The Josh Innes Show - Random Thoughts: New WIP Morning Show

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Hello All! Sorry about missing out on some pods yesterday. Around 3pm I hit a wall and didn't feel like talking. I guess that happens when you get up at 3:45 AM every day. Anyway, WIP has named Angelo's successor. I have some thoughts on this. Even if you're not from Philly, I think this is interesting behind the scenes radio convo. Fun Fact: That was going to be my job at one point. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit bmo.com slash viporter to learn more. So WIP is going to have a new morning show. Well, we knew that. We knew that Angelo was leaving, but now we find out who is actually going to be hosting said morning show. And the replacement for Angelo is the Midday show, which is, I guess, Joe DiCamera and John Ritchie.

I met John a few times. I think I did a few shows with him. Did John fill in whenever we were looking for someone to work with me? I don't remember the order of events of everything. I don't remember if we did things where when Tony bolted, I know we did a bunch of fill in stuff with other people. I don't know. we did things where when Tony bolted, I know we did a bunch of fill-in stuff with other people. I don't know if – I'm trying to remember. Did I do shows with people after the Cuz rolled out too when they were before the Bruno thing?

Did I do shows with other people? Or like I know I did some with Tony. Like we did a couple fill-in shows like that acted as an audition to see how he would sound. I'll say this about Tony, that like Tony was great to work with in the sense that he at least is a radio pro. Like what was great about Tony is he had a great laugh and you felt that he knew how to do a radio show and knew how to accentuate what you did well. I knew how to accentuate what he did well. He was just a radio pro. Part of the problem you run into now is a lot of guys just have no clue. It's just,

yeah, you get on there, talk about sports, whatever, but they're not radio people. What I appreciated about working with Tony was that Tony was a radio dude. And that's why I think that show worked out as well as it did. And then Tony decided, hey, fuck this. I quit. And that obviously was a downer. But obviously that's not what this is about. But I was just thinking about the order of events. I know I was on the air with John Ritchie at some point. It wasn't like a pregame show.

Was it when I was on at night? Did we do a show? We may have done a show together during the holiday season of 14. Does that sound right? I'm sure somebody that's a WIP person out there would know. That's when I did the shows with Tony, I believe. It was the holiday kind of run in 2014 after the cuz had left. I did those weird those weird shows with fella too which were very strange and i'm trying to remember if john ritchie and i did anything together i i think so because i remember thinking that he was really slow and by slow i mean it was hard to work with him because everything was very kind of like deliberate and very kind of drawn out and he didn't have a ton of energy that's why I like Tony is Tony like has a ton of energy like it's like it it sounds like it like I've

found some of our old stuff and the one thing that really stands out about me and Tony doing stuff was that it was just energetic like I can see why people tuned into that show versus Missanelli because Missanelli had no energy. He wasn't interesting. He's just an old dude sitting there talking to himself, had nobody else on the show. Just an old dude talking to callers is all that was. Then you get us in there and it's like a flamethrower and people are calling and we're arguing with people and we're going back and forth. And it was great. And speaking of that, you think about that now.

And like when I got the job, when I moved to Philadelphia, the idea was that eventually I would be in a major day part. Andy didn't want me to be in that major day part as fast as I got there. Like his ambition was for me to do nights for a couple years, get used to the city, let the people get acclimated to me, and then eventually move into either afternoons or, you know, if Angelo eventually hung it up due mornings. That was the initial plan. Well, his hope was that the cuz was going to sign one more deal and stay around for another year or two. And then eventually I would take that over or whatever because the cuz was getting no numbers. Nobody was listening. He was getting his ass kicked by Missanelli just hard, you know.

And then the cuz decided – remember this. Cuz didn't get fired. Cuz just decided not to come back. He was like, I ain't taking this. Because he could kind of see what the plan was. And he said, screw this. I'm out of here. And he didn't know for sure that that was the plan.

