Saturday mornings will never be the same. After 31 years on the air at WIP, Glen Macnow is retiring. His last show will be July 13. He announced it on the air with partner Mike Sielski this afternoon:

This all but puts an end to an era for the OG’s at WIP. Yes, Al Morganti is still there from time-to-time, and he is the only current on-air personality with a longer tenure than Macnow. And while there are other connections to the heyday of WIP still around – Howard Eskin still makes regular appearances and Rhea Hughes is still part of the morning show – Macnow’s weekend shows, especially his Saturday morning show, one that he hosted for 21 years alongside Ray Didinger before the latter retired two summers ago, was the last scheduled programming that featured a regular host (read: not Sonny Hill) that was around from the era of WIP when Tom Bigby was Program Director.

WIP will now have to replace him on the weekends come summertime and also choose a new host for the Philadelphia Eagles pre-game show, another position Glen has helmed for a long time, namely the last 17 years.

Current Program Director Rod Lakin will have to thread the needle a bit in doing that. It should be easy to find someone for the Eagles Pregame Show – frankly, that seems like something Joe Decamara would be ideal for – much like Angelo Cataldi was before Macnow took over. But the weekend programs are so much different than the rest of the shows on WIP.

It’s a different feel. Its more traditional. It probably appeals to an older demographic, sure, but ask a lot of Millennials and they, too, love listening to Macnow on the weekends. It’s that different tone that makes it so successful, and without Glen, finding the next guy to take up that mantle isn’t going to be easy. The only part-time guy who even comes close to that Glen-mold already there is Rob Ellis. Jody MacDonald would bring a traditional element to it as well, but he’s a little more hardcore sports than Glen. This decision ought to be interesting.

Originally from Buffalo, Macnow graduated from Boston University before embarking on a journalism career that would take him from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinal to the Detroit Free Press before being hired at the Philadelphia Inquirer in November 1986.

Macnow was brought on at WIP full-time in December 1993 and has been there ever since.

In between, Glen has written several books and created two popular television shows. One, that many in Philadelphia remember fondly, was The Great Sports Debate that originally aired on Prism and then later on Comcast Sportsnet. The other is his current beer show, What’s Brewing?

Macnow is signed on to continue to do that show through the end of 2024. It isn’t clear at this time if he will continue it beyond that, but I’m betting he does.


I feel that I can make that prediction because, in the interest of full disclosure, Glen is a good friend of mine.

I worked with Glen at WIP for almost five years. In fact, the very first gig I ever had in the world of Philadelphia sports was as the remote producer for the Mac and Mac Show at the Pizzeria Uno in King of Prussia (R.I.P). We once did a show from atop a billboard over I-95 to promote an Eagles-Cowboys game.

We once got yelled at together, on the air, by late Flyers founder Ed Snider for lip-reading off the TV broadcast what former Flyer Chris Gratton said to Florida Panthers tough guy Peter Worrell. (I’m certain we were right, but Snider had a point that we couldn’t just run with it considering the words weren’t actually heard. It was a journalistic lesson for me.)

I used to drive to Glen’s house every year to have my kids trick-or-treat on Halloween because he gave out, what my kids called, the “big candy bars.”

We’ve played in fantasy sports leagues together. We used to do an NHL playoff one that raised thousands of dollars for charity. We have one baseball league we have been in together for 26 years where the participants fly in from around the country to spend the weekend at Glen’s house and draft little-known relief pitchers and end of the bench reserves.

And since 2016, Glen has been acting in shows at a theatre where I’m affiliated. I cast him in his first play since high school (The Dining Room), his first musical (Guys and Dolls) and gave him his first singing solo (Anything Goes). He’s grown beyond me and done several independent films and is currently performing in a dramatic role in The Diary of Anne Frank which opened last night and runs through May 4:

So, when Glen called me to tell me he was retiring, I was happy for him, but it was bittersweet, because it leaves a void in the Philadelphia sports orbit that I’m afraid won’t be filled again in the world of hot take sports talk.

Glen and I sat down for a chat Thursday. He was sitting on the set of his play after a preview performance, swigging a celebratory beer. He was incredibly relaxed. This is his new element, or it will be after mid-July, and he couldn’t be a happier guy.

Here is a lightly edited (for clarity and relevance) transcription of that conversation.

Ant

So, why is now the time to retire?

Glen

My contract expired at the start of the year and we started talking about new contracts. They offered me a contract extension and when I thought about it, I said, “You know what, it’s time. It’s been great. And I’ve loved it. And I love doing the shows that I do with Mike and Jody. But there’s a lot of other things I want to do.” And I’m getting older, and I want to make sure I have time to do all of them.

