RADIO WARS: Former WIP Operations Manager Andy Bloom Goes on AM Radio, Hurls Bombs at The Maestro
When the sun went down last night, former WIP Operations Manager and current cockroach Andy Bloom came out from whatever he was hiding under and sat down for a full hour on AM radio with AP writer and WIP fill-in host Rob Maaddi. Bloom, if you’ll recall from RADIO WARS: Episode I, was the man who hired Josh Innes, called me a “first rate a-hole” on the air, and who got so bent out of shape at a rival station’s presence at a remote that he ordered his hosts back to the studio, mid-show.
The interview was conducted on 610 AM, the former WIP band – now owned by Beasley, which recently acquired Greater Media and 97.5 – that also doles out brokered radio slots for local programming.* Quite honestly, I’d recommend listening to the whole show. Maaddi walked Bloom, a short man who was likely tired what with having to move his figurative legs at the quicker pace, through the entire RADIO WARS saga. Bloom, whom I’m assuming drives pest control operations to drink (he just keeps turning up!), genuinely knows the radio business and had some – dare I say – unique insights on what transpired at 97.5 last week. But, this being Bloom – the sort of guy who elicits responses from sources like “I would cave his face in,” or, in the case of the photo in this post, “I wouldn’t be shocked to learn they jerked each other off with DEEP eye contact” – he couldn’t help himself when it came to The Maestro, who will now take this time to address Bloom’s wayward missiles.
*This is where you buy the air time and sell your own ads. It’s like selling fucking Avon. It costs only a little up front, but if you can’t sell the stuff it’s your problem. John Bolaris tried to get me to be his partner doing this at 610, and just this week someone from the station asked me to host a show. I declined both requests.
Bloom on RADIO WARS reporting:
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Andy Bloom: “I don’t know [what happened with Innes’ show/why his ratings dropped after I left]. I try to avoid the inflammatory blogs, radio war blogs, I avoid them because they have always been inaccurate. They’re half-truths and mostly lies. So I avoid them.”
Rob Maaddi: “When Kyle though writes about so-and-so is going here, he’s gotten those right.”
AB: “He gets a lot of stuff right, but a lot of the paint by numbers, a lot of the filling in of the detail, is extraordinarily wrong. There’s some things that he gets right and some things that he gets wrong, and usually I can identify the source by what’s being told. I can identify the source of a lot of who that is in Philly Voice. There are three people in that story. I can identify them. I know who they are.”
RM: “I’ll say it for you, when you’re a disgruntled former employee, you’re willing to be a source often…If you don’t have a boss to answer to, if you don’t have someone to fact check, if you don’t have an editor to vet your sources and go over and say this is who I have the information from, this is why they’re giving it to me, and this is why they can’t give it to me on the record…All that said, what Kyle does, for him, he’s been very successful because…
AB: “Trading in on rumor and innuendo, and a lot of it is wrong, and some of it’s right. Kyle and I have spoken one time on the air, and five minutes later off the air. And I was really mad at Kyle, and being a journalist, you can answer this question: He had found out roughly three hours before I was going to break the news to Rob Ellis, and Rob had a pretty good idea. This was not a freight train running him over, that he was not going to be on the afternoon show, that it wasn’t going to work and I was gonna move him back to nights. But Rob actually read it, got the news, on Crossing Broad, and I feel like what Kyle owed me and Rob was a chance to have me comment, or a heads up that he was gonna post it. When we were taking WYSP off the air and moving 610 to 94, there were a couple of reporters who got a whiff of it, and they all did that…It gave me a chance to address it with the people whose lives were going to be affected. Rob was going to find out three hours later. Had Kyle said to me “I’m not waiting three hours,” I could have pulled Rob off the air and said “I have to tell you this now because it’s about to get posted.” And I just think, as a journalist, you don’t do that. You call me up, you say “I know this as a fact, I’m going to post this…He’s not a journalist, so he deals in rumors and innuendo. And there are things he’s printed on me in there that are really wrong, and really walk the line.”
OK so there are two primary things here from Bloom, who has a rare disease that makes you sound like you’re slithering when you talk: 1) a lot of the RADIO WARS stuff is inaccurate, and 2) I should’ve contacted him before writing that he was about to demote Rob Ellis.
