Love him or hate him, Angelo Cataldi isn’t going anywhere, at least for another year.
The longtime 94.1 WIP morning show host and former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, whose tenure at the station dates back to 1989, announced on Wednesday he has accepted a company option on the contract he signed in 2019 that will keep him around through the end of 2022.
“I am officially announcing my final day at WIP will be December of 2022, and I will work one additional year,” Cataldi announced Wednesday.
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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. Lakin, most recently the program director for Arizona Sports 98.7 FM, is replacing Spike Eskin, who left in July to run WFAN in New York.
Cataldi’s morning show, co-hosted 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 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. Prior to the jump to radio, Cataldi was a sports writer for the Inquirer, where his work was nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize.
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