Loudmouth: Tales (and Fantasies) of Sports, Sex, and Salvation from Behind the Microphone

by Craig Carton

  Hmmm . . . My show was on fire; ratings had never been higher for the time slot. I had been asked to do pregame and postgame shows for Cavalier basketball games to help their ratings. I felt untouchable.

  I read the memo on the air.

  When I came in the next day, I was expecting something, but all I got from Jay Clark was “Good show last night.” Nothing else until the following Monday. I had put in for a few vacation days to go golfing in Myrtle Beach with Chris Beldotti, my best friend from college.

  Working nights presented me with the opportunity to stroll throughout the building without interference. Only my update guy, my producer, and I were in the building after business hours. I strolled past the executive secretary’s desk and happened to see my name on a piece of paper, so I investigated what it was. Turns out it was my vacation request form, and written on it in pencil was a handwritten note from Roger that stated, “No reason to approve this request. The plan we discussed will be in effect before these dates.”

  Motherfucker. I was going to be fired, and this coward didn’t even have the balls to come and talk to me. I was livid. My sole focus became to torch Roger, which I did mercilessly on the show that night. I buried him without referencing the note I had seen. I didn’t want them to know that I knew.

  The next day I went to work early. I got there before noon, stormed into Jay Clark’s office, and yelled, “What the fuck, you’re firing me and you didn’t have the common courtesy to say something?” I went on for a good minute or two, using every possible use of the word fuck.

  Jay allowed me to rant, and then smirked and said, “Are you done?”

  “I’m just getting started,” I told him.

  “Well, save your breath and sit down.”

  “I’d rather stand.”

  “Sit down and relax. You’re not being fired, exactly.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  He said something I imagine nobody who has ever been fired has heard before. “We got you a job in Philly. You’re going to be in a Top-Ten market.”

  “Ha-ha, yeah, right,” I said. He went on to explain that yes, Roger wanted me fired. He’d wanted me out of the building ever since I read his memo on the air, but Dave Popovich was a big fan and was proud of what I had accomplished. Dave got Roger to delay the firing while Dave got in touch with a guy named Tom Bigby, who had started a new sports talk format in Philly on WIP Radio. Tom needed a new host, and my show fit his needs perfectly. Popovich and Bigby went back a decade, and on Dave’s recommendation alone, Bigby wanted to bring me in. “Your last show here is the day before your vacation, and in the meantime, you will go to Philly and get together with Tom about your new gig. Congratulations!”

  Holy shit, I thought, Philly? I was going back to the East Coast to be in a Top 10 market, and I still had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I left Cleveland for vacation and then Philadelphia, and never saw Roger again—but I did send him a memo before I left.

  Roger,

  Thanks for the opportunity to come to Cleveland. It’s a wonderful town with amazing people.

  Fuck you.

  Regards,

  Craig Carton

  I got to Philadelphia in the spring of 1993, just as WIP Radio was about to become a legend in radio circles. It was a small-powered station that had captivated the heart of Philadelphia with its take-no-prisoners guy talk, mixed in with hard-core sports passion. No X’s and O’s were discussed; no basketball or hockey debated. This was a radio station for Eagles fans, and almost exclusively for men. The station was being led by a guy named Angelo Cataldi, who had made his bones as an investigative reporter but took to radio for the better pay. He had figured out radio: be consistent, be entertaining, and give people what they want. What the people wanted was hot chicks, football talk, and nothing else.

  The station was created by a behemoth of a man named Tom Bigby. I hadn’t officially been in radio until I worked for Bigby. He represented every typical quality of a radio programmer or boss. He thought he was bigger than the station. He thought he could turn anyone into a star. And he thought he knew everything about anything. He was right on all counts.

