Mike Francesa issues cease-and-desist warning to social media

The Funhouse Twitter account @BackAftaThis has gotten many followers over the years posting clips of Mike Francesca’s WFAN show, but it looks like it’s coming to an end.

After opening his half-hour WFAN show with a tribute to the retiring John Minko, Francesca didn’t mention Funhouse by name but expressed displeasure that social media posted a video of him Tuesday blasting President Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and said Entercom is going to stop this from happening in the future.

Francesa said on his show that Entercom is moving to stop social media accounts from posting clips of his show and that this has been in the works for a while.

“The other day I did an open that was viewed 2.4 million times in different places and used illegally in a bunch of places too,” Francesa said. “So we have been planning this for a long time, so this copyrighted broadcast and telecast is presented by authority of Entercom, Radio.com and WFAN and may not, remember, may not, be reproduced or retransmitted without the express written consent of Entercom Communications Corporation and Radio.com. And that means anybody.

“You want to go get video of me or see part of the show, go to Radio.com. Everyone of my programs are there, audio and video. No one else can reproduce the audio or video of this program again without written permission from Entercom. And that goes for anybody or you will be hearing from the lawyers.”

Funhouse, which has more than 97,000 followers, tweeted a response, writing that this move is only hurting Francesa’s reach.

“Francesca just made a really, really bad decision,” the still unknown person behind the Funhouse account tweeted. “He’s not happy that this ‘illegally posted’ clip of him got over 2M views. A clip Radio.com posted themselves only after it blew up. He says nobody will ever post his clips again. Enjoy yelling in the forest pal.”

Funhouse also tweeted that it will no longer post Francesa clips, but still will use clips from the Chris “Mad Dog Russo” Show and other sports media radio shows.

“He just went from being mostly irrelevant to completely irrelevant,” Funhouse tweeted. “Don’t misunderstand…. I’m a nobody, but I lost count of how many people told me they only hear him via my clips. He didn’t think this through.”

Earlier, The Post’s Andrew Marchand reported that WFAN’s parent company, Entercom, as part of its layoff and furlough plan brought on by the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic, has asked its top hosts, from Francesa to Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti, to take pay cuts of 20 percent and forgo bonuses through near the end of July.

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