But I think he had inside people that were very knowledgeable and very well on the inside that told him that that was kind of the plan, that I was eventually going to come in there and do afternoons at WIP. And I guess at that point, that's when 97.5 was like, hey, let's do a morning show. And then the cuz rolled out, and then the cuz took that job and took Andy's secretary with him, and they started doing a morning show over there, and the bro, whatever, and they took him over there, and that was fine. But the original order of events for what that was supposed to be, or the timeline, I think is a better way of putting it. The initial original timeline was not for me to start doing afternoons when I started doing afternoons. That was brought about because the cuz decided not to sign another one-year,

two-year deal, whatever it was. If Andy had his druthers, I wouldn't have even been doing any major day part. I'd be just filling in and stuff probably through 2015 into 2016. It wouldn't have happened as fast as it did. And I think Spike did want that. Spike wanted to get me on there as fast as possible. See, that's a misconception. When I got there, Spike was a champion of what I was doing, and Spike thought I should have been on there faster. But then obviously we had our falling out after working together and so people look back on it now because of the getting on the air faster in one of the major day parts. But so when the cuz leaves, that expedites the process and they give fella two kind of a half-assed chance to be the leader of the show, which they knew wasn't going to work. And then everybody felt bad for him. When people feel bad for you, it means you suck at your job. It means your wallpaper. No one ever feels bad for like the big flamethrower. They always feel

bad for the nobody who has no business having the job anyway. They're like, oh, he got a rough go of it. Yeah, you say that because he's just an affable guy. The people who are the stars are the ones that get shit on. The Angelos get shit on. The Eskins get shit on. The Missanellis get shit on. The Mees get shit on. People that are big, larger-than-life personalities, people never feel sorry for you. They feel sorry for the nobodies. That's just how people operate. But anyway, I digress. Let me try to get back on a timeline here for that. So Cuz leaves, goes to 97.5, and that expedites the process. And they give Fella 2 a little bit of chance, but they knew it wasn't going to be anything. And then they decide that they're going to put me on, and it's a matter of who we're going to do the show with. And I forgot the name of the place, but me, Andy and Miss Robin and Tony met at some pizza

place or some bar to shoot the shit about maybe doing the show together. And what's weird is I always got the vibe that it wasn't something that they really wanted to do. And I got the vibe that we saw it as two different things as what it was going to be. I knew it would sound fine, but I felt from the jump that he never really wanted to be there. And obviously I was right. He left in like four months or whatever it was. But we did really well.

Everybody had their own reasons. And I think that people involved with Tony might have been feeding some shit to people that were bullshit. But it doesn't matter. I think I got a raw end of a lot of media coverage there. But I bring that on because I'm lightning rod guy and I'm not from there and all that. So I get that. And all this because I still don't remember a show I did with John Ritchie, who's their new morning guy. I know I did it, but I don't remember it. I don't remember what we talked about what it was like i i think we talked about how he did the show with with arty but outside of that i don't really remember um and maybe that's not a good thing because i can remember like i remember doing shows with sludge when me and sludge and um and uh jody mack did a show together and what i remember what it sounded like when we did

shows with randos we just let come up there and do shows with us. It was a bit. But I don't remember anything about John Ritchie. But all I do know is that Angelo, for years, says, hey, this is going to be my last year. This is going to be my last contract. He was saying that forever, even back to 2015. And I was going to be the plan. If Angelo ever left, they would put some other slapdick in there for five months and let him fail, and then they would move me from afternoons to mornings or wherever, nights to mornings or whatever it would have been.

And that would have been the big grand plan. Like five years ago, I guess this would be seven years ago now, in 2015, or even further back when I took the job there at the end of 2013. The plan, the grand plan of Andy. Now, obviously, that would have shifted after Andy got laid off. Let's just say that after Andy got whacked, if I would have been a good boy and played by the rules and ratings were fine and they would have never dumped me and I would have never been fired, I never would have wanted to leave or whatever, would they have still eventually moved me to mornings? I don't know. All I know is what the plan was in place whenever Andy was in charge. And Andy's grand plan was at some point to have me be the guy that was going to replace Angelo, if not directly, more than likely after some other slappy and a round of dopes went in there and did it for four or five months and the ratings went down or whatever.

They'd bring me back in there. And you don't have to be the guy that follows the guy. You get to be the guy that follows the guy that followed the guy. And obviously that didn't come to fruition because Andy got whacked at the end of 2015 and I was devastated by that, like just fucking crushed. And maybe I'd handle things differently now, but at the time I was 29 and I came to Philly to work with Andy and they fucking fired him. And I, and I, and I can tell you this vividly, and I'm sure I've told you all these stories before, but it's relevant today because of the WIP morning thing. All right. If you're ready to win some real

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remember just vividly, they brought me into the production room that Sludge usually worked out of, which used to be, I believe, Danny Bonaduce's studio. But it was actually just the WYSP Air studio, I believe. And that's where Sludge used it as a production room for doing commercials and stuff and recording pods and whatever he wanted to do there.

