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RADIO WARS: What Does it Mean for Sports Talk Radio When a Lawyer Can Change Careers and Land a Drive Time Gig in Two Years?
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97.5 the Fanatic announced on Tuesday afternoon that Bill Colarulo will be leaving the midday show to join Ricky Bo on PM drive. The show will be called Unfiltered:
First things first, this is a much better name than The Best Show Ever? A million bazillion times better. Tyrone, Ricky, Brodes, and Jen Scordo were already playing from behind when that name was revealed a few years ago. “Unfiltered” is safe, certainly an inside-the-box word choice in radio and television. You would put it in the broadcasting lexicon next to words like “unapologetic” and “raw” and “honest” and whatever else suggests that the hosts are going to refrain from bullshitting you.
The biggest takeaway from this news has to be the meteoric rise of Colarulo, who was a lawyer just a few years ago. He got into broadcasting as an unpaid contributor for JAKIB Media, segued that into a weekend show at the Fanatic, and then climbed the ladder faster than Katy Perry climbed into space on the Blue Origin rocket.* He was doing 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on weekends and then became the first choice to cover for weekday shows when the daypart hosts were out on vacation or whatever. You heard a lot of Colarulo on middays and PM drive and Program Director Scott Masteller was really happy with those shifts, which is why Colarulo got the co-host slot when Mikey Miss returned in 2024. After Tyrone Johnson was let go, they pushed Colarulo all the way up to PM drive, which is more or less top of the totem pole in sports talk radio, along with AM drive.
You do ask yourself a rhetorical question, though:
The fact that a lawyer is now hosting PM drive – what does that say about sports talk radio in 2025? Is this an individual success story or an indictment on 97.5 the Fanatic’s talent roster? An outsider walked right into that building and made his way to drive time in about two years. The thought would have been inconceivable as recently as 10 years ago.
To answer the unanswerable question, maybe it’s a little bit of both. Colarulo sounds like he’s been doing sports talk radio for a long time. He took a risk shifting careers and grabbed the opportunity and ran with it. At the same time, there were veterans with institutional knowledge who applied for the job and didn’t get it. There were radio lifers who didn’t get a sniff. Were they not the best choice for the job, or was Masteller hyper-focused on his rising star? Are we simply overanalyzing this and it means nothing at all?
These are all interesting questions to ponder, but what we can confirm is that the days of journalists leading sports talk radio are officially dead. They’ve probably been dead for some time. If you look at both 97.5 the Fanatic and 94 WIP, the main daypart hosts are Joe DeCamara, Jon Ritchie, Hugh Douglas, Joe Giglio, Spike Eskin, Ike Reese, Jack Fritz, Andrew Salciunas, John Kincade, Mike Missanelli, Ricky Bo, and now Colarulo. You have a handful of former athletes in there, then some radio vets, but about a half-dozen don’t have sports or journalism backgrounds and came straight through the talk radio ranks or elsewhere, like law in Bill’s case, or rock radio in Spike’s case. And even going back a little further, Jonny Marks wasn’t asking questions in locker rooms, nor was Tyrone or Pat Egan or Jamie Lynch. Chris Carlin and Josh Innes weren’t “Philly guys,” which probably didn’t matter at the end of the day.
Years ago, the first wave of sports talk radio hosts in Philadelphia was comprised of journalists because there was no broadcasting tree to pull from. It didn’t exist. They needed to go somewhere to find the first crop of anchors, and the newspapers were a good source. That’s how you ended up with guys like Angelo Cataldi, Anthony Gargano, Mikey Miss, and Glen Macnow. Now the path to the top has multiple starting points, and if you have a host that can steer the ship and direct the conversation, then you look to the former players and the guests to satisfy the expertise and experience requirement. It’s the same way with sports writing, whether you’re at PhillyVoice or PHLY or a low-level blog like this one. You no longer have to have a journalism background or beat writer or locker room experience because it’s just not that important to the consumer in 2025. Look at all of the successful YouTubers and content creators and social media people out there. There’s no barrier to entry these days, which has really influenced a playing field that used to be much more restrictive. Whether or not that’s a good thing can be discussed by the philosophers.
Unfiltered isn’t going to win against WIP in afternoons, nor will most programs, but you don’t have to win to sell ads and make money. If they can improve upon TBSE and get the numbers slightly up, that’s a success, especially considering the current state of Beasley Media and how much cutting has been taking place in the Philadelphia cluster.
*I’ve used this joke several times in recent articles, so it may be getting old, but I like it. That whole rocket thing was so stupidly hilarious.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com