Ant

Sounds like a very rational reason to do it. Have you thought about what this is going to feel like for you over the next three months as you wind down this career?

Glen

Scary. I’ve thought about it a lot. And I’m very prepared for what I want to do afterwards. But the lame duck part of it makes me a little nervous. And what I don’t want over the next three months is people calling me to say goodbye. I just want to do the shows for the next three months. Like it’s just the normal shows.

Ant

Is that because of what you went through with Ray when he retired?


Glen

I did and with Ray it was like the Pope was retiring. Ray is a special circumstance. Nobody else is Ray. So, I’m not even going to look at approaching it like that. But it’s gonna feel weird because it’s gonna be kind of a countdown for me, right? I have counted it out to the summer and there’s 26 shows left and then it’s gonna be, “Oh, God, I got 24 shows… I got eight shows left.” So, yeah, it’s going to be very strange. I’ve been doing this for the last three decades plus and its gonna be odd.

Ant

But do you think you’ll have goodbye type things with the show?

Glen

Well, John Chaney said, “Excuse me while I disappear.” Yeah, I kind of want to do that. I mean, listen, everybody wants a nice hand as they get off the stage, right? So, I would be hypocritical to say, I wouldn’t, but I don’t want the shows to turn into three months of goodbye.

Ant

You’re kind of the, one of the last vestiges of WIP’s salad days. Do you almost feel like not only is this goodbye for you, but it’s an end of an era for WIP?

Glen

Well, WIP has been evolving. And I’ve watched it evolve. I’m really proud of being part of that group that helped build the station, Angelo, first and foremost, and Mike Missanelli and that group. Those are just the Inquirer guys. You have to include guys like Jody, and Steve Fredericks and Bill Campbell and the guys who came from a radio background, and I’m really proud of that.

When we started this, this was an entity that we thought probably won’t work. Who the hell wants to listen to sports talk for 24 hours? And it was a risk. This was only the second station in the country. But it became an institution, and I’m a small part of it building into an institution – a lot of people that had a lot more to do with it.

It has certainly evolved, mostly over the last five years, with all of the new faces, and it takes a very different approach now. And what I realized is that as it changes, it’s appealing to a demographic and I’m older than that demographic now. So, the style that these guys use now appeals to 25-year-olds and 35-year-olds, and that’s fine. And that’s good time for me to say goodbye.


Ant

When you first started out, and you thought it wasn’t going to work, I mean, you left the Inquirer to do this. What was your thought? Like it was going to be just a couple of years and then find something else? What did you think it was gonna be?

Glen

I said to [my wife] Judy, “This seems like a tremendous amount of fun. If I can get five years out of this, it’ll be worth it. No matter what happens after that. If I got to go looking for a new job after that, that’s fine. But if we can get five years, that would be a win.”

Ant

At what point did you realize it was going to be more than five years?

Glen

At four years and 364 days. Listen, I worked for Tom Bigby, right? So, when you worked for Tom Bigby, you thought you’re going to get fired every week? Right? I felt job security for the first time when I got my first three-year contract, which probably was about five years into it. That’s when I thought, “Okay, you know, we can start putting money away for the kids to go to college. That’s great.”

Ant

Do you think about your legacy at all?

Glen

If you look at it, over the years, the station has been consistently number one in the ratings among men, and it’s certainly a nationwide phenomenon, but we were really early on to it. And also – and this was a Bigby thing, so I’ll give him full credit for it – hiring newspaper people to come over and do radio who had never done radio. This was a really good mix, as I said, Jody, Mac and Fredericks and Campbell and these guys who were radio pros, and then you get these guys who know how to report, who know how to tell stories, have been in some clubhouses and locker rooms, and he moved them to radio and I think that it really became a model for so many other stations. That and the guy talk, right?

I mean, it’s not going to be all sports talk. It’s going to be guy talk, and you’re gonna talk about your life and your kids and the movies and TV and just stuff that guys talk about. I think WIP, as much as any station, created the model where we’re not just talking about what the team did yesterday and the scores and just look up to the players.  We’re going to a take a critical eye at it, we’re not going to be fanboys. And it’s going to become the model of a bunch of guys sitting around at the bar having a conversation about whatever we talk about. And so yeah, I’m proud. I’m proud to have been part of it.


Ant

And when do you think that change happened? Because when you first started, it was all sports. You didn’t do the guy talk stuff. And was that Bigby’s initiative?

