The Press Box - Angelo Cataldi on Three Decades of Hosting Sports Radio in Philadelphia

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Bryan Curtis is joined by longtime sports radio host Angelo Cataldi to talk through his career in media, which has lasted over three decades. They discuss transitioning from print journalism to radio, how to grow an audience while keeping your fan base, the format and schedule behind each show, the impact WIP has had on Philadelphia, and his upcoming retirement. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Angelo Cataldi Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, the host of the podcast, Plain English. We tackle technology, politics, culture, history, everything that's happening in the world and why it matters. New episodes of Plain English drop every Tuesday and Friday on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. I'm in Philadelphia, and I got a story for you about Philadelphia sports fans. Last year, a Philadelphia sports fan is driving in his car.

He calls into Angelo Cotaldi's morning sports radio show, which airs on WIP. While the guy is on the phone, he gets into an accident. Now, that's not the story. The story is that the guy stayed on the phone with Cotaldi even after the accident, because he had a take on Ben Simmons and he had to get it off his chest. Angelo Cotaldi has been a beacon for such fan since he started talking on WIP in 1988, Kataldi's voice is instantly recognizable. The accent comes from his native Rhode Island. The attitude comes from the upper deck of the old veteran stadium. Now those of us who

loves sports radio know hosting a show is part art, part science. Which of a city's teams do you talk about? When during a four-hour morning show should you talk about them? How much of a sports radio show should even be about sports? Kataldi, who is 71, has announced he's retiring in December. So I came to Philly and I sat in his living room and I asked him to explain how he came to be the voice sports fans wake up to. Caller, keep your eyes on the road. Here's Angelo Cotaldi. All right, Angela, you've got six months left on radio. What do these last shows feel like? You know, a sense of closure. I'm hoping to receive that in the next six months. A sense of relief To some degree, a sense of accomplishment.

And still, you know, I've done this a long time, but I still have a sense of trepidation. I still think about it and go, maybe tomorrow's the day I'm going to fall flat on my face. I never really, I never feel security. Trepidation in the sense, I won't be good at radio? I won't be able to do it as well as I did when I did it at my best. Because when you're 71 years old, you are compromised, whether you want to be able to do it as well. to acknowledge it or not. It's harder. I put more, I was in in preparation of a show now than I think I ever did because I don't trust that in the moment I will be able to come up with the right

name or the right idea the way I did 10 or 15 years ago. What time to get up in the morning to prepare a show? 2.30. I'm in the office by 3.15 and that gives me almost three hours there. But the prep starts the day before. The prep is, I already have like five or six topics for tomorrow that I've already put down and it's at 1.30 in the afternoon the day before. You can't just, you've got to go in with more than you're ever going to need because someday you might need it all. And you've got to have all of that ready in case you do.

And what kind of physical toll is getting up at 2.30 in the morning taking on you? I still have to have to all these years. I can't say I'm 100. percent adapted to it. Like I now get Wednesdays off, but I'm asleep by 8.30 or 9 o'clock on a Tuesday night because of the schedule. One of the big adjustments for me when I do end this thing at the end of the year is to go back to normal people's schedule because I was a sports writer and my schedule is actually the opposite. There were many days when I didn't go to bed until two or three because I was covering an event, a night event,

and now I'm up around the same time. A lot of sports writers are going to bed. So it is different, and it is at all. Anybody who tells you that the shift is not at all, either is better at adjusting than I am or is kidding themselves. Let me ask you about sports writing, because you're originally a print guy.

Yes. Started the Inquirer in 1983. You were the Eagles beat writer. What kind of beat writer were you? I was a beatwriter who approached covering a team the way you would approach covering city hall. And that was because I was urged to do it, almost threatened to do it when I went to Columbia. I was at the grad school of Columbia. The guy that my advisor was Norman Isaacs, a guy who had run the Louisville Courier Journal.

and when I told him really early on that I wanted to go into sports, he swore me to secrecy. Because in Columbia, you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to go become a foreign correspondent, run a newspaper, whatever. And all I really want to do is the frivolous world of sports that he said, listen, if you're going to do it. And it doesn't sound like I'm going to be able to talk you out of it. Do it like a journalist. Don't do it like a PR guy. Ask tough questions.

alienate if you have to, redefine the way you do it. And I think I alienate a lot of people. Whether I redefine anything, I can't tell you. But I got a nomination for the Pulitzer one year, and I did apply the standards of that school in the time that I worked at the inquirer. I asked tough questions. I had several times athletes physically try to get to me. was chased around by Bob McCammon, who was the coach of the Flyers, went after me.

A whole bunch of people did over the time because I asked tough questions and I asked them relentlessly. And I wasn't afraid. I always felt like I was basically a conduit to the fan and that I was going to ask the question that the fan wanted answer. And sometimes that wasn't what the athlete wanted to answer. I read that Eagles coach buddy Ryan stopped talking to you in 1986. Halfway through the season.

That was the year I got the Pulitzer nomination. Halfway through the season, I wrote an analysis, holding him accountable for the promises he hadn't fulfilled. And it was hard. I mean, it was a strong piece, but it was all based in absolute fact. And he did not acknowledge me the second half of the season. He would not, we would be in a mass setting and I would ask a question and it was as if crickets were going. He wouldn't answer it. He wouldn't acknowledge that I was even there.

Wouldn't answer a single question? No, no, for the entire second half the year. Years later, he came on my radio show and things went a lot more smoothly. I guess by then he had realized that he had one job to do and I had mine. And mine was not necessarily in line with what he was trying to do. But I really, you know, I have a lot of. pride for the way I did that job because that job was what my original plan was to be a journalist, and I think I was one. And then I sold out to go to sports radio. I did. I sold out. I mean,

I did. There's no way to say it differently when you've committed your life to one thing, and then you say, no, they're paying me more money to go on the radio and to do an entirely different job, and it's for more money, you're selling out. And that was the appeal of WIP, more money? That's all it was originally. Originally, it was, I was making $55,000 at the Inquirer, and I had a job offer in L.A., but it wasn't that much more. It wasn't, and it was L.A. and it was going to be very expensive.