It was the studio where Billy Davis' eyes and we went Kelly Fire and those songs were recorded. Anyway, legendary songs. And I remember they called me in. It was a guy by the name of David Yadgaroff, who was their market president, who's also not a guy I came there to work for. I came there to work for someone else and he left to go to New York. So this David Yadgroff came in. And it was Spike. And they brought me in. And at the time, I remember Spike was doing the show with me. It was Spike and Tank and me.

Because Tony had just one day decided not to come to work anymore. And that was that. That was all she wrote. And so Spike was already on the show with me. And he and I had had our back and forth about shit anyway. But it was fine. It was what it was. So they bring me in. And I have no idea what they're talking about, but I just

know that Andy's not there. So that's weird. Nobody had told me that Andy had been whacked yet. So it was weird, but I didn't know. I didn't know there was any hint that that was the case. So they bring me in and I remember sitting there on the counter. Like I went in a chair, I sat there kind of on the console there, and they were in there, and they explained. I don't remember everything they said. But they explained that Andy wasn't involved with the radio station anymore, but they were still very big fans of mine, and that does not impact my status. And Spike was telling me how much he liked me and how great he thinks I am. And they were like, we're on your side.

We love you. You're doing great. And Spike's like, I'm your guy. So let's do this. And all I remember is like while they were still talking, I picked up my phone and I texted my agent. And, you know, you could say that this is a character flaw of mine. I have like a flight mentality sometimes. But the second I heard about this, I texted my agent, David, at the time, David Brody. And I said, yep, we're going to have to leave Philly. And he said, why? I said, well, Andy got whacked, and I don't want to be here anymore. Like I said that to myself. In that moment, I made the decision like, yep, there's no chance this is going to work. I don't want to be here. And I think it was for multiple reasons.

One of the reasons that happened is because I felt a loyalty, and I'm a weirdly loyal person to those who hire me. Like if you notice, I've never lasted long in a place when the person who hired me left because not only do I just start acting like an asshole, part of it is I just really feel loyal and I feel like I miss them and like this is not why I came here. It's what happened – people think I got fired in Houston the first time. I didn't. My boss left in early 2013, went to Dallas, and it made my move easier. I said, I don't want to be here anymore. Find me another job. And they moved me to another CBS station. I was not fired.

That's stupid. And then it happened in Philadelphia. But I still had almost a year, I think, left on the contract at that time. When this is in Philly, I'm talking about. So they brought me in and did the whole thing. And I texted my agent. I said, we got to get out of here. And like that moment, I was just, I started texting Andy and everything. And, you know, looking back on it, like I always like to fuck with people and say, this is the thing I regret the most. There are things that you regret. Like people who say they don't have regrets, I think are full of shit, right? Like, I think it's easy to sit back and say, I have no regrets.

Even if you don't mind the result, I think you can regret the way you handled things. I don't regret that I no longer work in Philadelphia. That's the way of the world. It just wasn't meant to be. But I regret the way I handled that. Instead of just saying, hey, suck it up, because at the time we still had good ratings. This was late 2016. We had just wrapped up the quarter, and I think we were number one for the book. Now our ratings were starting to go down a little bit,

and Andy and I had a plan of how we were going to make sure we got back on track. It was going to be less Missanelli shit. We had already beaten him. He was dead. We were getting stories from people over at 97.5 saying the guy was on suicide watch, that he was just inconsolable that we were kicking his ass beaten him. He was dead. Like we were getting stories from people over at 97.5 saying the guy was on suicide watch. He was just inconsolable that we were kicking his ass so badly.

He was crushed. And so we had him and we didn't have to fuck with him anymore. But that was kind of our plan moving forward was to get away from that, get back to real content and all that shit. And then Andy got whacked and they blew up the show for the second time. And we put Mark in there. And this is no knock on Mark. I think he's a lovely dude. But you just don't put a show – three different shows together in a course of a year and it lasts.

Especially when there's so much negative vibe around one of those shows that the one guy left because he hated the other guy and the other guy is a piece of shit that's not from here and all that shit. So I tell you all that to tell you this. That this show – now WIP can't fail because they have no real competition. 97.5 is a joke. They have a show called The Best Sports Show Ever. Their morning show is really doing nothing. It's making no impact. They're a nothing radio station, a giant nothing burger of a station. They benefit from the fact they're in Philadelphia, which for as bad as the content on the radio is in Philadelphia, the market itself is, to me, the best sports radio market in the country. Boston's up there, but Philly is the most

passionate, I would say. Is it the best? Maybe not, because Boston's got a morning show that's got a 26 share and dominates the market. WIP is usually number two to Preston and Steve and that. So maybe Boston's better. New York is not. Chicago is not. Chicago's got two shitty AM radio stations with sports. Nobody cares. Philly is an amazing sports radio market.

