Their rise and fall is a great example of how not to run a business, and why chasing ratings can ultimately kill your brand.
WNEW's ratings were all over the place (mostly low, it was trying to break into a market with a lot of longstanding shows), and Opie and Anthony was its biggest show (disproportionately so). The problem was how they got to be the biggest show: by being willing to cross every single line they could. As a long-time fan of edgy comedy, I can respect that. As a radio show, however, this was basically suicide, and everyone knew it except O&A's fanbase.
Now... About that fanbase. O&A's at best were indifferent to other shows and at worst flat-out hated every other show that wasn't O&A. O&A themselves were just as bad in this regard, basically shit-talking most of the other shows on the network. This made cross-promotion basically impossible for WNEW, and would inevitably lead to the death of the network. In early 2002, Opie and Anthony aggressively started shit with the Don and Mike show.
For the uninitiated, Don and Mike were a pair of industry veterans, and while they were doing abysmal in NY (fucking all of WNEW's lineup was), they were a juggernaut elsewhere (especially in DC, where they had managed to compete with Rush and win). The two were competitors for the same demographic; whereas O&A was more about the shock humor, Don and Mike were more conventional humor. For reasons I still haven't been able to fully understand, O&A took issue with Don and Mike and spent nearly 3 days of time bitching about them on air. In response, Don finally lost his shit and delivered a lengthy, insult-laden rant, and this led to both shows being suspended. However, while WNEW suspended both shows initally, O&A was allowed back on the air after only a few days - despite causing the entire incident - because WNEW was dead in the water without it. Don and Mike, meanwhile, never returned. They were still contracted, just not on the air in NY, and old episodes ran in their slot. This did not endear O&A to Don and Mike's fans and naturally, they tuned out. WNEW's already bad overall ratings got worse because as bad as Don and Mike's ratings were in NY, it was still WNEW's second-biggest show.
Less than who months later, the Saint Patrick's Cathedral Incident I mentioned in my previous post happened. This was, in turn, less than two weeks after Opie and Anthony had just been fined tens of thousands of dollars for another incident. By now, the FCC was out for blood. Opie and Anthony had been fined dozens of times over a three year period, and the FCC hit WNEW with what was, at the time, one of the biggest fines they'd ever leveraged. Ever. On top of this, there was serious consideration being given by the FCC for pulling WNEW's license entirely, due to this one show.
Inevitably, the pair were inevitably taken off the air and WNEW tried hard to keep things going by basically giving Ron and Fez basically every single time slot freed up by the departure of the other shows. This was great if you were a fan of them (general consensus is that Ron and Fez were the best show on the network), but while they were the third-best show on WNEW at the time, the loss of Opie and Anthony's fanbase made the ratings crater. WNEW basically died at this point.
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