I was going to work at the L.A. Times. And I didn't want to work at the Inquirer anymore. I had reached my limit on them. The editing process, the lawyering of what I was doing, it just became, there wasn't journalism anymore. It was negotiation. So I decided I definitely was going to lead. And they came along and offered me $75,000 and I took it. It was that simple.

And it was like, I didn't even know them what I was doing. I assumed it was for a year or two until I got another job in a newspaper somewhere because I didn't see this as a career. But I did it initially for the money. $20,000. $20,000. $20,000. That's all I took. that's my price.

You remember what your first radio show was like? I remember what my first radio show was like before that in 88 when I started with Al Morganty because we had been hired on a Friday. Hold on this is a podcast on. You're going to have to edit that. Anyway, that's my grandson. Anyway, in 1988, Tom Berkshire hired us on a Friday afternoon. It was a brand new sports format.

Al did all the talk. He hasn't talked since, but he talked a lot down. And Al convinced Brookshire that we were ready to do a show. He agreed to it, and he said, come in Monday morning, literally three days later. It was a new sports format. They didn't have any people to fill the hours. We got one of the hours, 9 to 10 in the morning, the morning sports page. We came in on Monday, and it was only then that we realized there was be no host, that we were the hosts.

And we had never, neither of us had ever hosted a show. It was an absolute train wreck. It was awful. And by the end of the hour, you know, we come out of the studio and Brookshy's got a big smile on his face and he said, that was great, guys. That was real. Do you understand that was real? And that was the first day he started to teach me how to do this. And he spent two years teaching me a lot of how to do it.

But that's, we just, we learned on the job. I've said to people who claim they have tapes of those early years to please burn them because they were really, really, they were bad. I mean, but as standards we used today for doing a radio show, they were hideous. But over time, I guess you pick up enough to survive, and Philadelphia is a very forgiving city. Yeah, right. Well, for us it is, they kept me in business a hell of a long time, I'll tell you that.

And what was hideous about those early years? Too serious, took ourselves way too serious. I was a journalist for a while. I pontificated about stuff that I thought I knew more about than I did. And then a transition takes place. And with the help of my boss back then, Tom Bigby, you would say, you're not a journalist anymore. You're in an entertainment medium now.

You have to be funny. You have to be provocative. and the process started to take root. And then I'd say by 93, 94, we were starting to pick it up. But it took that long, and there was no barter clear because no one had done this before. There wasn't a 24-hour sports station, so we didn't have to meet anybody's expectations.

No one knew what we would do. It's so interesting to me, because this is early 90s. Sports radio is new as a format. Brand new. But you're realizing right away that pontificating about sports is not really what it's about. No. Very first show I did.

I got called in by Tom Bigbeo's a program director, and he said, I thought I had done great. I was illuminating the fans about the team and all these. No, it was just a lot of babble. And he said, you're not doing journalism now. Make them laugh. I brought you here to make them laugh. Make them angry.

Entertain them. This isn't, you can't do that. It took a while for it to sink in, but I started to pick it up. And that's because you needed to do that to grow the audience beyond hardcore sports fans? Exactly. 100%. If you wanted, they call it the, I can't remember, the core audience will listen for sports. It will not pay your bills.

You understand? You have to get people who are on the fringes of it who are listening because, you're telling stories about your family and something stupid that happened or whatever. And what you have to do is you have to serve the core. You have to make sure you got plenty of that in every show, but also serve the fringe. You have to get the silly stuff, the goofy stuff, the parody songs, all that other stuff for people that are not listening because they're living and dying with the teams. So for the sports fan, it's a sports show that includes some entertainment.

And for the other people, it's an entertainment show that also happens to be about sports. I never heard it express better than that. That's exactly what it is. But that occurred you really right at the right at the top there. Well, I was told it occurred to me. It was it was sink or swim. You know, they weren't going to keep me around forever. Brookie left after two years and a lot of people went, well, maybe it might be a good time for you, start looking in the newspaper jobs again. Because he carried me for a lot of it. And then slowly he started to give some of it up. He had a planned the whole time to get out in a year or two and that he was going to hand it off to me. I didn't even know it, but he taught me a lot about what it's like.

He was so successful as a player and then as a broadcaster. He was a network guy for 25 years. He knew everything. And now, talk about a lucky break. I mean, to be given the opportunity to work with somebody like that for him to educate me enough to be able to do it and have the right people around me. That was a gift I could never pay back. People don't know.

Brookies a former Eagles defensive back, who then becomes Pat Summerall's color analyst and drinking buddy on CBS. 100%. And what nobody ever saw about Tom Berkshire was, what a great work ethic he had and what a commitment he had to people that listen. He would be in by 4 o'clock every morning. He didn't have to do that.

It was independently wealthy. He would come in every day. He would really, every, he would plan what he was going to do. I just, all I did early on is observe and just serve as a sidekick who would, was there basically to instigate, to stir him up a little bit. I think he said shake the windows and rattle the walls or some, he had some term for it. You were the bad cop. Kind of, yeah, kind of. Just because he was such a nice person that you needed a little edge.

And when I started, I was the edge. So beyond the $20,000, what did you like doing about sports radio that you couldn't have done in print? It was all mine. What finally got me out of print was how hard they were editing, how I was doing a lot of projects that were investigative. I went behind the scenes and exposed a lot of stuff that was going on in the sports memorabilia business in the 90s, which was really corrupt. But from the time I wrote it to the time it got in the paper was sometimes months of editing and challenging and lawyers. And I said, this isn't why I did it.

