WIP host Angelo Cataldi announces he’s retiring next year

Cataldi, who has been at the sports talk radio station since 1989, announced on Wednesday he would retire as host of the morning show in 2022.

Longtime WIP-FM morning show host Angelo Cataldi in the station's studio on Market Street in Philadelphia.Read more94.1 WIP

by Rob Tornoe

Updated Oct. 6, 2021, 8:59 a.m. ET

Published Oct. 6, 2021, 8:13 a.m. ET

Love him or hate him, Angelo Cataldi isn’t going anywhere, at least until the end of next year.

The longtime 94.1 WIP-FM morning show host, whose tenure at the station dates back to 1989, announced Wednesday he has accepted a company option on the contract he signed in 2019 that will keep him around through the end of 2022. The contract initially said that Cataldi would be done at the end of this year.

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“I am officially announcing my final day at WIP will be December of 2022, and I will work one additional year,” Cataldi, a former Inquirer reporter, announced Wednesday.

Cataldi, 70, said he made the decision to stay after meeting with WIP’s new program director, Rod Lakin, whose first day at the station was Monday. Cataldi told listeners he started to become burned out in May and was prepared to announce his retirement at the end of this year when his contract expired, but said Lakin asked him to remain on an additional year.

As a result, Cataldi said WIP agreed to a list of demands, including reducing his schedule to four days a week after the Eagles’ season ends and hiring a driver to take him to the Borgata in Atlantic City during remote broadcasts. Cataldi also said WIP agreed to rehire former marketing director Cindy Webster, who was laid off as part of companywide cutbacks during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They agreed to bring her back as a special consultant to our show, to help with our relationships with the teams and promotions,” Cataldi said.

WIP’s morning show, cohosted by longtime radio partners Rhea Hughes and Al Morganti, remains a ratings juggernaut in Philadelphia. The show has also managed kept things fresh with a series of rotating cohosts, including former Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr., former Sixers general manager Billy King, and Flyers announcer and former player Keith Jones.

Cataldi said he has been told by management that WIP plans to stick with the same format once he retires, and said he expects Hughes and Morganti to remain as co-hosts alongside his yet-to-be-chosen replacement.

Cataldi has flirted with retirement several times in recent years. He signed a multiyear contract extension in 2019, but told The Inquirer he would have already retired if former colleague Marc Farzetta hadn’t left to launch a competing show on 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.’”

Cataldi, a Rhode Island native, began at WIP in 1989 alongside the late Tom Brookshier, a former Eagles great who launched the 610 WIP sports-talk format in Philadelphia. Before the jump to radio, Cataldi was a sportswriter for the Inquirer, where his work covering the Eagles and former head coach Buddy Ryan during the 1986 season was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.