On The Air
by Laura Nachman
Bucks County Courier Times
April 22, 2005


It wasn't smooth sailing for two members of the WIP 610-AM team as Angelo Cataldi and Howard Eskin sparred over Eskin's new Saturday morning show.

On Monday morning, Cataldi announced on his show that the real reason Eskin was doing the Saturday morning show was to make up income lost from his 30-day suspension as part of the Richard Sprague defamation case against Eskin, not to strengthen the weekend lineup as was previously announced.

In a phone interview, Cataldi said he was furious at Eskin for making fun of "The Best of Cataldi" which ran before Eskin's 9-11 a.m. Saturday show.

"How dare he trash me and my show," Cataldi said. "I informed station management two weeks ago that if they didn't tell Eskin to stop making fun of my people I would go public with the real reason Eskin was working Saturdays."

Eskin's response: "My working on Saturdays is completely voluntary," he wrote in an e-mail. "[WIP general manager] Marc Rayfield and I talked during the football season about working on Saturdays to help make the weekends 'lights out' like the weekdays are here at WIP. Marc has been working on making the weekends better for a while.''

Rayfield corroborated Eskin's story.

"I've wanted to build Saturdays for more than a year,'' he wrote in an e-mail. "And I asked Eskin a number of months ago to take a two-hour shift that I can build around. He agreed. My lobbying began long before the suspension. They are not related."

Family feud

A WPVI employee who traveled to Jacksonville, Fla., for the Super Bowl said that the shouting match between sportscasters Gary Papa and Phil Andrews wasn't the only time Papa clashed with a co-worker that week.

"Gary spent the entire week alienating everybody on the trip and had verbal disagreements with at least two other people [besides Andrews]," the employee said. "I chalk it up to everything he has gone through over the past year - battling cancer, his divorce, etc. It's been rough on him, and at times he had been edgy, so any little thing bothered him."

Papa and Andrews could not be reached for comment.

Attention, campers

Detroit Lions' running back Kevin Jones, Sixers' announcer Tom McGinnis and WCAU's John Clark are new additions to the fourth annual SportsBroadcasting Camps taking place June 20-24 and Aug. 15-19 at Bryn Mawr College and Aug. 1-5 at the Katz Jewish Community Center in Cherry Hill.

Past "counselors" include Phil Martelli of the Saint Joseph Hawks, ESPN's Sal Paolantonio, Comcast SportsNet's Michael Barkann and Phil Hartman, CN8's Gregg Murphy, WTXF's Bill Vargus and WIP's Glen Macnow. To register, call 215-732-2044 or go to www.scholasticpbpnetwork.com.

NFL draft

ESPN will televise the NFL draft from noon to 5:30 p.m. Saturday. ESPN2 will take over for the later rounds from 5:30-10:30 p.m.