Andy Bloom was 94 WIP’s Operations Manager from November of 2007 to January of 2016. If you read Crossing Broad at all back then, you saw his name pop up frequently as part of the RADIO WARS saga that ended with Josh Innes’ being suspended and later fired seven months after Bloom was let go by CBS radio, prior to the Entercom sale.
Bloom brought Innes to Philly, and still has a good relationship with him, so he went on his podcast this week to talk about a variety of topics, from the RADIO WARS epic, to sources within WIP, Mike Missanelli, Tony Bruno, and everything in between. Here are some bullet points takeaways, followed by full quotes:
They also talked about the time Bloom got on the radio to yell at Kyle back in February of 2015, and I transcribed that part here:
Innes: To go back to that, that was the time, the news that Rob Ellis was either getting moved, and you were angry about, I guess the leaker gave them that story, too, and maybe that told you who the leaker was?
Bloom: Absolutely. I knew who leaked that one, it could have only been one person who knew it, or two people actually, and that may have been the time I accused Spike, and it was not Spike. So it gives you a pretty good idea of who it might have been. I was going to inform Rob of my decision when he got off the air that day. There were a couple of people who knew what I was going to say. Somebody had called or emailed and let Kyle know what I was going to say. Rob was on the air and read it on the air. That was an incredibly, I guess shitty thing to do to a human being. (Crossing Broad) didn’t call me for confirmation, they just went ahead and posted it. And I just think human dignity requires a little more respect than that. Rob had a right to hear it from me. The plan was I was going to tell him when he got off the air that day, not before he went on the air, and there were two people who knew it. One of them leaked it. I accused one of them and it was not that person, and I believe that. The other person knew it and did it.
Kyle and Bloom actually spoke on the phone after that on-air argument, and Kyle addressed similar complaints back in 2016, so I’ll add a couple of my own thoughts instead:
Anyway, Bloom also talked about the day that Tony Bruno decided not to come in and do the afternoon show, and the dynamic of pairing Innes with him:
“I want to be very clear about this. The show was pitched to Tony as a partnership with a 51-49 vote, that if there was a disagreement, you (Josh) had the final 1% vote. It was always pitched that way. I think that at certain points that got to Tony, and if it wasn’t Tony, it was Tony’s support people.”
…
“In fairness, I’ll give Tony every benefit of the doubt here and pick on you a bit as much as I can, it was a little more of Josh Innes bringing his show forward and a little less of Tony Bruno. In particular, looking back, had we allowed Tony to use a few of his sounders, it might have satisfied him, but I think ultimately, to your point, that he was hearing from all of his old fans, really did kind of mentally F with him.”
They ended the podcast talking about Josh Innes theoretically returning to Philly with 97.5 the Fanatic. Innes has angled for that in the past, though I can’t imagine Mike Missanelli would ever sign off on it, assuming he has any say. He likely does not, though management would be smart to steer clear of doing something that would upset the afternoon apple cart. I think 97.5 would have to be up against the wall to make a controversial move like bringing in Josh, considering how ridiculous and nasty some of the RADIO WARS stuff got back in the day.
Who knows?
Here’s the podcast:
Listen to “JIS: Former WIP Programmer Andy Bloom” on Spreaker.