I have no problem with the latter. Maybe I should have. But if Bloom doesn’t like how blogs operate, that’s his problem. It’s 2016 and we’re all disrespectful assholes. I had a story and wrote it, and I’d probably do it again lest the Toon Man scoop me. And I just assumed that the guy who was demoting Rob Ellis would have, you know, TOLD ROB ELLIS ABOUT IT before it got back to me.
As for the accusation of half-truths and innuendo, I’d love for Bloom to give me an example. I asked him to do so on the air a year and a half ago, and I contacted Maaddi during the show last night and made the same request. Bloom has yet to provide an example. Putting together that Episode I post yesterday, I realized just how spot-on The Maestro has been over last two and a half years. Like, literally, everything, every step of the way. There’s certainly innuendo in what I write, but almost all of that is based on stuff people tell me off-the-record. There are multiple layers of information in our RADIO WARS posts. I’m not patting myself on the back, but that’s the truth. With all insidery reporting, there are going to be different versions of events – there are at least three accounts of the Josh Innes-Anthony Gargano confrontation – different interpretations of what happened. I know Bloom took exception when I would write about what he was “planning” when he hadn’t yet made a final decision on something. And yet, 10 times out of 10, what I wrote is what happened. Hell, I even accurately wrote that Bloom would concoct a fake WWE-style storyline to explain why Bruno and Innes didn’t hold their first show until the Wednesday after the Super Bowl last year, when it was announced the previous Friday. Bruno was sticking around in Arizona for a few days, so WIP created a fake suspension for Innes to explain the delay… which Bruno and Innes later admitted on the air. My source on that, because I don’t think he gives a shit at the moment, was Tony Bruno. So it’s not just the big news posts, it’s the little shit that goes on. I’d say 99% of it has been spot on, with 1% up for interpretation depending on who you ask. But I’d love for Bloom to provide an example of one story I got wrong. I’d happily tell you, the reader, what it was.
On the ratings:
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“I also know that his source, and he’ll deny this, was Missanelli and WPEN for the ratings information. It’s why he didn’t post them today, because now he burned that source. The way I know that is because when he was cutting and pasting last month, if you look at what he posted last month, you can see that it’s a cut and paste. A cut and paste from Greater Media. It refers to “this affected us too,” it’s cut and paste. It came directly from 97.5. He didn’t even edit it. I have no interest in going head to head with Kyle, but it’s a cut and paste. I’ll show it to you if he hasn’t already gone back and corrected it. He directly lifted something that he was sent by Greater Media, and didn’t take the time to edit it, therefore you can tell what the source is.”
This is delicious, because just minutes after accusing me of half-truths and not knowing the facts, Bloom literally does the same. The idea that Mike Missanelli gives me the ratings is hilarious. Mike is an email warrior, and has sent me his opinion on many things (apparently, there are others in the local sports media community who receive these emails, usually with no subject line and starting with “bro”), but he’s never sent me the ratings. The only time I ever hear from him with regard to ratings is when he berates me for misinterpreting them, only when he loses. In fact, I’ve gotten ratings from people associated with 97.5, WIP, former CBS employees, people who worked for Bloom, and once Josh Innes cold called me to tell me about his “win” (he didn’t include the streaming numbers). Ironically, there are people at 97.5 who have accused me of getting the ratings from WIP. Indeed I have at times. So it goes both ways.
And the notion that I “copy and paste” the ratings from Missanelli and or others at 97.5? Ridiculous and borderline slanderous. I usually get the ratings from someone, over the phone, and jot them down in Notes. It looks like this:
I blurred the actual ratings because Nielsen doesn’t allow you to post their proprietary data
I then turn that into a post. If it’s a particularly uninteresting month, I copy my post – my own words – from the previous month and just insert the new numbers.
So much for Bloom not reading RADIO WARS. He said something about me writing “this affected us too,” implying – stating – that I forgot to remove commentary from – GASP – my source. I’m not sure what he’s even talking about, but the only thing I can find even close to that is this, from earlier this month:
Idiot, that wasn’t commentary from someone at 97.5, or anywhere, it was my own aside about our web visits also being lower BECAUSE IT’S THE FUCKING SUMMER AND OUR BASEBALL TEAM SUCKS, YOU ABSOLUTE ASSHOOOOOLE.
Sorry, did I let emotion get in the way? You can listen to Maaddi’s full interview with Bloom here. You can also follow Bloom on Twitter (@AndyBloomCom).