But I didn't want to go back on the road every day and follow a team. I had already done that. And it just got to the point where when it finally appeared in print, it wasn't entirely minor. A lot of it wasn't exactly what I wanted the way I wanted it. I'm kind of a perfectionist that way. From the first day I got on the radio, it was mine. What I said was mine.

It was unedited. It was what I thought in the moment. And I've always embraced that more than any other aspect of this job. Whatever you want to think about it, it's mine. It's mine and it's Alts. and it's Reyes, it's the product of our efforts, not somebody on the outside who wasn't even intricately involved in the day-to-day, which I felt my editors weren't at the Inquirer. So Brookie steps aside, and then it's you and Al-Morganty and Tony Bruno.

Tony Bruno. And that's when the show really takes off? It went to hold another direction, yeah, because we didn't have the star power that Brookie could bring in. Brookie could get Bobby Knight on the phone. He, you know, his final show is 34A list star sports figures. He knew everyone. So what we did, Tony was the radio veteran. He really understood the formatics of it.

He understood pacing and things of that nature. And I did lead it then, but I led it with a lot of help from them. Al was kind of the quirky hockey guy. and Tony was, there were periods where Tony would just take the reins and go off on Iran. And yeah, it just kind of, it wasn't planned. We didn't know that it would all fit together, but it did. And it did pretty quickly. And that's when things really started to get traction.

So 93, 94, but two or three years that Tony was there. It's around that time. It was reported that the station had a bigger share of the radio, audience than any sports talk station in the country. Yeah, it was, including WFAN. And was despised by the teams, loath by the teams. I mean, this was during the time where Jim Fragosi went crazy and said that WIP WIP listeners sleep with their sisters and WIP talk show host sleep with their mothers

or some crazy. He went berserk. They all hated us. They despised us. But it was a different time, you know. The Eagles hated us. One year we went to training camp. We were the flagship station.

And they invited us. They wanted us to go to training camp, get people stirred up for the new season. And not a single eagle would agree to come on the show. Wow. And Ron Howard was the promotion director. And we found out later, they finally got one player, Chad Lewis.

and they had to pay him $200 to come on for 10 minutes. And when he reached the nine minute mark, he was looking at his watch. They hated us. I've earned my 200 bucks. They all hated us then. And it's ironic that that's probably the biggest percentage of an audience we ever got

because we were such, we embodied so much that the spirit of the sports fans in Philadelphia in that era, probably, but it was a nastier fan base then than it is now. It was vicious. And there was so many crazy things that were going on. But yeah, we kind of, what we have always tried to do, the whole period of time is reflect the psyche of the people we're talking to. That's the key to it, to be part of what they do and represent that. And I have always felt WIP did that better than any station in the country in sports. Honestly, I don't think anybody's ever done it better.

The players and coaches are usually used to having the psyche of the fans over here. Yes. And now the psyche of the fans is in the media on the radio. Exactly. And it was an adjustment for them too, believe me. And even now, I cannot say this a lot of love there. There might be a little respect now. There wasn't any respect then either. We were crazy, though.

I mean, I look back on summer now. We'd have gotten us fired if we did some of that stuff today. We did some crazy stuff. but, you know, we evolved as the audience evolved. So that's what the athletes and coaches thought. What did your old counterparts at the newspapers think of you guys? Most of them came over and worked with us. I was first, then Glenn Mack now came over,

then Mike Misenelli came over. Al had come not long after I did. So that's four people that were all on major beats in the Sports Department of the Inquirer. the rest of them it's hard to say like they would still come on as guess we weren't paying them so i think they liked the exposure and i guess it was it's hard for me to say i wasn't there i don't think they hated us as much as the athletes or the team's day and your accent is from providence yeah i've tried to get rid of it this is probably as good as it's going to get now

Was it an asset or a detriment in Philadelphia? Maybe both. People knew I wasn't one of them. So when they wanted to hate me, it was easier to hate me. But a detriment true, too, because I was never one of them. I never will be one of them. No matter how hard I've tried to be a Philadelphia and I didn't grow up here. And I've always held my parents responsible for that.

Many times I told them, how terrible it was that they kept me in Providence, Rhode Island, although she has because I hated it there. I heard that you're very good at planning out the segments of a show. How do you do that? Every day after I get in, I know I need a strong lead. I get a story that I think is going to resonate to get me generate a board, get me some callers going.

And then I set the rest of the show up. based on whom I guess are. So tomorrow morning, Todd Zalecki is my guest. He's my baseball guy. So I'll make sure that the segment leading into that will involve the baseball issues that we're then going to ask for him. So it's all done very formulaically, and it's a formula I created from our show.

So I just, by the end of, by the time I go on the year at 6, I've got every segment planned for what the content will be. it changes maybe 20, 25% of the time based on what's happening within the show. Sometimes something will take off so much. You've got to give it more. But I go into every show knowing what percentage of each of the show, each topic should take. Like there's the NBA draft. I know I got to do about 30, 35% of that tomorrow.

There's the Phillies at game in Texas. I got to do about 25% of that. I will set actual percentages of how much I want to do and how much all the other goofy stuff, you know, arguments about movies or TV or whatever. I'll have those percentages lined up before I start. And then I've done it long enough now so I can tell if I can stay within the parameters

of those percentages pretty closely. It's like a big soup, and you've got the carrots and the meat and the celery, and you keep stirring it so that all of it stays in play at the same time. That's the formula. Referencing the baseball. The baseball, the basketball, the NBA draft, the goofy stuff. It's all got to be in the soup, and you have to just know how much of each to do so that it

comes out good. And you make an outline of this in print? No, it's all notes. I mean, I could show you if you were to see it. It's all digital now. It's all, the pandemic got me onto the laptop. I had always done it on yellow pads. And then I don't know what occurred to me.

