Ever since Josh Innes left town our signals intelligence has been mostly silent. Both stations have been more interested in nation building than fighting a war and key players on each side have refused to get involved in the tit-for-tat ratings game. So, maestro has had to pivot, go deep undercover, call a few Russian hackers, cable Assange and… well, I found a guy who has access to the ratings. Wasn’t that hard really.

Since Nielsen considers their radio ratings proprietary data and has whipped us over the knuckles about using them in the past, here is a high-level view of the current state of Philly sports talk radio ratings based on ratings in the men 25-54 demo over the last few months.

Mornings

Angelo Cataldi and his crew on WIP continue to hold a safe lead over Anthony Gargano and special friends on 97.5. Angelo’s lead is larger during football season – for obvious reasons since WIP broadcasts Eagles games on Sundays and Doug Pederson is a guest on the show each week – where he held a roughly 50% lead over 97.5’s morning show. Since then, perhaps due to the surging Sixers and more basketball talk on 97.5, Gargano has cut into Cataldi’s lead by about a point or so, but WIP still holds a comfortable margin. [We’re very much ball-parking these numbers since our source asked us not to use specific data.]

Mid-days

Both stations have lingered in the 4’s here for a little while and are essentially neck-and-neck. It’s hard to declare victory for either Harry and Rob on 97.5 (Harry has spent a bunch of time filling in for Mike Missanelli later in the day) or Joe DeCamara and Jon Ritchie on WIP. Though 97.5 has been eeking out slight victories as of late.

Afternoons

This continues to be a bloodbath. WIP’s new afternoon show of Ike Reese and Chris Carlin is, somewhat predictably, struggling against Mike Missanelli (and Harry Mayes and Jason Myrtetus). It is actually down against the mix of rotating hosts WIP used before the show debuted in early November. Part of that is due to seasonality, but that doesn’t change the fact that the WIP afternoon show has been getting concerningly low ratings in the 3’s (the morning show often approaches a 9) and has been getting more than doubled by 97.5’s offering, which has included Mayes and Myrtetus when Missanelli was out in December, and Missanelli for most of January. Clearly Carlin has struggled to catch on with the local audience where even Innes, also an outsider, was able to bring in new listeners with his over-the-top style. WIP has essentially had five afternoon shows in three years– Macnow and Gargano, Gargano and Ellis, Bruno and Innes, Innes and sidekicks, and now Carlin and Reese. There simply has been no consistency.

What’s next? Angelo Cataldi has all but said he’ll hang ’em up when his contract is up at the end of the year. That would leave a gaping hole in WIP’s lineup, which in many ways has always been built around its morning show. But breaking up said morning show should would also save the station more than $2 million per year. CBS Radio, which owns WIP, recently merged with local company Entercom, which hadn’t owned any other stations in Philly, and it’s unclear how the newly formed company will choose to proceed. But you have to wonder what it will do if and when its morning show goes away and its other two daily shows struggle to get out of the 4’s, with hosts who don’t seemed capable of leading a morning show. WHY SO PECKED: