Before Boomer and Carton, long before Carton and Roberts, the sports radio shock jock had an opportunity presented to him that likely would have negated his WFAN tenure. During last Friday’s celebratory show for morning producer Al Dukes, Craig Carton said he was offered the job to replace Howard Stern when the King of all Media moved to satellite.
Stern’s affiliates were split between a few hosts nationwide, but the most infamous one was Van Halen singer David Lee Roth, whose show filled stations in New York, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Dallas and South Florida. Popular radio disc jockey Rover replaced Stern in the Midwest and comedian Adam Carolla took over a few West Coast markets.
A lot of names were discussed to replace Stern at the time, including Jon Stewart and Whoopi Goldberg, but Carton said the opportunity was his and he wanted it. Carton, who was hosting at NJ 101.5, would have been given Roth’s East Coast affiliates.
NJ 101.5 was owned by Millennium Radio Group at the time and Carton remembered discussing the Stern deal with them saying, “if there’s anything you’re going to do to stop this, you gotta tell me now because I represented that you’re letting me go.” Carton said the company gave him the go ahead.
He described it as a done deal, Craig Carton was going to replace Howard Stern. But on his way home from receiving the offer, Carton got an angry phone call. CBS Radio CEO Joel Hollander just received a fax saying, ‘if you want to hire Craig Carton, you have to give us [‘X’ amount of dollars].” Just like that, Carton was out, and Roth was soon to be in.
Roth’s show was an epic failure, barely lasting three months. But taking over for Stern was a seemingly impossible task with unrealistic expectations, defining the sentiment that it’s always better to be the individual replacing the person who replaced the legend.
When Carton told his now WFAN co-host Evan Roberts and update anchor Chris Lopresti the story, he spoke as if it was an obvious decision to want the opportunity to replace Stern, “why wouldn’t I?” he asked. Lopresti pushed back a bit, noting it probably would have ended poorly, but Carton said, “you didn’t see the check.”
Less than two years later, Carton was back in discussions with CBS Radio about replacing a morning legend. This time, it was Stern’s rival Don Imus. Carton’s contract with NJ 101.5 was now closer to expiring and he made it clear he would never sign with them again, making him available to join CBS and WFAN to replace Imus.
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
Nobody outside of New York gives a flying f**k about Carton or anyone at WFAN. Yet we’re getting nearly daily updates that border on gossip about a single New York station. Not exactly doing the rest of the nation a favor by shoving this down our throats.
Most people in New York don’t care about Carton either. He’s a foul-mouthed punk.
If this would have happened, first off it would literally be a best of all time to one of the worst. The positive would have been that a formerly great sports talk station wouldn’t have made the mistake of hiring him the first time, which likely would have prevented them from somehow choosing to hire him again thereby ruining the entire station. The combo that WFAN rolls out in the middle of the day is legitimately unlistenable.
Who?
I think this was all in his shiny empty head.
Who?
When does he start paying back the people he defrauded?
This was like 15 years ago and I doubt he was under any serious consideration.
When Stern left regular radio… Regular radio died. Billions of dollars per year in lost advertising revenue when Stern left that never returned even to this day.
Every company had to basically merge and now there is almost no variety or good channels and I live near a city and we used to get tons of good channels.
Radio is dead and nobody has ever heard of this guy. Why is this even an article? Clickbait title bs…
BABABOOEYYYY… And who tf is this guy?!!! Never heard of em
Who is this nobody and why is it a story 20 years later?