Gregg Giannotti became Boomer Esiason’s new partner beginning in January 2018 on what is now Boomer and Gio on WFAN. Joining an established show is tricky. However, Giannotti decided to let the existing crew members take the reins early while he settled into the role.
Giannotti was a guest on the Rise And Schein podcast with Adam Schein this week and said that once he joined the show, he understood he couldn’t make it about himself even though people told him to take advantage of this giant opportunity.
“People would tell me this is your shot, it’s got to be you, it’s your show, be yourself, take it over, it’s a huge opportunity. You never want to look back on this and say you weren’t yourself. I’ll be myself, but you have to be the version of yourself that works in that environment. In the beginning, I had to sit back a little bit and have everyone get comfortable with me. Then, slowly, slowly sort of build my own house and renovated the house that was already there.”
In the beginning, the one thing that Giannotti was very conscious of was not trying to sound like Carton, but still have a similar sound to the pre-existing show.
“It took a long time and in the beginning if you listen back, you can tell it was a different sounding show, but I was conscious of making sure that we weren’t so jarring to the listener when we started,” he said.
Giannotti told Schein that he was still getting to know Boomer Esiason when the show started. Esiason wanted to make it clear from day 1 that they were a team and building something together.
“No one really knew what was going on behind the scenes, so Boomer really wanted this foundation of trust in the beginning and I felt it and it felt real. Even when things weren’t going exactly the way I wanted them to early, he always had my back through that. If Mark Chernoff was all over me for one thing or another, I can always count on Boomer to give me a slap on the ass and tell me ‘it’s okay man, we’re good, don’t worry about it.’”
