Feature: Media: Game On
Eskin is easy to loathe, but he’s impossible to ignore. One WIP jock warns against counting him out. “Howard needed a kick in the ass,” says this host. “But he’s a survivor. I have a feeling Howard is going to come back. Howard hates to lose, and Mike — he blows himself up.”
BACK TO Brownie’s for a moment, when the fates of these two radio stations were forever altered. Many WIP staffers still regret the day Missanelli was fired, and none question his talent. Still, the question of what exactly happened that day looms. Did management overreact to a heated confrontation? Or did Missanelli really slug his producer? One source who’s seen the security camera video says the truth is exactly in the middle — Missanelli took a swing, but missed. And CBS Radio gambled that WIP was bigger than any one host.
WIP’s suits put that theory to the test again last fall. Angelo Cataldi had been talking to the station since Labor Day in hopes of working out a new contract. The 59-year-old has been with WIP for 22 years, and his show was then the second-highest-rated morning program in all of Philadelphia radio among men 25 to 54. (WMMR’s Preston & Steve was first; in April, Cataldi grabbed the top spot.) But it had become clear that WIP and CBS Radio were sticking to their initial offer, which didn’t include a raise. Cataldi was irate. With his paycheck already over a million, he wasn’t worried about where his next meal was coming from. But this was a matter of respect.
So the host set a plan: If ’IP wouldn’t pony up by Thanksgiving, it was sayonara. On the Friday before, Cataldi sat down with his wife, Gail, to explain the stakes. “My God,” she said, “you’re really doing this.” But there was a twist — Cataldi wouldn’t retire. He’d send his résumé to The Fanatic.
WIP blinked. Cataldi got a new offer, and though his raise was modest, it was enough to save face. Cataldi signed on through 2014, with a station option for a fifth year, and while he’s not carrying any grudges, he insists his hardball wasn’t a bluff. “I came close to not signing that deal, more than anybody knows,” he says. “I would have ended up on bended knee at the other station. I would have begged them to take me.” For the Fanatic, adding Cataldi to its roster with Missanelli would have been the sports-radio equivalent of the Phillies keeping Cliff Lee and signing Roy Halladay — although unlike Lee, who was beloved by his teammates, Missanelli remains a source of friction behind the scenes. “He runs the fucking station,” gripes one insider. “He’s the top dog, and he acts like the top dog. Whenever he has a big name on the show, he barks and tears into them to prove that no one is bigger then Mike Missanelli.”
