Howard Eskin
Howard Eskin is a Hebrew/Jewish sports radio personality for WIP-AM 610 in Philadelphia. Airing from 3 p.m. till 7 p.m. Eastern time, the “Howard Eskin Show” is the highest-rated afternoon drive radio program among men in the market. Along with fellow host at morning, Angelo Cataldi, he is one of the two most popular personalities at 610 WIP. He is a frequent contributor to the The George Michael Sports Machine.
Career
Howard Eskin is one of the original WIP sports talk hosts. Considered the ”hardest working sportscaster" by local media, he started the sports talk revolution on WIP in 1986. Howard was also a column writer for the Philadelphia Daily News in the early ‘90s, and the sports reporter for John DeBella's Morning show on WMMR in the 1980s.
Becoming known as a “news breaker", for getting stories before other sports casters and writers from “insiders”, he won an Emmy after joining KYW-TV in 1982. His most notable breaking story was in the 1980s that Leonard Tose, then owner of the Philadelphia Eagles was trying to secretly sell the team, or move them to another city. According to fellow broadcasters at KYW, had Howard not broken the story the team might have been indeed sold and moved (most likely to Phoenix, Arizona, now the home of the Arizona Cardinals).
Eskin later helped launch WTXF-TV’s 10 p.m. newscast as part of its original anchor team from 1986 to 1991. Later, he rejoined KYW-TV in 1992, and then moved to WCAU-TV in 1996, where he worked until his contract expired in 2005. Eskin was a regular contributor to "The George Michael's Sports Machine", a weekly nationally syndicated sports show.
Eskin's most recent breaking story was that former Philadelphia Phillies general manager Ed Wade would be fired if the Phillies did not make the playoffs. Wade was subquently fired by the Phillies on October 10, 2005. He unsuccessfully "campaigned" for the GM position, but it was eventually filled by former Toronto Blue Jays GM Pat Gillick.
Controversy
Howard is best known for his controversial comments in regards to teams, coaches, athletes, sportswriters, broadcasters, and sometimes non-sports related issues. Howard is also considered by some of his listeners to show either favoritism or bias towards an individual in one of the aforementioned occupations, and that anything that person does (positive or negative) will not change his personal viewpoint of that individual in regards to their success or failures in their occupation. It is not uncommon to hear Eskin defend one of his "favorites" against a popular critical opinion, or disregard a milestone accomplished by someone who he doesn't "like."
In the past, Eskin was suspended for 30 days by WIP and ordered to pay an undisclosed amount of money for claiming that Philadelphia 76ers star Allen Iverson and his lawyer tampered with witnesses and other malicious charges while Iverson was in court. He was also suspended and forced to give an on-air apology to the organizers of the Miss America Pageant for saying on the air that the contest was rigged.
Off the air in 1997, Howard's name surfaced involving a murder case of Marlene Stumpf. Stumpf was a 46 year-old married woman from Pottstown, Pennsylvania. She was posing in the chat room as a 25 year-old cheerleader named "Brandice". Stumpf had been engaging in some provactive chat room discussions with Howard. She eventually started sending emails along the same lines to Howard. Howard had sensed the woman was depressed and wrote, "Why don't you give me your address," he typed, "and I'll send you a little something." Howard would keep his word and send Stumpf some flowers. It was a few days after that that Stumpf was found murdered. Her husband was arrested and confessed to the crime.
Eskin has also been known to engage in long-term "campaigns" to advocate having players traded from Philadelphia teams such as Phillies' outfielder Bobby Abreu for apparent lackadaisical defense and lack of clutch hitting, and Sixers' guard Allen Iverson for his selfish play. Eskin last public stunt was organizing a mock funeral to celebrate Terrell Owens no longer playing for the Eagles during their 2005 season.
Another outrageous side of Eskin is his wearing of expensive fur coats at Philadelphia Eagles home games. That, coupled with his wearing of expensive clothing and jewelry saw Eskin nicknamed "The King of Bling," by Philadelphia Daily News writers. In 2004, Eskin sold a bobblehead doll of him wearing a fur coat, with the proceeds going to charity. In 2005, Eskin introduced a 2nd version of his bobblehead doll, with all proceeds going to charity. The first 100 dolls in the set come with a special small diamond chip in his "bling" necklace. The doll features Eskin in one of his famous mink coats and with the aforementioned "bling" necklace hanging from his neck.
To Eskin’s off-the-air credit, he has sponsored numerous charity and fund-raising events to benefit a particular humanitarian cause throughout the years, most recently for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The Show
Though Howard regularly initiates calls with comments such as "never had a bad day in my life" or "another day in paradise", he is known to be short-tempered and easily angered on his radio show if a particular caller does not agree with his viewpoints. He frequently refers to a caller as a “genius” or "chief" (both sarcastically), a “dope”, an “idiot”, a "nitwit" or a "moron"; usually this only occurs if Howard is provoked enough or already in a bad mood. Confrontational conversations with callers often end up with Howard cutting off the person in mid-sentence and interjecting "beat it!" as the sound of the terminated telephone connection is heard in the background. He is known to ask female callers about preparing dinner or washing the laundry and he calls obviously black callers "dawg" while sarcastically closing those conversations with the urban vernacular "holla". In addition, Italian callers are often addressed as "cuzz" and Dallas Cowboys' fans are termed "cock-a-roaches". The station's website has a so-called "Dope-O-Meter" in which fans can click on an animated bobblehead and two thermometers, one marked "Dope" and the other "Genius," would count the number of "dopes" (and related words) and "geniuses" Eskin said on his shift.
It is not known if this is Howard’s true personality or is staged by him and his program-manager to draw a high number of callers (perhaps to intentionally irritate him) and add drama to the show. Regardless, Howard’s show continues to receive high ratings.
Howard’s years of fame and popularity in the Philadelphia sports scene allows him to frequently have special guest athletes or other sports figures on his program, with memorable interactions with Charles Barkley and Freddie Mitchell.
One of Eskin's "stunts" have included a steak eating contest at the famed "Ruth's Chris" steakhouse. The challenge included Eskin and many excited Asian business associates. The contest took place for the Chinese Children Charity. Since there were no photographs allowed at the event, there were several drawings done by the onlookers. In many of the drawings, Eskin himself looked half-Asian.