I guess because there was no sports during the pandemic. So early on, I brought out the thing and now I do, I formulate everything. And I create a script. There's a script for every show. Before we start, there's a very specific script on what I think every segment should be. And I already prepare all the questions for all the interviews. All that's done long before we ever go on the air. Spike Askin, who was the program director at WIP before going up to New York,

told me he preferred when he did hits with you to do it remotely rather than the studio because he'd be looking in your eyes and he could tell you were already thinking about the next segment. It's very true. And that's, I'm better in an interview we're not looking at me because I am. It's like a chess match. You're trying to be four or five moves ahead. I got to know, right, where am I going from this? And then he might say something.

You go, whoa, whoa, I got to pursue that. And then he might say something so good that I have to use the next segment for it. That's where you abandon the script. And now you have something else to work with and you work with it. You mentioned going to bed 8, 39 o'clock. So do you watch night games? Not even close. I go to bed.

I'm in bed at 5.30 and I'm asleep at 6.30. I read for a while. I'm a bed by 6.30. I haven't seen. 5.30 in the afternoon. 5.30 in afternoon. So you don't watch night games. I get up at 2.30.

I haven't watched a game that I, other than the Eagles, I have made a few exceptions for Eagles. Other than that, I have not watched a live event that I'm talking about the next morning in 30 years. No, I don't see them live. I know how to watch them quickly. I have them loaded and ready to go. And I get up at 2.30 the first half hour, I'm watching everything that I didn't see live. So that by the time I'm heading in, on the drive-in, I'm processing what I saw at that time. But I do not see the games live.

That's got to be so funny as a former print guy. I'm going to bed early. As you said, schedule's reversed, but I'm going to talk about things that I did not see happen live. Right. But saw and fast forward the next morning. You have to do it that way. I have to do it that way. Al doesn't sleep.

I don't know how Al does it. I guess he doesn't have to do all this planning I'm talking about. So he just, but Al, Al watches all these things live. He watches late games live. I don't understand it. I don't.

I haven't watched any of them. I really need to be well-rested when I start a show because by the end of it, I'm out of it. My brain now is not functioning well by the end of a show because I really are locked. goes into it. It's like you're calling audibles the whole morning. You're doing all that. The minute you start to, I've never been able to cut corners to find ways to make it easier.

So that's always the way I've done it and still the way I do it now. You mentioned percentages. Over the course of the year, what percentage is devoted to the Eagles and what percentage to other stuff? I'd say 60 to 65% of all the content on our show in the course of a year is Eagles. I'd say to fillies, and Sixers now split the other 30% and then there's 5% left for hockey and all the other stuff. Then the goofy stuff is a whole different list. That's, you know, all this crazy stuff that we do, that's separate. But, yeah, it's Eagles.

Eagles have paid our bills for a long, long time. They are what this city wants to talk about the most. Is your show better when the Eagles are great or when the Eagles suck? you know until they won the Super Bowl I would have said they sought but that year they won the super ball we had a heck of a year it was fun and everybody was so involved in it it could go either way it's it's look even when the eos are really good what i've learned is there will be a lot of issues and dramas that crop up no matter what and so if they're good and there's trouble that's the best case scenario.

Trouble, but good. Okay. Because then you have things that people are, you know, stirred up about, but they're also excited because their team's winning. There's sports you just won't talk about it all because they'll kill the show. Soccer. Soccer is deadly. Couldn't.

At the minute I bring up soccer, I'm going to lose half my audience. It's a great quote during the 1994 World Cup. Some listener asked, why aren't you talking about soccer? Yeah. And someone at WIP said, we're not in the world. We're in Philadelphia. Yeah, it's, you know, Spike Gesson, you're just referring to, went from Philadelphia to New York, a whole different atmosphere there.

We're way more provincial. We want to talk about our teams. They want to talk about all the teams. They have a wider perspective than we do. We love our teams, and that's what matters the most to us. Now, 30 years ago, calling into a show like yours, that was a way for a sports fan to vent. Yep. Now they've got Twitter and all these other outlets.

Is that change your approach to calls at all? No, they'll still call us. The immediacy of it is still, I realize they have other ways to express it now. And we've tried to represent that. We monitor Twitter and we monitor Facebook and things like that. I haven't noticed that it is discouraged people to call in, especially at a time of controversy. Time of controversy. Now sometimes they'll call in to react to a tweet. They actually, if anything, social media generated more conversation for us, not less. That's interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed it. I know so over the last couple of days, you were giving prizes out to callers, to certain callers. When did that start? 20 some years ago.

I think I created a formula for that that no one else has adopted, but it's perfect. I would never do it without giveaways every day. Simple reason. I learned this a long time ago. I would come out, 6 o'clock, guns are blazing. Get nine or 10 calls right out of the box on a great day. I got a board full, everything's going. I go to break.

I come back, I get six calls. I take three of them. I go to break. I got two calls. You need to provide for a caller a motivation to stay on the line. the minute you add a prize, and it doesn't even have to be the greatest thing, they want to win something. And they'll wait. Sometimes the weight goes up to two hours, honestly, because there's guests, there's other stuff going on.

Sometimes there's a huge number of callers, and we do take them in order. And I'm telling you, the only way to maintain a caller base is to provide them with an impetus with giveaways. and we've done it, and it's worked phenomenally well for us, and I don't know any other station or any other show that's ever done it. And I guess I'll take it with me when I leave. But it's the only way to keep, especially important calls, callers that are right on topic, callers that I throw out, who was at that game when the guy ran onto the field,

and then I get three people who call right in, right? if I am not dangling something to keep them on the line while I go to a break for four minutes, they might not be there when I come back. Now I have less of a show. I have to give them a reason to stay, and a gift is a reason to stay. What are your thoughts about putting athletes on the air? There's two negatives to it. A, they're not always reliable to be there when they're supposed to be there.

