WRT ratings: The one thing you can say is that they didn't pick up all the WNSA listeners. In other words, their ratings are not equivalent to the total sports listening audience when there were two stations...Not that they necessarily expected to get the 100% gain, as they were picking up another station in the process anyway...that said...
WRT Simon/management: If Simon's running his own show without interference, why is it so far completely removed from what he did at WNSA? On WNSA, it was pretty much open format, it was Sports-heavy, he had a few topics to get the ball rolling but callers were free to ask about anything. On WGR, there's a strict set of topics that callers must adhere to and many topics are non-Sports. Are you saying that he was on the tight leash at WNSA and that his performance/format at WGR is more indicative of what is natural to him? You can obviously account for a difference in the time of the program (I know in the mornings even WNSA would resort to some schtick, and reduce the number of callers, even before Jimmy B) and the lack of guests, but do you really think we saw the "corporate Howard" at WNSA and are seeing the "real Howard" on WGR?