95.7 The Game hires two former KNBR employees

On Monday, two people who were laid off from KNBR announced on social media that they had joined 95.7 The Game. Former KNBR reporter Jake Hutchinson will go over to work on the digital side, and F.P. Santangelo will join the station as a part-time host.

Santangelo was the host of “KNBR Tonight,” the station’s 6-10 p.m. call-in show that ran for more than half a century, as well as the host of San Francisco Giants postgame shows on KNBR. He’ll be on the air for The Game twice this week, starting as a fill-in for the 2-6 p.m. “Willard and Dibs” show on Thursday before also joining the 6-10 a.m. “Morning Roast” show on Friday.

In his announcement post, Santangelo told his followers, “I’ve missed you guys,” a sentiment The Game program director Matt Nahigian echoed in a phone conversation with SFGATE on Monday when asked about the unusually short turnaround in hosting shifts for Santangelo.

“I never thought that for one second,” Nahigian said. “He’s raring to go.”

Nahigian also seemed preliminarily defensive at the idea that Santangelo, a former Giants infielder who spent seven years in the big leagues, is just a “Giants hire” for The Game. To Nahigian, Santangelo’s clubhouse background will help the station’s coverage of all of their local teams.

“F.P. is a smart guy who’s spent a lot of time here and knows about the other teams and has great perspectives on the other teams,” Nahigian said. “Friday is the day that Jordan Poole comes back. You might say, ‘Well, you’ve got F.P. in the morning, he’s a Giants guy.’

“No, actually. He’s a guy that’s got great perspective about what it’s like behind the scenes in the locker room. How great is that conversation going to be day-of? ‘What skirmishes did you see when you were a player? How did that affect the team?’ I think he relates to the audience extremely well.”

Oon the digital content side, Nahigian told SFGATE that Hutchinson will report to The Game’s ownership at Audacy instead of him. Nahigian also said that Hutchinson will cover the region’s top teams in a similar way to his prior job at KNBR, whose offices are located just a block down Battery Street from The Game. In announcing the move, Hutchinson said he’s “grateful to Audacy and 95.7 for this opportunity and recognition of what I bring to the table.”

It’s a sign that the latest chapter in the ongoing rivalry between the region’s two sports talk radio stations seems to revolve around digital content. Clearly, KNBR has deprioritized theirs. Nahigian is saying the opposite about his newsroom.

“You don’t make an investment in someone like him unless you’re putting a big emphasis on the digital part of things,” Nahigian said of Hutchinson. “I think it’s awesome, and he’s going to be a huge help to our current staff and just make it even bigger.”