The Josh Innes Show - My Buddy Sean Got Whacked At 790

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Sean Salisbury, my good buddy, got the axe yesterday. I love the guy. He took over that gig after I got dumped in 2019. If I didn't know this, I was reminded by the Houston Chronicle which actually used my name in the headline! What are we doing here? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right. Let's see here. So my buddy, Sean Salisbury, got whacked yesterday at 790 in Houston. I say my buddy, I haven't talked to Sean in a while. He and I don't talk all that often anymore. I've always enjoyed him. I think he's a wonderful guy. But I haven't talked with Sean in depth or anything in a long time. But he got whacked. A lot of people have gotten whacked in radio over the last couple days. At least at this point, I haven't. So there's that. But let me get it. Let me play a couple of commercials. get into this because something like it's fascinating that my name keeps popping up in situations that I have nothing to do with just because people want to use my name but let's see here let's go to this after these words

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mx.ca.ca slash yannex. So yesterday I get a text from AJ and it just says, man, the Cron's throwing strays. You're catching strays from the Cron. I'm like, what are you talking about? And this post

on Twitter from the Houston Chronicle, Sean Salisbury, who had hosted Sports Talk 790's morning show in Houston since Josh Ennis was fired in 2019, said Wednesday he's lost his job. You basically made the story about me with the tone of that headline. I'm not the one who got fired. I haven't worked there in six years. Over six years. It's been

over six years since I got whacked there. But the headline reads, Sean Salisbury, who had hosted Sports Talk 790s morning show in Houston since Josh Innes was fired in 2019, said Wednesday he has lost his job. You literally made the headline about the guy that hasn't worked there in six fucking years. I don't know. Look, I know why I'm not going to play stupid. I know why I get written about and I know why my name is thrown about because all these people, the same ones who want to tell you that you suck and the same ones who want to tell you that you're not good and the same ones who want to tell you that you, that no one cares that you exist, they know that your name generates reaction from people. And I guarantee when you click on this story, all of them

copy and paste these stories. So it's all going to be largely the same shit. It's going to probably say Sean Salisbury took over once, you know, Josh Ennis got whacked. Now, here's a story from Mike McGuff. Now, mind you, and I love Sean. Okay, Sean is a good guy. I loved working with him. I loved hanging with him. He's a good guy.

If you're making any amount of money, a base salary, particularly on a radio station that's in 20-somethingth place, the clock is probably ticking, right? The key in radio, unless you're somebody. like Bobby Bones or someone who's got an extremely successful local show. Like, I don't think Rod Ryan is ever in danger of getting fired because Rod Ryan is a huge part of what they do and generates a ton of money for them. And Rod's a good dude. His show is huge.

He's got the biggest morning show in Houston. He's got five people on his staff, four people on his staff. I don't believe he's in any danger because he generates for them and does a good job and that. If you're making six figures base, which I'm going to have to guess Sean was, because I know what I was making. Now, I don't know if they were paying Sean what they were paying me, but my show was, like, the grand total was like $300,000 between us, like $250, something like that. Because I got the money that Charlie was getting, and Charlie was getting paid this stupid amount of money, like $250,000 a year or something like that, some absurd amount of cash. And they gave that to me,

and then I divided it up among me and Jilly and myself. And I took obviously the biggest bulk of Jim got a nice chunk of it compared to what he was making at 6-10 at the time. And then Jilly, when we brought her on, I took some out of what I was making and said, hey, give this to Jilly and hers wasn't a ton. But it was in the same house anyway, so who cared? So that's how we did things. But I was making so much money that I knew that for what we were generating, that wasn't going to last long. Same thing happened in St. Louis. When I went to St. Louis, here's the main reason why I regret leaving my job in Nashville.

because my base salary wasn't big enough to really draw a ton of attention, but I was making so much money doing other stuff that I was making plenty of cash. Like I made more in Nashville with a much smaller with half the base salary than I did in St. Louis. So because all I made in St. Louis was the base salary. And they took out more in taxes. And I didn't really have a lot of live endorsements. In Nashville, I had live endorsements and I had two other radio stations I was doing a show for. I was doing a bunch of weekend shit.

So, like, my base pay was much lower, but it was about the same when you looked at how much I generated in a given year. So I regret that mightily. Now, I'm happy with the job I have now, and I'm starting much lower than I did at these other places, and I'm happy to have the gig. I'm not bitching about it. But if I could go back and look at a lot of the decisions I've made, and I've made some shitty decisions, and I made some, you know, good decisions. but, you know, blowing the thing up in Philly probably wasn't the greatest decision because if I would have stayed there, I probably could, I know I'd be the number one person there. Without a doubt, there would be no one that would be touching me right now.

We'd be a gigantic behemoth. But what kind of started that ball rolling down the hill is when Tony rolled out. If Tony doesn't roll out, who knows how things go. But when he rolled out, a lot of bad things fell and Domino's fell. And it just became a bad situation. Maybe if Tony actually wanted to do that show, maybe we'd still be doing it today. We would have done it for seven or eight years, and it would have been a giant. I don't know.

But if I would have stayed in Philly and wouldn't have blown the thing up at WIP, I think I'd be the biggest thing there right now. I'm not. It is what it is. I have regrets about the way things went at 790. We've talked about that. But I do regret, because, I mean, eventually I would have been fired there anyway because I did not generate enough revenue for the money I was making.

