The Josh Innes Show - Philly Radio Beatdown

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

It appears WIP is kicking the everliving shit out of 97.5 The Fanatic. It's truly amazing that Fanatic even exists. I've got some ideas to fix that station. No one will care. But, I'm right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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There are still many people I do hate. Do not get me wrong. But Spike isn't really one of those people. I just don't really give a shit to be angry about shit like that anymore. So it is what it is. But apparently, the afternoon show that he is part of in Philadelphia had Shawn Landetta on the show, who is the former Eagles punter. Now, apparently earlier in the day, the morning show, I guess, had talked to Freddie Mitchell. I think they were talking about 4th and 26 because they're playing the Packers.

So, of course, you're talking about 4th and 26th. Because, God forbid, anything in Philadelphia be current. Let's go rehash the same fucking thing you've talked about one million fucking times. But anyway, I digress. That makes me more angry than the individuals. Just the content of these people makes me angrier. But anyway, they just do nothing current. I can't stop, Josh. We get it.

Shut up. Thank you. Now, so apparently Freddie Mitchell had said that Sean Landetta, the former punter of the Eagles, used to like shave his balls in the locker room or something like that. Why this came up, I don't know, but it's a funny little anecdote. Ha ha, the punter used to shave his balls in the locker room or the steam room, wherever the fuck he used to shave his balls. Steam room would be a weird place to do that, so I don't think that's where it was. But the story is that Freddie Mitchell's mitchell's on the air he mentions that uh sean

landetta shaved his balls in the locker room and that's that so spike asked the question when they have sean landetta why they have sean landetta like who the fuck cares what sean landetta has to think that's the other problem i have with so much fucking radio shit is the people that they put on the air like let's get the punter on and obviously he's not a very interesting punter because he got angry over this dumb question but so anyway they get him on the air and they ask Sean Landetta they're like hey on the morning show they said that you shaved your balls in the locker room is this true and Sean Landetta sounds slightly offended by the question like oh blah blah blah what are we what are we talking about football right now instead of talking about my balls or whatever?

And this became a story in Philly because for whatever reason, radio shit is a story in Philly and everybody's outraged by it. Oh, no, Spike Eskin, shock jock. His dad's an asshole. He's an asshole. Shock jock shit. And, you know, it's not like theagles aren't playing a playoff game this weekend you couldn't find anything else to talk about and oh this is what they do when they get a player on

the air they just talk about balls what do you think you are opie and anthony and blah blah blah i'm like you people are such cocksuckers because you're the same people that bitch about the fact that it's boring same shit all the time then a guy asked an innocuous question about whether or not a player shaves his balls in the locker room which is one they were doing as a follow-up and you act like it's the most outrageous offensive shit you've ever heard when the morning guy used to have strippers and i'm talking bus station skank new jersey south jersey philadelphia strippers on the air oogling them on the internet and having them do stupid shit that doesn't bother you but you ask a player a punter like and by the Jersey, South Jersey, Philadelphia strippers on the air, oogling them on the internet and having them do stupid shit.

That doesn't bother you. But you ask a player, a punter, like, and by the way, I also liked that the idea that somehow players are someone like the Pope who you're not allowed, like you have to treat with reverence. Dude's a fucking punter. So what? You ask him if he shaved his balls in the locker room. But of course, everybody has to be offended because that's the name of the game in Philadelphia. If you're a media person and someone else in the media does something,

you have to act like it was the most offensive, terrible thing you've ever heard because that makes the story because everybody in Philadelphia is competing with one another and they all want to bring each other down. That's the way the Philadelphia media works. That's the game in the Philadelphia media. So everybody's all worked up over spike oh my god what a loser shock jock bullshit like go fuck yourselves my god he asked one question and the way people talk is it was like it was the whole damn show it was one question and by the way i'd rather hear an awkward interaction between a fucking punter and a radio host than hear them ask questions like uh so back when you were punting,

what was punting like? That must have been cool. As a punter, how would you have been preparing yourself for this game this weekend? So what was your mental makeup going into this game? How did you get locked in for a big playoff matchup? Boy, what do you want them to do? The reason reason you have a punter on the air honest to god is because generally speaking kickers tend to have a little bit more of a sense of humor because they they understand that they're kickers so a lot of times you'll talk to guys you might get wacky shit out of a kicker or like a deep snapper right like deep snappers like john doran boss like guys who understand that they're not like superstars so they find another niche and that's being kind of wacky and like John Doran boss doing magic and shit kind of wacky right like that's kind of the name of the game but the way people in Philly are like they're the most