And I'm such a fanatic about programming a show that it really frustrates me when they're not there. It's 8 o'clock they have to be there. Where are they? And the other thing is for every good interview with one, there's three bad ones. Some of the people are there because the team told them they wanted them there. Sometimes they're there because they're promoting a charity or something like that, which is not always great radio when they're telling you about what they're doing. Although it's important radio, I'm happy to do it as a tradeoff.

But I also need some content. That's why when you get adjacent Kelsey or get a Brandon Graham or people like that, we actually now try to line them up as a weekly guest because we know they have a lot to say. But it's, it is not as easy as just bringing on your normal experts. You don't know what you're going to get, especially when a new free agent comes to town. You're not sure what you're going to get. I kind of like to know. kind of be yeah some of those were one and done yeah we had them on once it was 10 pretty boring minutes

i can't tell you how many i were one and done even some of my favorite players are one and done because we brought them on and we went i was four minutes in and i was out of questions i went oh no this is not good that happens you mentioned the 90s you're channeling the feelings of philadelphia sports fans yeah do you think your show has had an effect on fans on how they think how they feel how they behave? A lot of people do. Not as much as people say. We cannot bring people to a game. We cannot keep people away from a game. We could not organize a boycott of any kind. None of those things would take. It's more that we reflect than that we lead. Now, there are exceptions. You know, the Donovan McNabb booing incident at the draft in 1999.

That's a case where we made headlines unintended. We weren't trying to do that and created a 15-year feud with McNabb because we booed at the draft. For people who don't know, you took people to the draft up in New York because you wanted 30 drunks. 30 drunks because you wanted the Eagles to draft Ricky Williams. At the behest of the mayor, Ed Rendell. He stirred us up.

us going and we went up there in a bus it was catered there was a lot of booze up a lot of beer by the time we got there unexpectedly many of them were tanked up pretty good we got in stupidly we were expecting to hear rickie williams the second pick of the draft when the name donovan mcnab came out a spontaneous reaction was i guess the biggest boo in the history of the NFL drop because they had happily given us 30 tickets, the NFL. They loved the idea that we're going to have these crazy Philadelphia fans there. And then after we booed and made it, there was no violence, there was no illegal behavior, but they did ban us. We never got tickets again. And that was a case where I guess we did lead. So many people hated us for that

because they thought we were making it harder for the star quarterback to, you know, come to Philadelphia. Wasn't intended. All we were reacting to is the fact that Ricky Williams wasn't picked. A bigger boo than Jets fans, that's something. Yeah, I thought we did. I don't know. Maybe we've been top since, I don't know. All I know is we're the only ones who are ever banned. You want that Philadelphia sports fans are the most misunderstood sports fans in the country. How so? Because they're not, all you ever see are the incidents. And yeah, they're incidents. They're incidents. in every city. They love sports. They live for it. Someday somebody's got to represent for them. They're handing down from generation of generation, the love of the Eagles, from father and mother

to son and daughter. It's beautiful. It's amazing. They take pride in it. They take rooms in their houses and turn it into an Eagles watching room and stuff all over the walls. They love sports. They have so much passion and so much appreciation for it. This is a working city that needs a diversion. They need something to look forward to while they're on an assembly line or doing whatever they have to do, working in an office. And sports is what it is. We bring them into their job in the morning. We take them back from their job at night and we help to provide for them. version that makes their life more fun. It's so simple. And none of that ever comes out. Oh, there was an incident. And then the media in this country is so damn lazy now that they're still

going to lock in on the incidents that happened 30 and 40 and 50 years ago and still try to paint that brush with the Philadelphia sportsmen. Snowballs, boo and Santa, those kind of things. Exactly. And boo and McNabb, that was ours. But honestly, honestly, these are, These are some of the most wonderful people. I mean, I have a debt to them that kept me on the air all these years. But the more I got to know them, the more I got to love them. So you create this show in Philadelphia in the 90s. Did you ever think about trying to take it to a different city?

Yeah, I was ready to. I got an offer and I said I would do it. I got 93, 94, again, proving I will always go where the money is. I was approached by W.E.I. in Boston, mid-90s. I talked to the guy. Yeah, they talked money with my agent, look good. Everything was going great. And I said, yeah, I think it's, I'm going to do it. It's where I was. I'll go home. My parents would be thrilled. But I won't do it alone. I got to take out with me. Al's from Boston. It was perfect.

I wouldn't do it. Al said, no. I said, come on, Al, I'll get them money. I think it was like over 100 now. You know, we're really going to make some money. And Al said, no, wouldn't do it. And the reason we did not bail on the city of Philadelphia after four or five years was Al said no. And so he said, and the reason why he said no, well, I guess there were two. One is he was convinced that this kamikaze approach to sports that we were doing in the 90s would not

play in Boston, which is a hero worship city, way more so than we ever were here. And the second thing was, I don't think he wanted to be embarrassed when his family was listening. You couldn't get an app back in 1995 to listen to our show, and I think I'll prefer it that way. I don't want people to know what I'm doing at in Philadelphia. People give Al a hard time. If it was up to me in the mid-90s, I would have taken the money and ran again. I would have done it. So you were ready. I was ready. I hadn't completely severed the tie back then. It took a few more years for me to go,

why the heck do I want to go back there? I didn't even like it. I want to be here. And then by 2000 or so, I went, I'm a Philadelphia now even if they won't acknowledge me because I didn't, I wasn't born here. What's the biggest perk when you're walking around the city or going out to eat of being a drive time,

Philadelphia sports host? Somebody coming up to you and thanking you. And I've gotten a lot of that now that I've announced I'm retiring. People coming up and saying, thank you. You've made sports more fun for me. I've been listening to you since Brookie. Just they reinforcing you that what you did had some value to somebody. And if you're doing that and they're paying you well, what more are you going to ask for?