  When the guys at Cleveland first set me up with Bigby, it was over the phone, and I thought he seemed pleasant enough. He spoke with a Louisiana drawl, and he was receptive to me. Before my new job was finalized, I had to fly in and do two weekend shifts for him so he could hear how I sounded on his station. I met with him on a rainy Friday, and he was the most intimidating guy I had ever seen. He weighed about four hundred pounds, and had small forearms. Wanting to prove to me right away that he was the boss, he told me to sit in and watch his afternoon show with Mike Missanelli and Steve Fredericks.

  For my money, this was the single best show WIP ever had during my time there. Mike is a smart guy. He played college baseball, graduated from law school, and had an ego the size of Philly. He was partnered with Philly icon Steve Fredericks. They called their show S&M and it was the type of show I later patterned my own career after. Mike was a younger, more energetic guy, and Steve played his foil and the older-brother type. The only issue was that Steve could never win an argument, and could never call anybody out, because years earlier when he was the singular voice of Philadelphia sports on the radio, he was caught in a North Philly drug den with a shitload of heroin. He garnered the front page for it.

  Both guys were pleasant to me, and Mike even said he was glad the station was bringing in some new young talent. To this day, he is the only guy who has ever welcomed me to the fraternity of on-air talent without fear that I was there to take his place. Mike and I got along great. Steve was receptive to me as well, and while we were never as close as Mike and I got, merely due to the age difference and because Steve wasn’t socializing publicly anymore, we got along great from the first time we met.

  About an hour into their show, Bigby came into the studio and ripped into Steve for something innocuous he’d said. Steve didn’t say a word. He just gave him a look like, “Are you out of your mind?” and let Bigby blow his horn. It was obvious to all of us that Bigby had manufactured his disdain to show everyone, including the new guy, who was the boss. I got the message. Bigby was showing me that it was his station, and just in case I didn’t get it, he pointed a few things out to me before I left for the day.

  Inside the studio he had placed a box with three lights and a timer on it. This timer told you when to dump a caller. Tom believed that no caller should ever go more than two minutes, and even that was too long. When a caller came on the line, the green light lit up when the timer hit thirty seconds; a yellow light lit up warning you that the caller was now getting dangerously close to being on the air too long. When the timer hit ninety seconds, the light hit red. And if a caller ever hit two minutes, all the lights went nuts.

  Tom took me to his office and showed me that not only did he have the same box with lights in his office, but in fact he could push a button himself and disconnect a caller, and he made it clear to me that he was always listening. He claimed he had the same setup in his house, but I never bought that. He did, however, have one more contraption, and that was a special phone line hooked into the studio that only he could dial. When he called that number, the phone lines blinked green and a strobe light went off, so you always knew when he was calling. Every show you did, you did it with him in mind. He was ruthless, maniacal, and a genius at the same time. You could never even think of letting a caller go overtime, or of sleepwalking through a segment.

  Needless to say, I was a little nervous for my two tryout shows. Nobody had ever actually taught me how to do radio, and I had been in the profession for less than two years. Yet here I was, two tryouts away from landing a gig as the youngest full-time on-air sports talk host in America in a Top 20 market.

  The first show I ever did was with a likable guy named Tom Sredenschek, a Fox producer who wanted to do radio. He was a nice guy, and he had been ordered to allow me to do the radio formatics, meaning I would in
troduce the callers, go to the commercial breaks, and so on. The four hours went by in a blur, and I was thankful that he was my first-ever partner. We did it again the next day, and again it felt smooth. Bigby never called during either show, and I had no plans to meet with him, because my flight back to Cleveland was the next morning. I called his office and left a message thanking him for the opportunity, and saying that I looked forward to chatting on Monday.

  Bigby called Monday morning. He told me he hadn’t heard either show, but he wanted to know what I thought. I told him that Tom Sredenschek was a good guy, it felt good being on Bigby’s radio station, and I was eager to get started. He shot back that the shows were all right but I had let the callers talk too much. Not only had he listened, but he went on to critique specific calls at specific times. He also told me I should have smacked Tom several times because he was getting in the way of good radio. No response from me.

