Mike's Tardiness

Here’s a pet peeve that drives me somewhat crazy watching mike and the dog on YES...Francesa constantly walks in late to the start of segments. Russo is always there on time and inevitably has to field the first call of a segment on his own. Case in point today. The YES cameras started on a wide shot revealing that only Russo was in the studio...then as if in panic mode, YES switched to the tight shot of Chris so viewers just tuning in wouldn’t realize that Mike wasn’t in studio. Russo opened the phone lines and Bruce from Bayside kicked off the segment saying hello to Chris and Mike (little did he know there was no Mike). 30 seconds later, Francesa decided to grace us with his presence. Now if this was a one-time thing, I could understand. But it’s not. Why is this okay? What is Francesa doing that is so important that he can’t be in the studio for the start of EVERY segment. I wonder if any of the WFAN execs have ever talked to him about this, though I see the conversation going something like this:

Mark Chernoff: Mike, we need you in the studio for the start of every segment.
Francesa: (Deep Long Island accent) Ughh, have you taken a look at our ratings recently?

Would they ever let Joe Benigno or Evan Roberts get away with this? Mike gets on athletes all the time for not hustling. For dogging it. Just last week, he made reference to the fact that Lastings Milledge has been late to a few games this year. Well, how is what Francesa does any different? He shows up late to segments. Isn't that sort of dogging it? Does this bother anyone else?