It was a good deal. What subjects won't you touch on the show? I'm not supposed to touch politics. and I hope we had to do a little bit of it during the pandemic. It was inevitable. It doesn't go in a good direction. Race, I really try to avoid race if I can at all. Sexual orientation.

The point of what we do is people, there's plenty of places to hear debates on all that stuff. We're the diversion. We're escaping reality. We should avoid that as much as we can. And we do. unless it becomes such, unless somebody, you know, one of our coaches or our managers comes out and makes a major political statement that we can't avoid. If we can avoid it, we avoid it.

It's been hard to avoid last six years. Harder, harder the last few years than ever before. But whenever we do it, I usually drive home that day and regret we did. Let me ask you about a couple of stories. What was the Honk for Herschel campaign in 1992? Hock for Herschel was, we were still in the advocacy age of our show, and we thought how great it would be if we could get Herschel Walker to sign as a free agent in Philadelphia. So we had a honk for Herschel thing. Eight o'clock one morning we put people out on the streets, and they were supposed to honk their horn and make a big racket.

And they did, and it sounded amazing. and then we were able to line up Herschel Walker to hear how much Philadelphia wanted him. He came on as a guest. I went Herschel, I want you to hear this. This is how much Philadelphia wants you. And we played the honk. And it was one of my favorite moments in the whole time we've done the show. He was just overwhelmed with the gratitude that we loved him that much.

And pretty much the whole thing was fake. that was all done with sound effects. There was virtually no honking. Oh, really? You just enhanced it. People all over town are laying on their horns for you. To say enhanced it is to understate what we did. It sounded amazing. But when you think about it,

how are you going to orchestrate the whole city and be able to represent that with how many mics do you think we had? We didn't even have, I don't know, even think there were cell phones then. It was fake. But he did sign here. He did. 1992. Maybe we conned him. We conned the audience that day. You did a sequel the next year for Reggie White called The Rally for Reggie? Yeah. Honk. Yeah, that was, we got a lot of people, five, six, seven thousand people in Love Park. And it was supposed to be to recruit Reggie, but it ended up

being an attack on the ownership of the Eagles stand on Norman Brayman. And the plan there was to get him on from the rally. That would have been legit. But by then, he had become so angry at the Eagles organization and the cheapness of the owner that he refused to come on. So we brought in local dignitaries. It was still fun, but like three days later, he signed with Green Bay. So that one didn't work at all.

In terms of advocacy. Yeah. For people who weren't lucky enough to grow up in Philadelphia, what was the Wing Bowl? Oh, boy. Yeah, that was a 26-year radio promotion, created, started by Al-Morganti in a hotel lobby of the Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel, 92 or 92, probably 93. Brookie would never have done it, so it couldn't have been 92. We were going to have, Al said, you know, we're never going to have a Super Bowl in this city.

why don't we take the number one product Buffalo was in it every year back then they kept losing why don't we take the number one product in and have a eating contest this was before eating contests were big Al as a visionary if you really think about all these ideas I was behind so many of them so we did it we had a few contestants the midday guy was the Chuck Cooperstein he was the commissioner a guy won he had eating so

many, Carmen his name was. They're about 27 minutes in. He just lit up a cigarette and waited to get his prize. It was a cheap habachi. He was that far ahead. It went from there by 26, where we were given away $75,000 worth of prizes. We had 20,000 people in the Wells Fargo Center. And it was the closest thing as you'll get to a public orgy. It was bad. It was by the end. had gotten completely out of control. And it was time to end it, especially given, you know, Me Too and all that's going on. Now we got out at the right time. It would not be acceptable a lot of what went on in those buildings.

But it was a hell of a radio promotion for a long time. It was really a big one, but we're glad it's over. You ever look back at stuff you guys did during the 90s and wince? Oh, God, yeah. A lot of it. But it was, you know, if you take it out of, out of context, then yeah, in the context of today, you go, man, what the heck were we doing? Why were we organizing people to scream at J.D. Drew?

And then they started throwing batteries at them and all the things, you know, Babe Roe. We used to every year go to a Phillies game and load an entire row with hot women. You can't do any of that. Now you look at it now and you go, whoa, what are we doing? But back then, in that era, in that time, it was more acceptable by the people than it would be now. Speaking of the 90s, what were your encounters with Kurt Schilling like during that period? I hated him. The thing was, everybody else loved him. Mike Misenelli thought he was the greatest thing. Al Morgani couldn't kiss his ass hard enough.

They loved him. He came on our TV show, the great sports debate many times. during the playoffs we would come in, sit down in the studio at 6 a.m. He would be on the line. He would have called and be waiting to come on our show at 6 in the morning. Wow. He was strange. He was really a strange dude. But he was a jerk.

