someone who knows when to challenge Felger and when to let the chaos cook. 'I'm sure you all have people like this. My wife is like this,' Felger said on the show one afternoon in April, kicking off a rant. 'She's got a relative on the phone.' 'Oh you want to say hi to so and so?' Massarotti added, throwing propane on the fire. 'You want to say hi to Aunt Millie? Say hi to Aunt Millie!' Felger yelled. 'Hi, Aunt Millie!' Massarotti exclaimed. 'Hi, Aunt Millie, oh, yeah, yeah,' Felger said. 'And you start passing the phone around the room. My wife doesn't get how painful that is. Talk to so and so. No, you talk to so and so!' Two years after they debuted, 'Felger & Massarotti' was the most popular radio show in the city. The corporatization of sports Meanwhile, Boston was diversifying — becoming a majority-minority city in 2000, with the foreign-born population reaching 29 percent in 2021, 16 points higher than it had been in 1960. Boston was becoming less provincial, with tech, academia, and health care exploding across the city. Major national chains expanded into areas like the Seaport, which transformed from a parking lot to a luxury playground. As Boston changed, The Sports Hub's biggest rival, WEEI, calcified around an old idea of Boston that was increasingly out of step with the city. In the early 2010s, the station's identity started to drift. (I was an intern at WEEI in 2013.) Its banter began to curdle into something more overtly political. Some shows veered into broader social commentary, often echoing the language of Fox News. On-air debates drifted from pitch counts and power players to rants about race, gender, and grievance. Sports talk blurred into something else entirely. 'A lot of people did want to hear the politics, but there were a lot of people that didn't,' says Michael Holley, who hosted shows at WEEI from 2005 through 2018 and now cohosts a show with Felger on NBC Sports Boston. Holley says that WEEI at the time veered into conservative political commentary in ways that alienated parts of the audience. 'Sometimes when you're so locked into politics, even when you're talking about sports, you can feel that there's something going on underneath. What's not being said?' Mike Felger and Tony Massarotti in 2017. Felger took a different path. 'Whatever his political positions were,' Holley says, they 'were generally far in the background.' He wasn't interested in gatekeeping the culture. He stuck to his North Star: skepticism. The same instinct that led him to question a cornerback's contract extension or second-guess a manager's pitching change also applied when he talked about the people in charge. Team owners weren't benevolent caretakers: They were billionaires trying to squeeze as much value out of a team as possible. Fans weren't helpless marks, but they were often being taken advantage of. That sensibility stood out at a time when Boston's institutions — its teams, its media, even its politics — were increasingly shaped by corporate interest. The clearest sign of Felger's growing influence came in 2011, when Red Sox owner John Henry, who owns the Globe, walked into 98.5 The Sports Hub to confront Felger on air. Henry was furious over the show's portrayal of the team as leakers and backstabbers in the wake of manager Terry Francona's firing — and especially the insinuation that details of Francona's personal life had been planted in the media by the front office. Felger didn't back down. The biggest reason Felger endures is that he channels the Boston that actually exists today — not the one frozen in black-and-white photographs of Southie taverns and cigar smoke. Felger's show isn't perfect. He's had his stumbles, like when he called former Major League Baseball pitcher Roy Halladay a 'moron' for piloting a stunt plane that crashed, leaving his young children fatherless. Most recently, Felger received criticism when he hammered Red Sox manager Alex Cora for missing a game for his daughter Camila's graduation from Boston College. And the program has had moments that forced internal reckoning, including a racially insensitive joke Massarotti made about two Black men in New Orleans, which sparked outrage among listeners locally and nationally. But in a city still shaking off its reputation for being hostile to outsiders, Felger's response to the backlash against Massarotti stood in stark contrast to the defensive posture that once defined WEEI. He addressed it directly, gave space for reflection, and didn't make himself or the show a victim. 'Minorities in this country do have to put up with a lot of crap, and comments like that just make it harder for them. We apologize for that,' Felger said on air. 'I feel bad that I personally didn't do more to correct it in the moment. I had a chance in just a split-second moment to do something, and I guess I just froze. So I feel bad about that.' The city has kept changing too. In 2021, Michelle Wu became the first woman and person of color elected mayor of Boston — a moment that felt inconceivable to me as a Korean-American growing up in Brookline during Tom Menino's reign. Wu, like Felger, came to the city for school and never left. She didn't look or sound like Boston's old guard. But she came to represent what the city was becoming: younger, more diverse, less beholden to the institutions that once defined it. The biggest reason Felger endures is that he channels the Boston that actually exists today — not the one frozen in black-and-white photographs of Southie taverns and cigar smoke. Whether it's torching billionaires for pretending to be poor or ripping MLB for turning the simple joy of watching a game on TV into a scavenger hunt, Felger plays the part Boston needs: the guy who still refuses to be bought off or distracted. He also embodies something essential about a city that doesn't always welcome change but that can't help evolving anyway. You can hear it in his caller board. It long ago stopped being the province of Irish and Italian lifers (although they still call in). These days, Felger and Mazz get calls from Roxbury, and even the occasional call from another state or another country. Felger speaks a dialect everyone recognizes: caffeinated and skeptical. Felger's greatest strength may be his clarity, but it can also read as rigidity. He's a little grumpier, a little more suspicious of anything new — streaming, social media, stats — like someone who still thinks the microwave is cutting-edge. He's not always in sync with how younger fans engage with sports. The show's ratings have slipped — down from an Like Felger, Wu didn't fit the mold of what Boston leadership used to look like. Does she ever listen to his show? Her office did not respond to requests for comment. As for her main rival in this year's election, Josh Kraft — whose father Robert remains one of Felger's favorite punching bags — he says he turns on both The Sports Hub and WEEI. 'Sports radio is great because it can test the temperature of what's going on,' Kraft told me. 'And they know how to maximize that temperature of what's going on. But sports radio is entertainment.' Kraft sounds a little dismissive of these shows. But his comment also captures something bigger: Sports radio doesn't just reflect Boston's mood but shapes it. It stokes and channels emotion. It's not just a mirror but a lever. Felger didn't bend the city to fit him. The city bent toward him — and toward the many Bostonians like him who've shaped what it's becoming.
