Free Republic

Legendary New York City radio host Bernard McGuirk has died at the age of 64 following a “courageous” battle with prostate cancer, his station announced Thursday. McGuirk — who hosted WABC’s “Bernie & Sid in the Morning” with co-host Sid Rosenberg — died Wednesday night surrounded by family at a local hospital, the station said. He had been on the air in the city since 1986 and was the executive producer of the nationally syndicated program “Imus in the Morning.” In 2007, McGuirk moved to WABC with Don Imus, the late radio icon, and his “personality from day one dramatically...

Longtime update man John Minko announced Thursday on Mike Francesa’s Radio.com show that he will be taking a buyout from WFAN’s parent company Entercom because of the economic strain of the coronavirus pandemic. Friday will be the final day for the 67-year-old – nicknamed the “Mink Man” after being part of the fabric of the station for more than three-decades. He started with WFAN when it launched in 1987.

Originally listed for $2.4 million, ex-WFAN host Craig Carton continually lowered the listing price of his sprawling Chester mansion over the last year. As the price dropped, Carton was embroiled in a legal battle that eventually led him to be convicted on multiple fraud charges last month for his role in a Ponzi scheme-like ticket brokering scam. He faces up to 45 years in prison.

WFAN was run like a frat house, with drinking by employees starting as early as 10 a.m. and executives condoning buying prostitutes for ad clients, according to a shocking lawsuit filed Wednesday by a 40-year-old former CBS Radio ad exec. Lauren Lockwood, who worked at WFAN from 2006 until last summer, claims the station’s executives tolerated a hostile work environment that subjected her to sexual harassment. On various occasions, WFAN host Joe Benigno pressured her into having a threesome, the lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn state court, claims. Benigno “whispered in [Lockwood’s] ear about having ‘threesomes’ with him and his wife...

They weren’t laughing. Chris Russo and Mike Francesa took some shots Wednesday over WFAN’s struggling ratings in the months after Francesa’s departure, and morning show hosts Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti, as well as WFAN’s vice president of programming, Mark Chernoff, responded Monday morning. “Classless, it really was,” Esiason said in comments first noted by Newsday.

WFAN radio talk show host Craig Carton has been arrested on conspiracy and securities fraud charges. The 48-year-old “Boomer & Carton” co-host was taken into custody by the FBI at his Manhattan apartment Wednesday morning. He is apparently charged in a fraudulent ticket-selling scam that netted over $2 million, 1010 WINS’ Al Jones reported.

New York radio legend Mike Francesa will be leaving WFAN when his contract expires at the end of 2017, he told Fox Sports’ Katie Nolan on her podcast. “I’m not saying I’m leaving the business. I’m leaving Monday to Friday, five-and-a-half hours, FAN,” Francesa said. “I’m not saying I’m not gonna work again. I’m not saying I’m not gonna do anything again. What I’m saying is, that part of my life, at the end of ’17, that is ending.”

Chemistry, as any married person or sports-talk show host knows, is hard to explain—and even harder to maintain. But for 19 years, from 1989 to 2008, Mike Francesa and Chris Russo partnered on an immensely popular and polarizing radio show on WFAN-AM Radio in New York. The hosts, famously dubbed as Mike and the Mad Dog, became famous, rich, and as most bands do, eventually broke up. Their time on the air together has been chronicled by a million chroniclers, including a Grantland oral history on WFAN that appeared on the first day of that now-defunct site.

With the blessing of DollyCali, I will be your host for this, the NFL Draft weekend! A certain percentage of you probably don't know me, and some of you do. So let me give you the crash course, impromptu introduction... GOP_Raider, a distinguished and wise poster at Free Republic, is a senior fellow at the National Institute of Hitting It. He is the author of such wisecracks as "Does Ted Kennedy cure hangovers by never sobering up?" and "Annoying liberals before annoying liberals was cool." GOP_Raider is single and lives in a well-armed compound somewhere in the western United States....

It was just announced on the "Mike and the Mad Dog Show" on WFAN (Imus's home base): Imus is out of a job on radio as well.He will not even be on the air tomorrow.

Could February's Vanity Fair interview finally result in crusty curmudgeon Don Imus's undoing? Just days after the New York Post revealed he spent a chunk of it trashing his fellow MSNBC hosts, other excerpts emerging today paint an even uglier picture of radio and cable's most notorious rambling weirdo. To top it off, the AP reports today that Imus kicked his cocaine habit not due to the horrible damage it inflicts on addicts and their loved ones, but because drug dealers were too slow to show up with more junk! .........................snip...........................

How does a crusty, mean-spirited, Kerry-supporting fossil like Don Imus manage to stay on the air? Does he have the best lawyers, who write iron-clad contracts? A world-class superagent? Compromising photos of corporate execs? All of the above? Or is it simply the age-old art of coasting on one's earlier success, where a shrinking energy level meets increasing compensation?