He was a jerk then. He's even a bigger jerk now. I never liked him. He never liked me. It was fine. But see, I've never tried to. ingratiate myself to an athlete. Most of the people I've worked with, Al, included, love the athletes. How was an athlete? I played chess. I never had a connection with the athletes. I was

approaching it like a journalist for a while. That's where I developed my animosity for them, and them for me. And it never really changed. They still don't care for me. I was surprised to learn that a frequent guest was the late Senator Arlen Specter. I love him. He was a great guest. He called it 640 every Monday morning after Eagles games. So 40 minutes after Kurt Schilling? No, no, different seasons. But he would call all the time. We got him going on SpyGate. He ended up doing a either we got him going and he got us going. He ended up doing a congressional investigation into the Patriots in 0506 because they were spying on teams. And Senator respect to was convinced that the egos got screwed out of the winning a super ball that year i loved him he

was such a good man because yeah again i wouldn't even say this on the show but i'll say it to you that's the kind of politician i love a guy literally listened to an issue and made a judgment not by what his team supported but what his mind did and he was a centrist he was down the middle and he would do what he thought was right we don't see much of that anymore this might have been one of my favorite stories last year a caller named james calls into your show you know i'm going here he gets in a car accident oh yeah yeah yeah while he's on the air yep and then he proceeds to stay on the phone and tell you how much he hates ben simmons correct that we've had three or four of those over our time here another guy um got in an accident and continued his point

and we in each case we acted the same way we said um shouldn't you deal with you deal with with what you're doing now. We'll give you priority status if you want to call back after you get his insurance and license plate number or whatever. They don't. Yes, it's happened regularly and it's great. The other thing we always have now, we've had this a whole bunch. People will call wait on hold and fall asleep and snore. And they will snore into the receiver and you can hear them snoring. And what we do is we now know how to handle that situation. We put them back on hold and we keep going back to them 10 or 15 minutes. And we go, if you just tuned in, you have missed some very exciting radio.

Here's James on line four. And we go to him here, you got to laugh at yourself. Absolutely. Signature of the show is the Friday Weasel of the Week? How did that start? Right after Brookie left. That was, I wanted it. away to recap the week. We had winner. I didn't like loser. I used back then, it was really one of my

go-to words. I love to call people weasels. So we adopted it and we kept it for 30 years. We even for a while had a, we didn't give anything for winter. Winner to us is fine, but it's routine. Weasels fun. So we had a little statue, a guy was making us statues of weasels. And if you got Weas of the week, we would send you the statute. But that kind of, I guess it got pricey. Whatever happened, we stopped that after while. And the people accepted the weasel if they won? Oh, they, it was a, it was a badge of honor. Are you kidding me? You won Wiesel of the week. It's great. Now, sports radio in other cities where you don't grow up is kind of like walking into a family reunion. You don't know who's mad at each other and what the relationships are. Right.

But how do you describe your relationship with Howard Eskin, who hosts a WIP show on Saturday? Love, hate. love and that I really respect what he has done for sports talk, and especially in Philadelphia. I respect his work ethic. I respect his love for sports. I don't respect that he's never been a great team player. He's never looked out for you.

More now than before, but he's a big talent. He's a big talent. And all of us that are doing talk radio in Philadelphia, here took something from Howard's approach to it. He was very, very provocative and interesting. And overall, I think we're on a pretty good place right now, but still, the next time I say something he doesn't like, we will not be in a good place. And he will come after me, and then I will retaliate, and then we will have two old men fighting like little children. You may have just said it.

Yeah, you never know. With Howard, you never know. It could be anything. If it's not that, it's something else. Did you get better radio out of Sixers Guard, Ben Simmons? I should say, former Sixers Guard or former Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz. Simmons, without a doubt. Interesting.

Simmons was easier to hate than Wentz. Wentz won a championship, even though he wasn't on the field when they finally did beat the Patriots. But Wentz contributed something. Simmons was an enigma from day one. And Simmons, Carson could play the role. Carson could answer questions like a robot, but he would give you the answers. Simmons gave you nothing.

And over time, he wore his welcome out to the point where he had to go. Better radio from former Eagles coach Rich Kotite or former Phillies manager Jim Fergozi. Fergosi. Coteight was just a boob. He was, Cotite was, you know, it took a while for the rest of the world

to catch up with us that he didn't know what he was doing. But Cotight was just a blustery bonehead. For Gose, he was smart. He manipulated. He knew how to work a room. He had leaders in there,

like Dalton and Dykstra and those people. And he had a real nasty side to him. And we got a lot of, lot out of that that helped us who was a philadelphia owner you think you took more shots at than anybody wow it's a big list yes it is probably brayman bottom line brayman seven years having the players pay for their own warm-up socks yeah brayman he was a he was a car dealer man seven miserable years and you know the great irony of that is He was a great businessman. He could buy an NFL team.

How dumb does his sale look of the Eagles now, given what they were? He sold him for $185 million. They're worth $3 billion now. Good job, Norman. I was amused to learn that the old owner of the Flyers was also the owner, WIP. For a short time, Ed Snyder. Well, not for that short of time, a few years. Ed Snyder, here's the thing you need to know about Ed Snyder.

He hated WIP. Ultimately, he traded us for Eric Lindner. We were in the Eric Lindrauss steel. They had to pay $15 million. That's what he sold WIP for. He sold it to provide the money for Lindra. He hated us. He said it was the worst decision he ever made,

and he never once meddled. Never. He let us say what we wanted, even if it was trashing him or his team, and he never meddled. And I have more respect for that than anything you can imagine, because he had every,

he had the power, he had the money, he owned the station, he could have shut any of us down, and he never did. That's at least semi-honorable. I thought it was really honorable. I thought he got out of touch near the end, but you know what? I respect the fact that he let us do our jobs. Let's talk about retirement. You've raised this possibility over the last several years.

What push you to actually do it? I did it last year. I retired last year. They got me back. They found one more way to get me back for one more year. They basically appealed to my loyalty to the station. They were bringing in a new program director. They said they wanted to give him some time to get his feet on the ground.

He's a great guy, Rod Lakin. And they said, can you just do one more year? And I said, no. And they said, give us a list. What would it take? And so I took, I have like 12 weeks vacation. were going to use them. But I said I want Wednesdays off. I want to bring back the best promotion person I ever work with Cindy Webster who got laid off during the pandemic and all these other things.