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Lucas Giolito gives the Red Sox a boost but more pitching help is needed
'That was what we needed,' catcher Carlos Narváez said. 'He threw his three off-speed pitches nearly half the time. The fastball today was good at the top of the zone. 'You take away a few games and he's been really good, in my mind one of the top 20 guys in the league.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Giolito's reliability has played a big role in the Red Sox contending for a playoff spot with 53 games remaining. Advertisement 'The last month and half, he's been solid,' manager Alex Cora said. 'That's what we need. Not only an innings-eater but a guy who can pitch quality innings.' Giolito left two runners stranded in the first inning when he retired Kody Clemens — Roger's son — on a fly ball to center field. Giolito retired 13 of 14 before the Twins manufactured a run in the fifth. He then ended a two-out rally in the sixth by striking out Harrison Bader. That ended his night after 101 pitches. 'We ran into some trouble, fifth and sixth inning, some long, long counts,' Giolito said. 'Too many pitches, but it was good to complete six and take a little bit of pressure off.' Advertisement After not pitching last season while recovering from Tommy John surgery and pitching for three teams in 2023, Giolito has enjoyed being part of a group again. 'I'm very much focused internally on the team, the clubhouse, winning baseball games,' he said. Then taking the next step into October. A postseason rotation of Garrett Crochet, Bryan Bello, and Giolito would be formidable. As it stands today, Walker Buehler would be the No. 4 starter. He's 6-6 with a 5.72 ERA. But Buehler has an excellent playoff pedigree — 10-3 with a 3.04 ERA in 19 games, 18 of them starts. His one relief appearance was a perfect ninth inning to close out the final game of the World Series last season. The Sox would probably be inclined to lean on that history and keep Buehler in the rotation for the postseason. But here's the thing: They need to get there first. As relatively solid as their first four starters, there is no fifth starter on the roster at the moment unless you count righthander Cooper Criswell, who was summoned from Triple A Worcester on Tuesday to supplement the bullpen. Criswell has not started a major league game this season. He is 4-2 with a 3.28 ERA in 16 starts for Worcester. We all get caught up in numbering starters. But as teams fight for playoff spots, that's meaningless. What counts is giving the team a chance to win the game and not leaving the bullpen in tatters for the next day. Advertisement As they pursue a postseason berth, the Sox should have better rotation options than Criswell, Richard Fitts or a bullpen game. But that depends on chief baseball officer Craig Breslow acting with nerve, not caution, as Thursday's trade deadline approaches. Giolito and the rest of the players are waiting to see what happens. 'I'm curious,' Giolito said. 'That's for all the people upstairs to deal with. But definitely curious to see how we add.' How or if? That's the question. Peter Abraham can be reached at
New York Post
5 hours ago
- New York Post
Twins' Jhoan Duran puts MLB world on hug-watch alert with ultimate fakeout
Jhoan Duran put the baseball world on notice — and made everyone refresh their social media feeds — with one moment of embrace on Tuesday night. The hard-throwing Twins reliever has been at the center of trade deadline rumors and appeared to confirm those suspicions when he was spotted by TV cameras hugging the team's bullpen catcher, Frank Nigro, at Target Field during Minnesota's game against the Red Sox. It quickly sent folks into a frenzy, with people thinking Duran was in a trade to be announced. But this hug watch was a bust — at least for now. Jhoan Duran shared a hug with his Twins bullpen. Not long after the clip went viral, ESPN's Jeff Passan reported that Duran had not in fact been traded and that 'he was just hugging his bullpen catcher because that's what friends do sometimes.' With less than 48 hours to go until the deadline arrives, Duran is still a Twin. But with Minnesota at 51-55, they're likely full-on sellers, meaning a reliever such as Duran — who has two more years of team control — is a big prize in this year's market that could fetch the Twins a solid return. Jhoan Duran delivers a pitch during the ninth inning of the Twins' home win over the Red Sox on July 28, 2025. Getty Images One National League scout told The Post's Jon Heyman this week that out of the available relievers on the market, they would rank Duran first on a list of 10 other relievers, which also included the righty's teammate, Griffin Jax. The 27-year-old has been one of the best relievers in baseball since getting called up in 2022, and this year, he holds a 2.01 ERA and 211 ERA+ with 53 strikeouts in 49 1/3 innings. He's saved 20-plus games the past two seasons and is on pace to do so again with 16 this year.