  Bigby said that he wanted me to do nights and some weekends, and that he was prepared to make me an offer. Now remember, I started out making $12,000 living in a retirement home on August 24, 1991. On April 1, 1992, I signed a three-year contract making $30,000 per year. Now, in the spring of 1993, I was about to get an offer from Tom Bigby and WIP, just as it was about to hit the big time and become a legendary station.

  Bigby asked me how much I would like to make. I assumed I would make more than I was making in Cleveland, but I had no idea what it would be, so I figured I’d take a shot. I threw out a crazy number and said $50,000. Tom came back with “How about I do you one better and pay you $52,500, and we call it a day?”

  I said “yes” faster than an IHOP waitress agrees to blow Tiger Woods.

  That was it. I would start May 1, 1993, and I would make $52,500. I only later learned that WIP was a union station, and that the union had negotiated that the minimum salary a full-time talk show host could make was $52,500. Bigby played with me and made it seem like he was doing me a favor. I bought it, but even after I found out, I didn’t care one bit. I had more than quadrupled my salary in less than two years, and I was now in the sixth-biggest market in America.

  I did the night show with a former Eagle named Garry “G” Cobb, and I also did an occasional weekend shift. Garry and I had a blast doing nights together and created a strong following. I loved Garry and still do, even though time and my failure to stay in touch with people have caused us to drift apart. Garry wasn’t the best talk show host but he was always a solid friend and a great partner.

  Working with G Cobb was great. He always had my back and always looked out for me, whether by bringing me on his weekly TV show, G Cobb Live, or taking me out to meet girls. G and I were very tight. During one show, G fell asleep. He was tired from running around all day, and he fell asleep on the air. It had happened before, but this time in particular he was out cold. The snoring was loud enough that you could hear it on the show. I elbowed him several times to wake him up, but no luck. We had a caller on the air who wanted Garry’s perspective on some Flyers hockey issue. I elbowed G again pretty hard, and he popped up and for no reason at all, said, “Randall Cunningham.” I could barely contain my laughter, but I did long enough to say, “G, the caller asked you a question about the Flyers.” Garry responded without missing a beat. “I know, Craig. Randall could have played hockey. He’s a great athlete.” I always laugh when I think back to that moment and all the good times I had with G.

  G Cobb was a businessman and a hustler. I loved that about him. In addition to his TV show, he had business deals throughout the community. He worked hard at everything but radio. I believe it got to a point where Garry recognized that I prepared extensively for the show, and he knew he could count on me.

  There came a time in WIP’s history when we were not allowed to talk about so many sports topics. An edict came down from Bigby, and the whole radio station became guys doing top-ten lists. Bigby didn’t believe there was a big enough audience for talking hockey, baseball after 1993, or Sixers hoops ever. That left one sport: Eagles all the time, or lists that guys would create to help get callers and make it through a show.

  I hated the lists. I thought I could entertain listeners without them and without the calls, but there was nobody better at creating lists than G Cobb. His most popular list show was the famous “Ugly Show.” Twice a year he would come on the air and say, “Craig, who is the ugliest guy in the public eye?” and bang, we would have at it. Four hours of me, Garry, and the callers just burying people for everything from looks, dress, to you-name-it.

  During my first-ever Ugly Show, I nominated a guy named Larry Rosen. At the time, Spectacor was Philly’s main sports cable supplier. Owned by the Sixers, it was the home of Sixers and Flyers broadcasts, and the precursor to Comcast Sports. Larry Rosen was its “star,” for lack of a better description. He hosted all the pregame and postgame shows and was a major presence on the network. Coming from New York and then even Buffalo and Cleveland, I had never seen a guy so ugly working full-time on television. I said so on the radio. I got the usual laughs and moved on, thinking nothing of it.