And they said yes to everything. So you have Wednesdays off. I have Wednesdays off. I'm like a doctor, except they don't golf. I was going to say it was like Johnny Carson at the end. Remember he'd be like, Johnny Carson, hold on. There's a misnomer. He was doing three-day weeks at the end. Okay. I'll never go to that. I was. We'll be gone before that. But yeah, retirement has scared the heck out of me. But, you know, as I get older, as the job becomes a bigger challenge and more work, you've got to know when it's time. And it was probably time a couple of years ago. But it is definitely time now. I read a couple of years ago, you wanted to retire. And then Mark Farsetta, am I getting the name right? Who'd been at WIP, went up against you on a different station. Yeah. And you were like, I'm not going anywhere. I would work until he was out because I feel like he was very disloyal to me.

I mentored him for 13 years and behind my back he did a deal to become the competition. And I would have signed off on it, but he didn't, he wasn't honest with me. And because of that, I was not going to leave until he left first. And once he left, that was when I said to myself, All right, you should go now. And then it's taken a couple of years to do that. You know, Mike Francesa retired in New York. I know.

A couple of months went by and he went and came back and got his job back again. You're not going to do that? No. Because what happened with Mike? He went back and it wasn't the same. It wouldn't be the same. Once you leave, you got to leave. And I know Mike, I mean, we had him on a couple of times.

Mike's tremendous talent, phenomenal talent, one of the all-timers. But it's hard to cut the cord. and he had to make that struggle public, but in the end he did the right thing. And he still has an incredible career, but I won't do that. I will find a way to make use of my life after I do this. You said on the show Tuesday, you have no hobbies.

So you're going to acquire a hobby? My TV is the hobby. I love television. I don't need any other hobbies. That's a huge TV. I really don't have any friends either. I have, that's my friend and my hobby. I love television.

I've loved it my whole life. The only commitment I've made beyond my retirement at the end of this year is that I'm going to be on a podcast with my TV guy, Jay Black, because it's talking about something I love totally, and that's television. I love it. And I always will. What do you feel like you missed out on by waking up that early every morning and doing the schedule you did? Nothing. I have led a blessed career in Philadelphia. I have gotten every break you could hope to get.

I've worked as hard as I could, but I don't. have a single regret. And I believe I have a stronger marriage because my wife sees less of me. And I think she would agree with that. Next year, the biggest challenge will be she'll see more of me. She claims she's going to get a job at O'awa. I don't know if that's true. Now, what will you miss do you think most, but not doing mornings? Relevance. I will not be relevant. My opinion will not matter. I will have nowhere to vent it. I love the idea that I'll see something at a game and then be able to make a big thing of it the next day. That is, that's kind of like a drug after a while. And that's going to be the hard part of the transition that I'm going to wake up in January

and something big will have happened in sports and I'm going to be talking to myself in the mirror and not to an audience. That's going to be hard, but I'm going to have to figure it out. What are you not going to miss? I won't miss the hours once I have a normal schedule again. I'm sure I won't miss that. And I guess I won't miss how hard it gets,

to be in a bureaucracy and to deal with so many different people with so many different agendas. And how do I keep everybody happy? enough so that we could still do the show we want to do. That's always a problem. The management that I work for now is the best management I've ever worked for before. And if it wasn't, I would have left. But it's still constantly when you're in an area where it's kind of sensitive, you're always wondering, what are they thinking? Am I handling this right? What I won't miss the least is the political correctness of today and the fact that no matter,

matter how much I attempt to adjust to it, I know I haven't fully done it. And that there's a trap door there somewhere that could still take me down. Honestly, that's the thing that scares me the most every day. A feeling of being out of sync with the times. Just saying something I didn't mean in being submitted to the cancel culture, it could still happen. And it's a fear everyone in broadcasting has every day who is on life. because something may just not come out right.

And then suddenly somebody is alienated and it's the wrong person to alienate. And now you've got a battle on your hands. I'd like to be out of it before that happens. Angelo Cotaldi, thanks for coming on the press box. My pleasure. Thank you. All right, it's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah.

Monday's headline about surging noodle prices was ramen a leg. Today's headline comes from Aaron J. Galloni. It's from the Washington Post. It's a religion story. Over the past few weeks, the Post reports, Dolly Parton has been the subject of a five-part sermon series at the Church of the Three Crosses in Chicago. The Reverend Britt Cox wrapped up her sermon series,

the gospel according to Dolly on May 29th. We've been using Dolly as a way to talk about story and about our larger story of faith, and that all of our stories matter, and that God's story is continuing on in us. Cox told the congregation, accompanied by a flourish from the church's pianist. The gospel according to Dolly Parton, David,

what was the Washington Post's strained pun headline? First of all, I'd be shocked to, find out that the gospel according to Dolly Parton doesn't already exist in book form, like sitting up near the register at your local Barnes & Noble. It feels like it does. And how is the gospel according to Dolly Parton not just the best headline option here? Okay, so it's going to be a pun. It's got to involve Dolly.

It's not like the Parton of the Red Sea, is it? No. Okay. So I'm assuming it's going to be Dolly. Oh, maybe one of the first. Dolly songs? Oh, uh,

uh, Jolene. Oh, oh, okay. Wow, you went right there. I was already with, like I'd already thrown.

And we're thinking of the gospel. We're thinking of the gospel. The gospel according to Jolene or for, Joe, no, let's just run them down here. Matthew Mark Luke, Matthew Mark Luke,

Jolene and Jolene. Matthew Mark Luke and Jolene. I kid you not. That's great. From page B2, Washington Post. He is David Shumaker of Brian Curtis Production Magic by Erica Servantes.

We are back Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brad.