vile people that's what's fascinating about Philly they'll say the most vile shit they're the kind of people that think that calling Tony Romo Tony Homo is like high-end comedy right yet they then they listen to sports radio and it's as if it's supposed to be like meet the fucking press so fucking what if Spike asked a stupid question and the guy gave an answer and he said he didn't like it good do more of that shit be interesting try different shit why do you hate the Cowboys is tiresome there's only so many angles you can take on a fucking playoff game before it's like i'm doing four hours of radio what do you want

me to do i have four hours to do radio do you literally just want me to sit there and talk to beat writers all day saying the same fucking shit do you want me to sit here and talk with freddie mitchell again about fourth and 26 like good for spike like look again it's all i can and i guarantee you spike didn't go into that like oh watch this is gonna get crossing broad to comment because no one goes into that kind of shit crossing broad is desperate for radio war shit they keep calling it radio wars there are no wars it's over there is no war i don't know how you can put radio war. Speaking of, let me play some commercials here. So this Crossing Broad posted the most recent quarterly ratings in demo ratings, not just like everyone, but like the demos that people look at that matter, which means somebody from WIP fed

them these numbers because WIP is just beating the ever living shit out of the fanatic. But let me read you some of these numbers. It still says radio wars. There is no war. The war is over. It's not a war. It's a murder at this point. It's not a war. A war is there are two sides. They're fighting to try to win something. One side is not fighting.

They're not trying to win anything. And they are getting pulverized. It is a prison yard beatdown. It's like when the fucking Dahmer got shanked or whatever in the fucking prison it's not even competitive but let me play some commercials and we'll talk about it all right so let's see here the headline in this radio wars it says radio wars there are no wars there can't be a war when both sides are not competitive but radio wars 94 WIP trounces 97.5 the fanatic in the fall book as Mike Missanelli needle fails to move.

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saw increases from the summer while fanatic dipped across the board it's important to note that it wasn't that long ago that WIP wasn't always beating the shit out of the Fanatic. They were beating them. And some day parts they were losing. Missanelli, when I got there, was beating the afternoon show of WIP. That's what they put me on. But WIP wasn't doing these kind of numbers always. And I don't believe it's because the talent that they have on the air or anything like that. One significant thing happened that changed the course of history for WIP. And if this wouldn't have happened, WIP would still beat the Fanatic because the Fanatic doesn't give a shit. But they wouldn't be putting up like 14 shares in every day part and competing with the rock stations and shit.

I think they'd be more, a little bit lower than that. Again, they'd beat the shit out of the fanatic, but they would not be out beating the shit. Like they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. And that significant event was winning the Super Bowl. I believe that WIP is still riding off of the fact that the Eagles won the Super Bowl because they were trending downward. Things were not going well. This would have been in like 2017.

So I got fired in August of 2016. So they won in February of 18. So they were struggling. Then they won the Super Bowl and everything kind of turned. Then the baseball team got better. And that has certainly helped because when I was there, the baseball team was tanking. They were awful. They were even worse. They weren't tanking. They were just terrible. Football was mediocre. No hockey was meaningless. All that, right? So you know this. I've told you this story before.

The way WIP started taking over again and really throttling the fanatic is the Eagles won the Super Bowl. That helped them. And they've been riding that high ever since. They'd be beating them, but it wouldn't be by this much. So here it is, mornings. WIP with an 11 share over the air and a 4.8 on the stream, which is good for 15.6 share in min 2554. I'm assuming that this is min 2554.

The Fanatic has a 3.8. So that is a five times throttling. The morning show, your anchor show on the radio station, is getting throttled five times. So the Fanatic was in fifth place with their 3.8. The Preston and Steve show, which is the big morning show in town, had a 21.2. They just always win on WMMr in the morning so that is

what it is so you're number two uh if you're wip middays 15.6 for wip to fanatics 3.8 so again that's mike missanelli in his first full book from 10 a.m to 2 p.m miss Missanelli and Bill Colarulo finished number eight overall while Joe and Hugh were number one with a 15.6 which represents the highest number they have ever done that's right you brought back now okay now this is important okay here's where some of these numbers can be misleading and we need details that is a mid midday show. In middays, this would have included baseball playoffs in this book. There were weekday baseball games and those numbers are bigger than the actual shows. So I do think there is some misleading information in here that they will not share with you. Maybe it's in the story, maybe it's not.

