No Mike Francesa, no problem for Michael Kay.

The ESPN host continues to own afternoon drive time, beating Francesa’s replacements at WFAN in the first ratings book for 2020.

Newsday’s Neil Best reports that in January, Kay had an 8.1 rating among New York men between the ages of 25 and 54 from the hours of 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts, who replaced Francesa in the afternoon drive slot for WFAN, averaged 6.7 according to Best.

In December, Francesa walked away from the afternoon drive mic for the second time. He famously retired from WFAN in 2017 following a long farewell tour, only to return to the station four months later. Francesa had been back on the air since May 2018, but there were rumors for months his second stint at WFAN would not last long, particularly after his much-ballyhooed “Mike’s On” app was bought by Entercom, WFAN’s parent company, and merged into the Radio.com app.

Francesa left the airwaves as he was being bumped from the top of the talk radio mountain. Kay soundly defeated Francesa in the Autumn 2019 ratings book in a 7.4-5.5 beatdown in the men aged 25-54 demographic, according to the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand. Even when counting Francesa’s streaming numbers, the gap was still wide at 7.4-6.1.

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This result was months in the making. Kay held a similarly large lead when the first month of the Autumn 2019 ratings were released. Francesa’s reaction then was to point to the scoreboard.

“I have been in afternoon drive since 1989 and have never finished behind another sports program. Never,” the big guy tweeted then. “The other station celebrating a success now would be the same as spiking the football after finally scoring a TD in a game that is 77-0!”

As for WFAN’s new midday crew of Maggie Gray and Marc Malusis, Best reports they won the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. slot. Same goes for WFAN’s morning team of Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti.

(NJ Advance Media’s Brian Fonseca contributed to this report.)

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Mike Rosenstein may be reached at mrosenstein@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rosenstein73. Find NJ.com on Facebook.