The San Francisco Giants’ rough season on the field isn’t just impacting their roster. It’s also putting a strain on the team’s relationship with its flagship radio station, KNBR-AM/FM.

Giants games have aired on KNBR since 1979, and the station is currently in its first year of a three-year extension that was signed in spring of 2025. The longtime partnership will make 2028 the 50th season of Giants baseball on “the Sports Leader.”

But what has been a strong relationship at many points during that time has been tested in recent years, and none more than this season, multiple sources with knowledge of the relationship told SFGATE. (The sources were granted anonymity in accordance with Hearst policies.) In terms of the past decade, one source told SFGATE, “It’s never been this bad.”

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Neither the Giants nor KNBR responded to SFGATE’s request for interviews about the status of the relationship between the team and radio station.

There has been no shortage of criticism to lob the Giants’ way in 2026. On the field, the team has performed poorly, making fundamental mistakes and mental errors on a somewhat regular basis, and had several moments of player disputes for the world to see. But the team has been making even more headlines for off-field reasons, from star players dodging the media to writing Bible verses on their hats before playing on Pride Night.

The San Francisco Giants observe the national anthem at Oracle Park on July 26, 2026, in San Francisco.

It’s all been discussed actively among the fanbase, and KNBR hosts, reflecting that fanbase, have addressed these things on the air, too. The team, according to sources, hasn’t taken kindly to the barrage of criticism.

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The biggest moment happened during the fallout from the Giants’ Pride Night debacle, and revolved around a canceled interview with president of baseball operations Buster Posey.

On June 24, Posey refused to answer questions about the four Giants players who protested against the team’s annual celebration of the LGBTQ community, which by then had become a national story, saying he would only answer “baseball questions.” The next day, KNBR announced that Posey would be the guest on its weekly “Giants Executive Show” on Thursday morning.

But around 90 minutes before that was set to happen, KNBR put out a new announcement that Giants President and CEO Larry Baer would be the guest, not Posey. While the Giants and KNBR never publicly said why they made the change — and did not respond to SFGATE’s inquiries about Posey’s absence on the show — multiple sources tell SFGATE the switch came after a contentious back-and-forth between the station and team, with the Giants threatening to cancel the interview entirely at one point. 

Buster Posey, president of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants, speaks during a ceremony honoring former teammate Brandon Belt, prior the the game against the Miami Marlins, at Oracle Park on April 25, 2026.

The end result was that fill-in hosts John Dickinson and Dieter Kurtenbach were barred from asking Baer follow-up questions after he opened with a statement about Pride Night. In the segment after Baer’s interview, Kurtenbach ripped the executive’s statement while acknowledging the “parameters” that were put in place for the interview. Other KNBR hosts have also publicly acknowledged the restrictions.

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