Just the content sucks. And that's the issue. That's what always bothered me. You've got this huge audience of people and you're feeding them just bullshit. But then you look at the ratings and go, well, apparently they want bullshit. That's a weird dynamic. But first of all, you don't want to be the people that follow the legend. And they're following a legend in Angelo.

You don't have to like him, but he is. I don't necessarily like everything about his style. It's not what I do. But I respect him because I know the way he worked and the way he was driven. And I've talked to him. I mean, I talk to him more now than I did when I worked there. When I worked there, I saw the guy maybe once or twice ever. I talked to Ria some, Al on occasion.

But I talk to Angel. I'll email him once every couple months and just check in, see what's going on, see how he's doing. If I see his name in the news about something, I'll ask about, hey, what's going on. And I admire the guy. I have an admiration for what he's done. He's had the same job for 30 some odd years, and he hasn't just had it and existed. He's done well. And I know it's hard for people to believe, but he does evolve. His character evolves a little bit. The bits he does evolve to a degree. He does try to stay young with things. Some stuff he'll do that'll

always be old man things, but he evolves. And that's why he's done so well. The Cuz doesn't evolve. The Cuz does the same shit he's been doing for 20 years. I mean, that's just who he is. That's all he can do. He's limited. So following the legend is not an easy task, and they're going to have to do that. I mean, look, they're not going to fail. Failure would be like just completely falling off the face of the earth. I don't believe they're going to have to do that. I mean, look, they're not going to fail. Failure would be like just completely falling off the face of the earth. I don't believe they're going to fall off the face of the earth because it's impossible to do that on WIP. You can't just fall off the face of the earth,

especially when you're going to come in after a World Series appearance and after the Eagles, who are at least going to make the playoffs, right? So you're going to be coming in off of that high, so you'll do fine. Every time I've heard the show, I just don't think it's interesting. I think it doesn't do anything for me. Decamer was a nothing burger over at 97.5 and gets this gift because Philly won't hire people from out of town. Literally, I'm the only person they'll hire from out of town now. I haven't gotten back on the air there, and it's not like I desire to do so.

But they just keep recycling the same shit. and you take the shit from one shit station, you bring it over to WIP where the ratings are, and boom, you get ratings. Shocker, right? No offense to a John Marks. I've never even heard the guy for the most part. John Marks was a nothing burger at 97.5. He goes to WIP. He's going on, what, three, four, five years, however many years it's been, in the afternoons with Ike. Ike is a nothing burger at 97.5. He goes to WIP. He's going on, what, three, four, five years, however

many years it's been in the afternoons with Ike. Ike is a nothing. He's not interesting on the radio to me at all. But Ike goes over to do afternoons. He's doing fine there because WIP will always have you doing fine. If you play by the rules and don't just really suck, you'll probably have a job at WIP forever. They try to avoid turnover in that way unless they have to fire someone, which I guess they had to fire me, or they have to rehire someone or hire someone because someone's quitting like that. I think that really only Michael Barkhand is the only one I can think of that got whacked. He was making a ton of cash, I think, and that's why they whacked him. But yeah, so I don't think this show's going to be particularly good. It's not my style of things.

But hey, look, Philadelphia's not my style of things. But there is a thing to be said about that, because I say this all the time, like, oh, Philadelphia people hated me. Maybe a lot of you didn't. I just go by what I read on the internet, which is a fucking horrible thing to do, which is why I deleted Twitter and all that, because I just think that that gives you a bad perception of what all the people think about you. So I think a lot of people did like that type of radio. And you see the shows that were successful in the past on radio there,

and you go, hey, maybe people do like what I do. So maybe I don't give you enough credit. Maybe I'm unfair. Maybe I'm a dick and I shouldn't be that way. That's very possible, but I don't think that's going to be a good show. And maybe they brought them in there to do that just so they can blow them out in 18 months and bring in somebody else to bring back the magic. I don't know. There's two things I don't know. One, I don't know that radio stations give a shit enough anymore to care about what your ratings are. I don't think they give a shit. Now, when they will care is that Angelo bills a whole lot for them. He generates a lot of revenue.

What's going to happen to that revenue when he leaves? That's what I'm interested in. Like, they don't care about the ratings. As long as you can keep selling it. If you're, you know, no longer number two to Preston and Steve, but instead you're number five, hey, if you're still generating the revenue you were, hey, rock on. You start losing that money, and then it's kind of like, all right, we might have to do something. So we'll see on that. But anyway, all right, more to come.