There's a target. When you're making $200-something thousand dollars a year base, they're looking at you like, why are we paying this guy on the sports station? and nobody listens to this amount of money. Like, if you survive in that world, it's because you're not making a huge sum of cash base and someone's got to be there, you know? So, and then I regret that in Nashville.

I shouldn't have left Nashville for St. Louis. Like, just directly, like, the biggest regret would probably be that. Like, yes, Philly would have been a big deal. And yes, it would have been successful and all that. But I didn't really like it there at the time. Like, looking back on it, I like it more. But at the time I didn't. I had nothing against Nashville.

I like Nashville. It's a good city. It's still the South. I think my sensibilities fit more with the people there. It wasn't my favorite place ever. But it was fine. I regret that because I blew up a situation where I was getting a lot of gigs doing weekend shit in Seattle and Charlotte and Dallas. So I was making extra cash doing that.

I was doing totally fine there. But leaving for St. Louis and chasing the bigger base pay so I could call my dad and be like, hey, dad, I'm moving to St. Louis. And they're paying me $150,000. How about that? You're like, that's cool. but then you're like now looking back on it you got a year of that and now you're back to square one again making nowhere close to that so I mean that's life I mean you make decisions and do dumb things

Salisbury has hosted the 790 show he's been there since 2018 initially hosting from 3 to 6 before moving to the morning slot in 2019 before joining he did all these different jobs blah blah blah blah okay there you go but the ratings just aren't very good for sports talk in Houston anyway. So that's the thing about working in this industry right now is if you make a large sum of cash base, it's just easier to dump you. That's what it is. Like the art to staying around now is actually just like don't make waves among people, generate money for them and don't have a have fewer zeros behind your actual salary. And then you can survive. As I told you,

When I went to Nashville initially, I had gone from making 200-something a year, whatever it was in Houston, and then I was out for a couple years, and I went there to make like 60 Gs, which is fine, right? Like, I needed a job, and I took it. It's Nashville. So I went. And I did so well there with endorsements and other shit that that 60 Gs was easily double and a half in the time I was there because I was doing a bunch of shit. But then you get drawn in by the allure of going to other places that are going to pay you a bigger sum of cash up front. So you're like, I don't even have to worry about the endorsement part of it. But then what you don't realize is if you're not making them the money to make up for what they're paying you, then you become an easy target.

And that's reality. And I think that's in a lot of fields, right? I mean, if you're not making the money. That's why people like Michael Berry have it made. Michael Barry essentially is his own animal. like Jim Mud doesn't work for Iheart. Jim Mud works for Michael Barry. I think Ramon works for Michael Barry.

He doesn't work for Iheart. Like, they're set because Michael Barry makes so much money for Iheart that Jim. Jim is so much better off lifewise working for Michael Barry. Do I think that he's as fulfilled? I don't know this for a fact. I'm not speaking for Jim. But knowing what Jim likes to do and what Jim's passion was when I hung out with him on a daily basis, Do I think that Jim is probably fulfilled with, you know, doing the job he does there?

Probably not. I bet Jim Miss is doing the show and doing wacky shit every day and all that. Like, I guarantee he does. I don't ask him these things. It's not like, hey, I don't text Jim and go, hey, are you fulfilled? Like, I don't do that kind of shit. You know, it's not really my place to do that, but we're still best friends. I talk with him all the time.

But I'm not going to sit there and pry into it and say, hey, are you happy? I guarantee he's happy making the money he's fucking making to do the job he's doing. I mean, look, he's doing a good job of what he's doing. But I don't think it's as much work as he had to do when we were doing a daily show. And I'm sending him out on a fucking cherry picker and all those other shit. But is he as fulfilled? Probably not. But he's safe.

Unless he somehow, unless he goes liberal, unless he dyes his hair blue and transitions, I don't think Jim Mudd's ever really in danger of losing his gig with Michael Barry. So he can have that for as long as Michael Barry as Michael Barry. Jim Mudd's going to be there. And I'm happy for him. I'm happy for his, the comfort he has. I'm happy for the fucking McMansion he now lives in. My house is the size of a studio apartment.

Like, Jim Mud's bathroom is larger than my house now. But I'm happy for him. But, you know, it just, it is what it is, right? Like, in an industry like this that's not as powerful and strong as it was 10, 50, I mean, 30 years ago, whatever, you have to be, you have to understand your role. I think part of my issue with a lot of people, radio people, particularly, is they think they're bigger shit than they actually are. And I'm talking about on-air people. Like, I'm truly of the belief that some of these people who are, like, I'm seeing posts from people who just got fired. I think they're more, I think they're happy about getting fired just so they could put up the IG post to let people know they were fired so everybody can tell them how great they are.

Because it'll be the only moment they get any real attention. Because for the most part, a lot of these people think they're big shit that work in radio, and they're not really big shit. They're just there. They're fine. They're like local Jemoke. And they're fine, but it's not like, you know, there's someone that the world truly cares about. But don't tell them that because they think the whole world cares about them. So when they get fired, they get to go out and post that they got fired, and then they get a thousand likes compared to the normal 20 likes they get.

And they're like, wow, I guarantee you there are people that have gotten their rocks off on getting to post that they got fired. it's just how people are it's weird it's a very strange thing but anyway more to come