But I think they should. If you want to go actually do some homework on this, if that was the fall book, that means that was October, November, December, right? That would have been that ratings period, I believe. If that's the case, that means you had post-season baseball and the Phillies had to have played a handful of post-season midday or afternoon baseball games. So I think that's why that number's as high as it is again not to say that they wouldn't beat the shit out of the fanatic of course they'd beat the shit out of the fanatic but it is important to be factual in your breakdown of this which is nothing they're

going to do on crossing broad because obviously the people at wip who gave them their information are not going to tell them that oh by the way our midday show number surged to its highest ever because we were airing postseason baseball um let's see this says wip's midday show never used to come close to pulling numbers like this again do the homework on it and find out how many games in that book how many baseball games philly's baseball games were played during that stretch that fell in that book. Not even, and by the way, that would probably also include stretch run baseball games, which could have been day baseball that weren't playoff games either. And the play baseball always gets a bigger number than the shows, uh, at least when the baseball team's good. So, but way to go, uh, Mike Missanelli, they brought you back. Much ballyhooed, and you're in eighth place,

getting beaten, again, five times. Afternoons, Spike, Ike, and Jack Fritz had a number one show, a 15.5 to a 3.4 on the Fanatic. The best show ever, question mark, finished 10th. So congratulations, you are 10 spots below wip wonderful job 97.5 the fanatic the same radio station that could have hired me in 2019 coulda shoulda woulda you didn't you're stupid and you still could have i'm still waiting for the call

back from the program director the guy that's now running the station a guy i used to talk to all the time a buddy of mine a guy who when he ran other radio stations i would talk to him about those radio stations a guy that i respect as a person a guy who five months ago on a friday was supposed to call me back on a monday and never fucking. So I'm not saying you're getting what you deserve there, but congratulations. You made the move to try to bring back Mike Messinelli, who no one gives a fuck about. You got a bunch of shows on the radio that are basically just like copycats of WIP shows. You want to know how I know all this? Look at WIP. It's mostly just dopes that failed over at 97.5.

A lot of the dudes that have been successful over there recently are dudes who failed at 97.5. They go over to WIP. WIP gets the numbers. It ain't because the dudes on the air are doing spectacular shows. Don't kid yourselves. It's because it's WIP and they're getting numbers. Good for them. I'm not shitting on the idea that they're getting numbers.

Good for them. But then what happens is WIP or the fanatic, they hire people. They put these people on. These people do Philly sports radio the way they think they're supposed to do Philly sports radio, which is rip off everything WIP's done for 100 years. And then you're basically doing WIP light. You're a Diet Coke. You're a zero-calorie, zero-sugar version of WIP light, you're a diet Coke, you're a zero calorie, zero sugar version of WIP,

which is really a zero calorie, zero sugar version of what it was in its heyday in terms of the content. And you're expecting to compete. That's why I don't think fanatic even cares to compete. I don't think they care. I think they're just existing. There's nothing else they feel that they can put on the format that makes sort of the frequency. I mean, they're owned by Beasley there, right? They've already got the rock stations covered. Like the only thing that maybe they could put on there, I mean, they've got country, so they don't need country. They got active current rock shit and classic rocks. They don't need that at Beasley. So basically you look for where there's a hole

in the market and where you think you can make money, right? Where's the hole in the Philadelphia market? You got classic hit stations. You got adult contemporary stations. You got pop stations. You have an alt station, although you may consider, I mean, look, maybe you find something else that buoys those two rock ones and you add another rock one. I don't know. I don't know what that would be. You've got classic rock. You've got more of an active rock. Maybe you just go full on alt on there. I don't know. You probably won't. There's no point, but there really is. That's the problem is you've got this frequency. What the fuck are you going to put on it? Probably, I wouldn't doubt, maybe they want to sell it

at this point. I don't know what it bills. That's also important. People look at ratings. You have to look at how much money a radio station is making relative to how much it's spending. My guess is that the salaries of these people on Fanatic aren't very high because the salaries of the guys at WIP aren't close to what they used to be. Angelo was making a million dollars a year. I don't think that that whole staff is making a combined million dollars a year right now. So if they're not getting paid a ton, nothing against Joe Giglio or any of those guys, I don't believe those guys are getting gigantic salaries, right? Not relative to what radio used to do 15 years ago, 20 years ago. So if they're not getting that, what do you think they're paying the doofs doing the afternoons or the mornings over at 97.5?

