This story has been updated.
After more than 80 years, WHCU will no longer be the official radio broadcast of Cornell men’s hockey.
Cornell Athletics has cut ties with News-Talk WHCU (870 AM / 97.7 FM) — owned and operated by Cayuga Media Group — for men’s hockey broadcasts beginning this upcoming 2025-26 season. WHCU was the only radio broadcast available for all Cornell men’s hockey games.
The most recent WHCU broadcast team included Jason Weinstein on play-by-play and Tony Eisenhut ’88 on color commentary. Weinstein began broadcasting Cornell men’s hockey in 2004 and has been a steady voice for the team ever since.
With the change, Cornell Athletics has promoted Weinstein to take on play-by-play for both Cornell men’s and women’s hockey broadcasts on ESPN+. The transition was confirmed by a Cornell Athletics spokesperson in a text to The Sun.
“I'm grateful to continue doing something I've done for the past 20 seasons,” Weinstein told The Sun. “Cornell hockey has come to mean a lot more to me than just a gig.”
Due to Weinstein’s promotion, Cornell Athletics has parted ways with Grady Whittenburg, the voice of Cornell men’s and women’s hockey on ESPN+ — a paid streaming service — since 2018. Though Weinstein has not regularly called Cornell women’s hockey games, he called a handful of playoff games across the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 seasons.
Tony Eisenhut ’88 will continue to provide color commentary for men’s hockey broadcasts. A color commentator for the women’s broadcasts has yet to be named, a Cornell Athletics spokesperson confirmed to The Sun.
“Tony and I have become good friends [and] I've become friends with a lot of the staff and coaches I've worked with over the years. You know, my son goes to Cornell now,” Weinstein said. “It's gonna be great to work with Tony again. [He is] a big reason why I've enjoyed doing the games as much as I have.”
Since 1940, WHCU has provided radio coverage of Cornell men’s hockey. WHCU’s free broadcast included pre and postgame shows that regularly featured coaches and players as well as instant analysis and commentary, and Weinstein regularly traveled to broadcast away hockey games. WHCU, on the other hand, did not broadcast any Cornell women’s hockey games.
Weinstein confirmed that he will not travel to away games, something he has done with radio since he began calling Cornell hockey in 2004.
“As each year went by, it became more and more apparent that Cornell was more and more of an outlier to do radio and to travel radio,” Weinstein said. “It wasn't great to hear [that there would be no more radio] but it just seems to be the trend.”
The split with WHCU, initially reported on July 30, was driven by a Cornell Athletics decision to “move in a new direction with its multimedia rights,” according to 607 News Now. When asked to provide clarification about the “new direction” and more information about the switch, a Cornell Athletics spokesperson provided a statement on behalf of the department in a text message sent to The Sun.
“Beginning with the 2025-26 school year, Cornell Athletics will no longer be airing games on commercial radio. This decision has been made after careful evaluation of how our fans consume content, technology trends, budget priorities, equity concerns, and the need to cut costs due to the changing financial landscape of higher education and collegiate athletics,” wrote the spokesperson.
Weinstein told The Sun he was informed about the change not long before it went public.
“I heard the end result. I wasn't involved in the discussions or anything, so I don't know when the [administrators] made the decision,” Weinstein said. “When I heard (the news) wasn't super long before [the public] did.”
Cornell men’s and women’s hockey — along with the rest of Cornell’s Varsity sports — is streamed live on ESPN+. ECAC Hockey will continue to be broadcast on ESPN+ through the 2028-29 season, as an eight-year contract extension was inked in 2021. Additionally, a 10-year agreement between the Ivy League and ESPN+ was reached in April 2018.
Many fans have expressed grievances with the inconsistency of the ESPN+ broadcasts. For example, viewers complained on X on March 29 that the broadcast for Cornell’s regional final matchup against Boston University had not yet begun despite the game having already started.
Another viewer, Marcia Earle ’81, expressed her discontent with the broadcast on X on Jan. 18, citing the same issue of the broadcast being unavailable even though game action was well into the second period.
Earle, who currently lives in Westchester County, appreciates the ability to watch the games when she’s not in Ithaca. But when technical difficulties arose, she avidly enjoyed the WHCU broadcasts.
“I closed my eyes, I listened to the play-by-play, and [Weinstein and Eisenhut] are terrific,” Earle told The Sun. Multiple readers reached out to The Sun via X to express their experiences with both WHCU and ESPN+. “There's a different quality to the experience and the engagement of WHCU as opposed to ESPN+.”
Regardless of age, Cornell hockey fans tuned into WHCU’s broadcasts. Josh Gershenfeld ’21, a longtime Cornell hockey fan even before attending Cornell, finds the radio broadcast to be reliable when he’s on the go.
“My preference is always to watch the full video stream on ESPN+ whenever I'm home. … I live in New York City now, and when I'm walking around, I'm definitely tuning into the stream of the radio broadcast,” Gershenfeld said. “I think Jason Weinstein is tremendous.”
Gershenfeld also enjoyed the commentary from Whittenburg, but found the stream itself to be poor and, at times, impossible to watch.
“I think the ESPN plus broadcast crew is also very good. I really like Grady Whittenburg as well. But I think even when I am at home, the ESPN+ broadcast is really unreliable,” Gershenfeld said. “So many times the video feed just cuts that altogether, or it's really pixelated and refreshes every couple seconds.”
Above all, fans ask for one thing: consistency.
“Have it have the broadcast start five minutes before so I know that it's working and I can actually see the puck drop and I’m not messing around with my browser,’” Earle said. “You'd think Cornell Athletics would care about the viewership to realize this. This is part of the fan experience, the alumni experience, the community experience, because hockey matters to all those communities.”
Jane McNally is a senior editor on the 143rd editorial board and was the sports editor on the 142nd editorial board. She is a member of the Class of 2026 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. You can follow her on X @JaneMcNally_ and reach her at jmcnally@cornellsun.com.
