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RADIO WARS: More On Dwayne From Swedesboro

By Kyle Scott

Published: Aug 23rd, 2016 · 1:34 PM EDT

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OK so the number one response to the “Dwayne From Swedesboro” post has been people asking whether or not Mike Missanelli knew that he was talking to a producer. I genuinely don’t believe that he did. From the moment I started poking around on this story, everyone I spoke to, with no allegiance or reason to protect Missanelli, volunteered the information that perhaps the best-funniest-craziest part of the story was that Mike was the only one on the on-air and programming side who had no idea. Mike – who I can assure you is not thrilled about any part of this – seemed genuinely caught off-guard by my email when he discussed it on the air with Jason Myrtetus.

I had reached out to Mike yesterday. He didn’t immediately respond to me, and opted to do so on the air, but he emailed me back at 5:45 p.m.– I didn’t see it until after I posted the story. Here’s what he said:

All I can tell you is that Dwayne did come to the station one day and talked to certain members of management. You might want to call [program director] Matt Nahigian about this. I think he met him.

I asked him directly today and he responded:

“I didn’t know.”

Last night I spoke with Nahagian and asked him if he knew that Dwayne was fake. He declined to comment on the record.

Meanwhile, Josh Innes and his producer, Adam Reigner, who used to write for this site, are having a field day on Twitter:

To Adam’s point– I think he’s wrong. Mike rules 97.5, but I’m guessing wants little to do with the low-level producers working crazy hours for peanuts. It’s Myrtetus, his producer, trying to put Missanelli in the best light possible, in this case using the character of Dwayne to get him going.

Which leads us to former 97.5-er Sean Brace, saying on his podcast today that this is where the buck started:

“Things have changed since I left to where it is now. That’s obvious. So I will just go ahead and tell you that before I ended up getting fired, Egan was this voice. This caller that called in to rile Mike up at like 2:30. Mike would roll into the station at like 1:30 and you would know as a producer what type of mood he’s in or what not. And you’d know throughout the course of communication if he’s got a good show planned or anything like that.

So you might go to it, and you might start the show off, and Egan’s running around the hallways and you’d be like “Yo Pat, go call in.” Now this wasn’t started with me, this was started obviously when Jason Myrtetus was the producer. So Myrtetus is the assistant Program Director, and the producer of Missanelli’s show. Again, I have no problem with them steering the caller – I feel like people are like “I can’t believe there’s fake callers” – once in a while you gotta punch up somebody to rile your host up, that’s just what it’s all about, it’s about entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Brace stopped just short of saying there were other fake callers besides Dwayne – something several people have intimated to me – but did blow the lid off Missanelli’s Sound Off segment:

“There’s this thing called SoundOff at 5:45, I still believe they do it, Egan would be a caller on that. I think that’s where he got his start a couple years before… Pat Egan’s been with that radio station forever. He’s been working his way up through the ranks, he’s finally getting PT now, hopefully he’s able to keep his job after this, and I think he should…I think it started with SoundOff. Honestly, it wasn’t anything for malice or anything like that, no bad intentions at all…

So I can understand why Myrtetus would have him call in to rile Mike up every once in a while. And that’s where it was for me before I left. And I remember the first time someone telling me it was Egan being like “Yo, this caller is Egan,” and I’d be like yeah I can tell it’s Egan. And he’s got this slang and all because he can’t sound like him so he’s gotta change it up. And I totally get that. But that’s the caller side of things.

Where things go off is – Holy Shit – when I click the damn tweet, click the handle yesterday, and I see Dwayne from Swedesboro has 1,000 followers. I see Dwayne from Swedesboro fires off 15 tweets a day it seems. I see Dwayne from Swedesboro is having conversations with Pat Egan and other people at the station. That’s where you lose me. And credit Crossing Broad on this man, that’s funny as shit that they got this tip and they followed up on it and they went after it.”

I talked to Myrtetus today and asked him about Sean’s comment. Myrtetus said of course they get on the line with callers and encourage them to spar with the host, but denied that there were other fake callers.

Whether there was or wasn’t, are or aren’t, this Tweet, roughly three weeks ago, wasn’t particularly well-timed:

Other radio insiders I spoke with today are not in the least bit surprised that there are fake callers, but they thought that this particular case – with Egan being a white kid doing an impression of just the worst black guy stereotype – was a bad look.

Egan, for his part, has been embracing his role as Dwayne, but has caught the ire of ESPN’s Bomani Jones, among others:

This has spiraled into a race conversation on Twitter, and that will be something Missanelli – who routinely harps on such issues – will have to deal with today.

I’m told 97.5 will address the situation on the air at 2 p.m. today, and I can only assume Josh Innes will do the same on WIP. We’ll be running recon on both stations. MAKE THEM BEATS: