WIP to announce Angelo Cataldi’s replacement on Thursday

Update: WIP to replace Angelo Cataldi with Joe DeCamara and Jon Ritchie

We’re finally about to learn who will replace longtime 94.1 WIP morning show host Angelo Cataldi.

The station tweeted that they will announce Cataldi’s replacement on Thursday at 7:30 a.m. Cataldi announced his impending retirement last October, saying that his final day at the station would be in December 2022.

Now, Cataldi’s last day will depend on the Eagles. As the host told Philly sports reporters Kevin Cooney and Mike Kern on the Working the Beat podcast in August, he plans to remain on the air until the Birds wrap up their season — which could keep him at WIP through February if the Eagles make it to the Super Bowl.

“I finally just said to my boss, ‘Listen, It’s going to be weird for me to start an Eagles season and not know if I’m going to be there at the end,’” Cataldi said. “I’m willing to stay until the week they’re eliminated, in case they make the playoffs.”

The station was supposed to announce Cataldi’s replacement in July, but the news has since been pushed back. It’s not clear who the station is looking at for Cataldi’s spot, but according to Philadelphia Business Journal, midday host Joe DeCamara is a likely choice.

One once-potential replacement was lineman-turned-broadcaster Ross Tucker, whom Cataldi ruled out in September. As Cataldi said on air, Tucker was a frontrunner as his replacement several years ago, but he lives in Reading, and wouldn’t be able to commute to Philadelphia throughout the week.

“He loves his family,” Cataldi said on the show. Tucker confirmed that was accurate, and noted that Cataldi “couldn’t understand that.”

Cataldi, whose tenure at WIP goes back to 1989, was supposed to retire at the end of 2021. But last October, he announced that he accepted a company option in a 2019 contract that would keep him at the station through at least the end of this year.

Cataldi said he accepted that option after meeting WIP program director Rod Lakin, who started at the station last October. WIP also agreed to a list of demands, including cutting his schedule to four days a week following the end of the Eagles’ season, hiring a driver to take him to Atlantic City during remote broadcasts, and rehiring former marketing director Cindy Webster, who was laid off during cutbacks at the station early in the pandemic.

This most recent round of retirement talk isn’t the first from Cataldi, who has considered calling it quits a number of times. As he told the Inquirer in 2019, he would have already retired by then if not for former colleague Marc Farzetta launching a competing program at 97.5 The Fanatic.

“I think it’s safe to say I would have retired by now if he had stayed,” Cataldi said in 2019. “Whether or not he would have gotten the opportunity, it wasn’t my say. But I kind of groomed him for 13 years. So when he left, it was like, ‘That plan isn’t going to work.’”