Michael Patrick Francesa (born March 20, 1954) is an American sports radio talk show host. Together with Chris Russo, he launched Mike and the Mad Dog in 1989 on WFAN in New York City, one of the most successful sports-talk radio programs in American history. On December 15, 2017, Francesa retired from his own show, Mike's On: Francesa on the FAN, which had been airing in the afternoon drive slot formerly occupied by Mike and the Mad Dog. He was succeeded by Chris Carlin, Maggie Gray and Bart Scott in the same time slot for the first ratings book of 2018. On April 27, 2018, WFAN announced that Francesa would return to the station for a 3 1⁄2-hour afternoon show, a shorter shift than his original slot. Francesa hosted this shortened afternoon drive WFAN slot in a tumultuous tenure through the end of 2019 before he retired for a second time, moving to a half-hour evening slot on WFAN while also producing content for the Entercom-owned Radio.com platform, which began in January 2020. On March 24th, 2020, Francesa was tapped to return to the station for a daytime slot on Sundays.