Probably less than the guys are making over at WIP. So it's not like they're paying these dudes a ton. So there's not a ton of cost, I guess. So whatever you generate is, I mean, you should be doing fine. Like, I don't think they're hurting, but it's just pointless. Like, why even have it if you're not going to try to win or at least try to be more competitive? Because getting beaten 15 shares to three in the target demo, you're not competitive. You're not close. You're an afterthought. And you clearly don't even care to try, which is what's fascinating. If he cared to try, the guy I know that's running the place would call me right now and say,

what do we got to do to get you here? And let's try to shake shit up. They don't want to shake shit up. They don't want to do anything. They just want to exist. And that's one of the biggest problems with radio right now is everybody just wants to exist. That's all anybody cares about. People are afraid for their jobs. People that run these companies are afraid for their jobs. People are scared shitless and they don't take chances. They took a chance on bringing me here to St. Louis and they made it sound like they wanted to take all these big risks within a year and plus they fucking fire my ass. Nobody wants nobody wants to fucking take chances on anything most of these people are fucking cowards so they're just and to a degree i understand that you're just trying to hang on as long as you can and keep getting a paycheck for as long as you can and that's what a lot of these

people are fucking doing right now so more power to you but if i'm running that radio station and i'm beasley and i'm seeing 15 shares to threes i'm like why am i paying any of these sacks of shit you know what you need to do you need to give one good shot at just going fucking buck wild if you're fanatic what do you have to lose why if you're losing by 12 shares why are you trying to emulate what they're doing over there why not just fucking go ham on it and try something different? Build a clubhouse culture. Build a world where the audience is loyal to you. That's what you have to do. If you want those numbers to go up, your option is to either, well, what you're doing now,

which is not working, which is basically being WIP light, or you build a world where you might not have the biggest cume, which is the QM audience, the number of people listening, but you have people that are so fucking committed to you that the TSL is bonkers. That's the time spent listening. And that can drive your number up. And before you know it, instead of a 3.8, you got a six and you're looking more competitive. And maybe you steal a little bit from them. And instead of them having a 15 share, they have like an 11 and you've got a seven. And all of a sudden, it's a little bit from them. And instead of them having a 15 share, they have like, you know, an 11 and you've got a seven.

And all of a sudden, it's a little bit more competitive. Again, it's easier said than done. But if you said, Josh, what would you do if you were in charge? That's what I would do. I would build a clubhouse. I would want my shows to be the kind of people that people want to hang out with. No offense to like a John Kincaid. But who's like, boy, I sure can't wait to go hang out with John Kincaid.

Nice guy. Don't have an issue with him. But like if I'm listening to John Kincaid in the morning, what like 25, 54-year-old male is like, man, I can't wait to go out and have some beers with fucking John Kincaid or whoever the fuck or Mike Missanelli, 70-year-old angry lesbian yells at cloud guy who wants to hang out with that fucking guy. My strategy. And again, no one gives a fuck about my strategy. And of course they don't because they know it's a good strategy and they're lazy fucks. But what they should do is create this world of just like it's us versus everybody. And let's give this one fucking shot. And if there's a place that could work, it's Philadelphia because it's been proven that weird 80s radio tactics still work in Philadelphia because they're in a fucking fallout shelter and emerged in 2025 still thinking the way things are in 1987. So it can work there.

But you have to create a world where you paint them as the lame sons of bitches that are hacky and lame and boring. And over here, we just want to have a good fucking time. It's just hanging with the dudes, man. Podcast type vibe. Look, I'll text the guy right now. I'm pitching the idea. Won't hear back from him, but that's what they should be doing. That should be the mindset. Try something different. Get out in front of the people. Do shit do stunts do shit that makes news Let people know you're there and give them a different alternative You're a passionate sports city yet. Your two stations are giving the people the same shit on both station I know what i'm fucking doing and at some point someone's gonna be like, oh wow, this guy actually fucking knows what he's doing

Fucking people. Anyway, I love you guys