Glen
It was Bigby’s initiative. My reaction to it at the time was that I was skeptical. I mean, Jody and I would do a show and we’d get called into his office and he’d say, “Don’t talk sports.” And I was thinking, “What the hell are you saying? That’s the jingle. That’s the logo. That’s the model.” Listen, the guy was a real S.O.B. but he was a genius. He knew that if you want to get people to listen for more than 10 minutes, you had to do more than discuss the batting average of the nine-hole hitter. And he was right. And all these years later – here’s something I’m really proud of – I have people who come up to me, and I’ve never met them, but they’ve been listening. And they say to me, “I remember, when your son used to be in high school wrestling. How is he doing?” Or, “You recommended this TV show to me two years ago, and I love that show.”

And the part of it, that’s really cool to me is these people invite us into their cars, or their home when they’re paying bills or making dinner and they have you on [the radio] and you’re their friend. You may not have ever met them, but you’re their friend. And there’s this very personal relationship that develops with listeners. I’m not as big on the callers as most hosts. I respect the callers I take the callers but it’s not the format of our show. But the listeners, I feel privileged over the years that all these people have come up to me, and they know me. Listen, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. And I’m gonna digress, but here’s what my jobs have been for the last three decades: I watch sports, I talk about sports. I write about TV and movies, and I get paid to drink beer. And that’s been my life. And how fucking lucky am I that that’s been my life? I know that I’m blessed to have had that all these years. It’s great.

Ant

What’s next for Glen Macnow?

Glen

I got plans. We’re traveling to Portugal in May. Just before I retire, actually. But yeah, I want to travel. I really want to write a book about my family history. Just for my family. I don’t want to sell it. I want to write it but I don’t want to sell it. Selling books is awful.

Ant

I’m sure you have a lot of cool memories from the station, what was one that sticks out to you that was maybe the time you knew how influential WIP had become in Philadelphia?

Glen

When the producer (who is now a Program Director for a sports talk station in Cleveland) got a call during a break. And he said, “Ricky Watters’ agent just called. He said Ricky wants to come to the Eagles. And he wants to come out to your show to tell the world.” And we said, “Is this a crank call?” We didn’t know. So, we’re doing the show when Ricky Watters walks in the door, sits down with us and says, “I want to come to the Eagles.” And that was a really cool moment on the show.

This thing started from nothing and became, I would argue, the most powerful radio station in Philadelphia. I know radio stations don’t count today like they used to, but what I would argue is, WIP is the most important sports media in Philadelphia.

Ant

I know when you were first moved from days to nights, you weren’t happy, but a lot of the things you became known for at WIP were born out of working a solo shift in the evening, right?

Glen

Yeah. They called me in and told me that the ratings on the show with Anthony (Gargano) were flagging and they had a situation where Missanelli and Eskin had a show together and couldn’t stand each other. So, they moved Mike with Anthony at middays, kept Eskin by himself in the afternoons and I was moved to nights. At first I was like, “This is awful. I’m working nights.” But at the time, WIP had both the Flyers and the Sixers. So, I was doing after those games. So, it’s like 9:30 PM to 1:00 AM. But it was really good for me because it was doing a show by myself for the first time and the shows were good. That’s when I started things like the Food Hunt and the Movie Club for Men. So, 1210 AM had the Phillies and I had a program against the Phillies on a sports talk radio station. Fortunately, the Phillies weren’t very good in those days. So, I ended up doing the Movie Club for Men, which was really good. I mean, I had the governor come in and talk about his movie and everything. I started the food hunts, which I did for a lot of years and gained a lot of weight. All those things ended up kind of sweet.


Ant

And then you had Tell Us Your Story and the Stupid Football Bet on Saturdays with Ray, right?

Glen

Yes, we started the stupid football bet during the Andy Reid era. And Tell Us Your Story was born because of the pandemic. You know what? That was like, really fun. That was great. Nobody does that in radio. You can’t do that in radio, we’d have one guest for an hour. Right? And just like A-level guests, and we did that and that was great. The Movie Club for Men led to me writing the two books – the sports movie book with Ray and I wrote the gangster movie book with George Anastasia.

Ant

What about “What We’re Watching?”

Glen

Oh my God, how could I forget that? When you asked about my legacy, THAT’S my legacy. More people come up to me and ask about whatever show I talked about on What We’re Watching than say, “Your Eagles opinion was bullshit.” That’s because everyone on the station has an Eagles opinion, but the T.V. thing I kind of carved out as my own niche, and that was good.

Ant

Anything else, you’d like to add?

Glen

Make sure you say I’m going to do a lot of theatre once I’m done.

Ant

But are you sure we’re going to keep casting you now that you won’t have a platform to promote the shows anymore?

Glen

(Giving me the evil eye).

Ant

O.K., we’ll end it there.