  Tom Bigby was a lunatic, and every bit as powerful as the station he created. He considered himself a superstar, and acted as such. Once when I was traveling with the Eagles for a playoff game in Dallas against the Cowboys, Tom wanted me to do a three-hour show on the Saturday before the game. The only problem was, he never set up a radio station for me to broadcast from, so I had to do the whole show from the phone in my hotel room.

  The show was minutes from starting. I asked the hotel to put a “Do Not Disturb” note on my room phone and dialed in to the radio station. There would be a cohost in the studio to help take calls, and I would host from my bed, essentially. Just as we went on-air, there was a knock on my door and the muffled sounds of someone saying, “Room service.” I hadn’t ordered any room service, so I ignored the knock and started the show.

  “Live from the Hilton in Dallas . . . ” Knock, knock. Again, “Room service . . . ”

  I reached over to the door with the phone in one hand. I opened it and in came Tom Bigby. He sat down on the bed and just stared at me while I tried to start the show. After a few minutes he gave me the sign to wrap up the segment and take a break. The whole time he never moved from my bed.

  When he finally got up from the bed, he looked me in the eye. The smile disappeared. “Remember this: I am the star of WIP, and nobody else.”

  O-kay, got it, Tom. He was right. We all hated him, but every one of us who worked for him and had success has always pointed out that without Tom’s insight and direction, none of us ever would have gotten as far as we did. Tom taught me that callers should be treated in the same way music stations use songs—only the best songs should ever make the air. Callers should take the conversation to another level. They should be entertaining; they should bring out the best in the host, and you should never take a call just for the sake of taking a call. Less than one percent of your audience will ever pick up the phone to call you, so be very careful in screening calls so that every one serves a point. Whether it is confrontation with the host, information, or entertainment, the caller should be used for a precise reason.

  I also learned that you need to know your audience. Know who you’re broadcasting to. If you’re in Philly, you need to know that the Eagles are the most important thing in town. If you’re in New York, it’s the Yankees. Also at WIP, more than anywhere else, I also learned that you need an angle, and you need to live, breathe, and sleep the topics you’re talking about with the same passion that your listeners do. Showing up and reading the newspaper was for lazy hosts with no ratings and no desire to be successful. I wanted to be a star, and I was willing to work harder than anybody else to become one.

  Seven months after I got to WIP, I went to my first holiday party. I didn’t bring a date, as I didn’t know protocol. This turned out to be a good thing. After the cocktail hour, Bigby wanted to have all the on-air hosts come up onstage and say a word or two, and then conduct
a raffle for the family members in attendance. One by one he called the various hosts until they were all up there, except for me and Jody McDonald, the midday host. I wasn’t called up on the stage, not because I wasn’t a valued member of the air staff, but because this was the type of mental game Bigby liked to play. He loved to make people feel uncomfortable, insecure, and inadequate.

  Bigby had called Jody’s name a few times, but he refused to go up. He refused because as he said, “If Craig isn’t called up there, then I’m not going. He’s as much a part of this staff as anyone.” I never forgot that, and even though I still didn’t get called up, I have always done everything I can for Jody over the years. I love him for what he did.

  The second awkward moment at the party was with another station employee’s wife. He and his wife had to be well into middle age, and while the staff member was sober that night because he had to drive home, his wife was liquored up. I was standing outside the bathrooms. She came up to use the facilities, only to find the women’s room occupied. She struck up a conversation with me. Clearly intoxicated, she swayed back and forth. Then she let go the bombshell: “You’re Craig, right?”

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  “Will you fuck me?”

  “What . . . um, are you okay?”

  “Will you fuck me? My husband can’t get it up tonight and I need some cock. Will you fuck me in the bathroom? He’ll never know. Please fuck me.”

  I told her I thought she’d had too much to drink, and that she should be careful what she was saying. “Then fuck you, if you can’t give me any cock.” She stumbled into the bathroom.

  I didn’t stay at the party much longer after that, but in retrospect, I guess I should have, just to see what else might have happened the more everybody drank.