Radio_bruno

Tony Bruno spoke exclusively to Jeff Blumenthal of the Philadelphia Business Journal about his departure from WIP. Reason for leaving? “Constant nonsense.”

Do you regret going back to WIP after leaving The Fanatic last year?

I don’t regret coming back to WIP. I had left 97.5 and I heard Josh a few times at night. I did a few shows with him and it was fun. But once we started, there was all of this constant nonsense. But I would come to work and wonder what was going to happen today. It wasn’t like we didn’t get along. It wasn’t cause he was the alpha dog.

Josh always put people on who were going to rip him. Back in the day, you could have someone disagree with you without hating you. Every time I would go out somewhere, people would tell me how much they hated Josh. But they were listening. And we climbed to the top of the ratings. It’s not the reason I left but it was part of it.

Then why did you leave?

I was worn out from the daily nonsense and the podcasting was growing.

Well then, that sure is a lot different (and much more closely aligned with our reporting about Bruno’s displeasure with the way Innes handled callers and his antics…) than what Bruno wrote in his statement and the Kumbaya Innes and Andy Bloom sang about Bruno’s departure two weeks ago.

And here’s a fun part about Bruno’s worth to the station:

How tough is it to replace a host from a business standpoint?

You don’t need to be number one in the market to make a lot of money for your station. I was able to generate more money [via endorsements for sponsors] than they were paying me. So they didn’t want to see me go.

The biggest problem is from a sales standpoint is what happens to the endorsements when someone leaves. I had 13 different endorsements. So I am sure the sales department is disappointed with my departure because there is no guarantee they will hold on to those relationships. Anthony Gargano had a lot of endorsement relationships when he left WIP and I know there was concern that they would follow him to The Fanatic. It’s a big issue.

The rest of the Q & A centers on the merits of podcasting (with which I agree!) and the early success of The Tony Bruno Show. But we now seem to be peeling back layers of the retirement onion. Of course, you could’ve just read our post from two weeks ago for the full story. BAND PLAYS ON: