💼 Careercow Anthony Cumia - A once successful radio host crashes and burns, turning on all his fans and the drama around it

[BatterHomes&Gardens]

got bored today.

 

[basically gayer fez]

Is it about time the Opester had a thread on here solely due to his recent mental deterioration on his live streams and fabrications of stories from 20+ years ago? It's at the point where you sit back and see the stuff happening on Twitter and YouTube from Erik calling out Gregg for his "disloyalty" despite being a piece of shit during Gregg's last years at Sirius, and you wonder how worse it can get for how Opie let trolls egg him on and completely call out those like Cumia, or Erik for some views on his meaningless barfly live streams. Opie made Ant, Jim, and others' careers, and to this day, will never admit 'nor respect that but will blame them for seemingly off-air problems of no doubt Opie had responsibility for.

 

[Dropa5pack]

Is it about time the Opester had a thread on here solely due to his recent mental deterioration on his live streams and fabrications of stories from 20+ years ago? It's at the point where you sit back and see the stuff happening on Twitter and YouTube from Erik calling out Gregg for his "disloyalty" despite being a piece of shit during Gregg's last years at Sirius, and you wonder how worse it can get for how Opie let trolls egg him on and completely call out those like Cumia, or Erik for some views on his meaningless barfly live streams. Opie made Ant, Jim, and others' careers, and to this day, will never admit 'nor respect that but will blame them for seemingly off-air problems of no doubt Opie had responsibility for.

I don’t know if opie has enough viewers for a thread, he pretty much streams into a void just see how slow this one is.

 

[deeman]

I don’t know if opie has enough viewers for a thread, he pretty much streams into a void just see how slow this one is.

Yeah and say what you want about WATP's "guarding" Rekieta and goes after Aaron, lots of people complains about that and you can skip that segment alltogether. but their weekly Opie and John segments are gold.

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

Is it about time the Opester had a thread on here solely due to his recent mental deterioration on his live streams and fabrications of stories from 20+ years ago? It's at the point where you sit back and see the stuff happening on Twitter and YouTube from Erik calling out Gregg for his "disloyalty" despite being a piece of shit during Gregg's last years at Sirius, and you wonder how worse it can get for how Opie let trolls egg him on and completely call out those like Cumia, or Erik for some views on his meaningless barfly live streams. Opie made Ant, Jim, and others' careers, and to this day, will never admit 'nor respect that but will blame them for seemingly off-air problems of no doubt Opie had responsibility for.

i think he should even if it just turns into a ron the waiter appreciation thread.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

Yeah and say what you want about WATP's "guarding" Rekieta and goes after Aaron, lots of people complains about that and you can skip that segment alltogether. but their weekly Opie and John segments are gold.

I can't get around how Karl openly gunt guards for Anthony. All he does is attack people Anthony doesn't like.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Is it about time the Opester had a thread on here solely due to his recent mental deterioration on his live streams and fabrications of stories from 20+ years ago? It's at the point where you sit back and see the stuff happening on Twitter and YouTube from Erik calling out Gregg for his "disloyalty" despite being a piece of shit during Gregg's last years at Sirius, and you wonder how worse it can get for how Opie let trolls egg him on and completely call out those like Cumia, or Erik for some views on his meaningless barfly live streams. Opie made Ant, Jim, and others' careers, and to this day, will never admit 'nor respect that but will blame them for seemingly off-air problems of no doubt Opie had responsibility for.

He isn't really interesting enough for a thread. Anthony barely is at this point and this just kind of became the defacto "Opie and Anthony show" thread anyhow.

Ant and Jim are just has-beens who bang trannies and Opie is just a has-been. Even talking about early 2000's radio broadcasts in the era of "content creator livestreams" feels weirdly antiquated in way. Most of the draw any of them had died in like ~2015 and never recovered and never will.

 

[Solomon Bundy]

It's worth noting Opie's deteriorating mental state has reached a point where people are asking questions about his family leaving him. It's not worth its own thread though, either Cumia's or the Aaron/Dabbleverse thread will do (he's covered by WATP).

 

[basically gayer fez]

i think he should even if it just turns into a ron the waiter appreciation thread.

We all know RTW is a Dabbleverse icon.

this just kind of became the defacto "Opie and Anthony show" thread anyhow.

I'll say this thread is a lot tamer than the OnAforums, despite posting there as well, though it usually devolves to trashing Emily from Reddit and Danny Ross.

It's worth noting Opie's deteriorating mental state has reached a point where people are asking questions about his family leaving him. It's not worth its own thread though, either Cumia's or the Aaron/Dabbleverse thread will do (he's covered by WATP).

What is left of the diehard O&A fans started comparing the Opester to his mother, but I digress. My theory is that Opie has always been crazy just because of his own self-inflating "shock jock" ego. He found a way to screw everything up with the radio show over the past 20 years they were on (dead mayor, sex in church, cake stomping, wig snatching, corporate bathroom photography). Everyone who worked for Gregg never had a good experience with him, and when he got fired for the Roland incident, he then expected those same people to be on his side when HR and upper management had their firing pen out. All these years later, on these live streams, Opie is stuck believing that he has friends in the business, though both the comedians and staff hate him, but he is mentally stuck in the denial that it is everybody else's fault and that his delusions have only gotten worse in recent years. The reality of that is, he never had friends, and when he did, he treated them like shit. The guy looks like shit (well aware, he is in his early 60s), he simply goes on these "shows" of his to rant and rave about old radio drama to get some clicks on his videos that get on average 20, maybe 30 views on his socials, only intensifies having "Anthony", "Jim Norton", in the title. A crazy old never-was who spends most of his time streaming to almost nobody, talking about how "famous" he thought he was.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

I'll say this thread is a lot tamer than the OnAforums, despite posting there as well, though it usually devolves to trashing Emily from Reddit and Danny Ross.

The O&A Forums are full of idiots and A-Loggers. I've browsed it a few times and my impression is it's the home of all the Pests who never moved on with their lives.

What is left of the diehard O&A fans started comparing the Opester to his mother, but I digress. My theory is that Opie has always been crazy just because of his own self-inflating "shock jock" ego. He found a way to screw everything up with the radio show over the past 20 years they were on (dead mayor, sex in church, cake stomping, wig snatching, corporate bathroom photography). Everyone who worked for Gregg never had a good experience with him, and when he got fired for the Roland incident, he then expected those same people to be on his side when HR and upper management had their firing pen out. All these years later, on these live streams, Opie is stuck believing that he has friends in the business, though both the comedians and staff hate him, but he is mentally stuck in the denial that it is everybody else's fault and that his delusions have only gotten worse in recent years. The reality of that is, he never had friends, and when he did, he treated them like shit. The guy looks like shit (well aware, he is in his early 60s), he simply goes on these "shows" of his to rant and rave about old radio drama to get some clicks on his videos that get on average 20, maybe 30 views on his socials, only intensifies having "Anthony", "Jim Norton", in the title. A crazy old never-was who spends most of his time streaming to almost nobody, talking about how "famous" he thought he was.

Opie hated his mom, so they push the mom stuff thinking that it gets under Opie's skin. To be fair to them, it probably does. Opie's "crazy" antics were, for the most part, career moves. That is, in my opinion, Opie's biggest fault: despite insisting he was outside the biz, he always operated inside of it. Opie was always the company man wrangling Anthony's drunken racism and Jim's wormy behaviour. The Menino scandal was expressly something O&A did to get out of their contract with WAAF so they could move to WNEW. Sex for Sam 3 was a bit of an Icarus moment because neither Opie nor Anthony expected anyone to actually try and fuck in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Had Mercurio shut his fucking mouth and everyone simply ran away, it probably wouldn't have been a scandal at all. It ended up working out for them, though, since WNEW paid our their contract and then they signed with XM - but that's a different story.

The Cake Stomp Incident was him trying to create a viral moment, which worked. Same with Stalker Patti's de-wigging. There was a lot of O&A shit that was presented as organic when they were, in fact, bits. Opie's greatest sin was burning so many fucking bridges in his attempts to be funny. He was never able to hold court like Anthony or Jim, so his shenanigans were considered cruel and tragic as opposed to his co-hosts. As for the Roland Incident, I think it's pretty clear that Sam threw Opie under the bus. Jim and Opie had already split at that point, so Jim washed his hands of it. To be fair to Opie, he does have friends in the business - he is still friendly with Ron Bennington, Bill Burr, and quite a few radio executives. He still gets offers to host talk radio, but he doesn't want to take some bit gig making less money. He's talked about this quite a bit on his more honest streams, but he feels guilty spending so much time working instead of spending time with his kids. The reason Opie doesn't do anything else with his career is he already made his money and he prefers hanging out with his family. Why bust your ass when you can rest on your laurels? He's 62, he has the penthouse in NYC, he has the Hamptons beach house, his kids are set for life, and he's got the faithful wife.

I think Opie has a lot of resentments towards people who were subordinate to him and now openly hate him, like E-Rock and Sam Roberts. It doesn't help that the old Pests often stoke this. There was one stream with E-Rock, Anthony, and Jim where a superchatter told a flat-out lie about something Opie said about E-Rock, and E-Rock responded by unloading about Opie. It was obviously some troll but E-Rock said a bunch of shit he couldn't take back. Opie is also still angry about E-Rock archiving everything and not sharing with him, which is a whole separate issue where Opie needs to stop being a faggot and pay E-Rock.

I guess this is my long-winded way of saying I don't think Opie is as unhinged as his haters believe.

 

[Tanner Glass]

The Cake Stomp Incident was him trying to create a viral moment, which worked. Same with Stalker Patti's de-wigging. There was a lot of O&A shit that was presented as organic when they were, in fact, bits.

It feels like one of the things that flies so cleverly under the radar but this is an area that Opie excelled at that people don't seem to get. Most of everything Opie did as a bit was some clever way to get around some radio rule, some broadcast law, or some station directive.

You weren't allowed to hold "fake" contests on Radio - so he came up with actual offensive contests constantly.
No prank calls because of recording laws? Intentionally invite on bad guests and have the prank callers call in to you instead (or have Jimmy call in and scream Ramone).
Not allowed to say certain words on the radio? Just come up with new ones every so often.
Station isn't advertising your channel? Make a contest for being a disruptive ass for O&A on live TV.
Slow day? Make the interns fight over something.

and so on.

It was likely no accident that Louis CK was in studio when Donald Rumsfeld was there promoting his book or when "Gap - The Movie" came out, same way that Patrice always seemed to be around when there was some awful woman who needed to be bullied. Very obviously everything Opie did didn't always land, but a lot of the really memorable moments of the show he had a hand in and knew when to shut the fuck up (at times). The show at large without Opie was borderline unlistenable - any "Opie on Vacation / Anthony in Charge" shows were just meandering political talk for hours (or days) on end.

That all said - I don't think Opie realizes while extremely funny bits - there was a real human cost to them via the staff. Every guest/company/product that Opie fucked over was a Booker/channel director/underpaid producer getting screamed at for hours or days over it, having to smooth it over, then having to do it all over again. If Roland booked a guest that got fucked on the show, then listened to the show and realized it was an inside job, it was Roland's phone getting blown up each and every time. It was often E-Rock that was sent to further directly antagonize the guests after they already left and so on. I think Opie thinks they all had the same experience he had interning and can't imagine that they have regrets about it and I'm certain they do.

At the end I'm sure Opie also realizes the medium has changed and has passed him by considerably. It's much more constant live video content and he's not going to go out there and "get it" as a 60+ year old man who most people barely remember and every person alive already has a podcast running - so why bother? He got to see Stern have the worst recorded case of Troll's remorse, Anthony and Jim are both just out there completely wasting all of what's left of their potential and becoming terrible side shows. SiriusXM is dying a horrible death after never really getting a good run going. So he never got to be the Greatest of All Time of radio, that will always be Howard Stern. He at least got to be the guy who got under Stern's skin so badly that Stern of all people had to get his managers to intervene on his behalf.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

It feels like one of the things that flies so cleverly under the radar but this is an area that Opie excelled at that people don't seem to get. Most of everything Opie did as a bit was some clever way to get around some radio rule, some broadcast law, or some station directive.

You weren't allowed to hold "fake" contests on Radio - so he came up with actual offensive contests constantly.
No prank calls because of recording laws? Intentionally invite on bad guests and have the prank callers call in to you instead (or have Jimmy call in and scream Ramone).
Not allowed to say certain words on the radio? Just come up with new ones every so often.
Station isn't advertising your channel? Make a contest for being a disruptive ass for O&A on live TV.
Slow day? Make the interns fight over something.

and so on.

It was likely no accident that Louis CK was in studio when Donald Rumsfeld was there promoting his book or when "Gap - The Movie" came out, same way that Patrice always seemed to be around when there was some awful woman who needed to be bullied. Very obviously everything Opie did didn't always land, but a lot of the really memorable moments of the show he had a hand in and knew when to shut the fuck up (at times). The show at large without Opie was borderline unlistenable - any "Opie on Vacation / Anthony in Charge" shows were just meandering political talk for hours (or days) on end.

That all said - I don't think Opie realizes while extremely funny bits - there was a real human cost to them via the staff. Every guest/company/product that Opie fucked over was a Booker/channel director/underpaid producer getting screamed at for hours or days over it, having to smooth it over, then having to do it all over again. If Roland booked a guest that got fucked on the show, then listened to the show and realized it was an inside job, it was Roland's phone getting blown up each and every time. It was often E-Rock that was sent to further directly antagonize the guests after they already left and so on. I think Opie thinks they all had the same experience he had interning and can't imagine that they have regrets about it and I'm certain they do.

At the end I'm sure Opie also realizes the medium has changed and has passed him by considerably. It's much more constant live video content and he's not going to go out there and "get it" as a 60+ year old man who most people barely remember and every person alive already has a podcast running - so why bother? He got to see Stern have the worst recorded case of Troll's remorse, Anthony and Jim are both just out there completely wasting all of what's left of their potential and becoming terrible side shows. SiriusXM is dying a horrible death after never really getting a good run going. So he never got to be the Greatest of All Time of radio, that will always be Howard Stern. He at least got to be the guy who got under Stern's skin so badly that Stern of all people had to get his managers to intervene on his behalf.

I couldn't have put it better myself.

 

[basically gayer fez]

The Menino scandal was expressly something O&A did to get out of their contract with WAAF so they could move to WNEW. Sex for Sam 3 was a bit of an Icarus moment because neither Opie nor Anthony expected anyone to actually try and fuck in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

On the contrary, Anthony at this point was just happy to be on the radio over tin knocking somewhere in a hot attic and expressed multiple times that he'd do anything to impress management so that he wouldn't be fired. Ant was more torn that Opie despite trying to get a "better deal" still had fucked over both of them, Clear Channel was out of the possibility, and Howard didn't want "clones" doing his show in the afternoons on WXRK.

Fast foward to Sex For Sam, even though it was skated by management Opie had wrote down church on the list, while it wasnt their fault... in hindsight, could they had just pushed the dump button without mentioning mecurio. Again to preface this was a different moment in time where you could get away with a lot without breaking the FCC rules on terrestrial.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

On the contrary, Anthony at this point was just happy to be on the radio over tin knocking somewhere in a hot attic and expressed multiple times that he'd do anything to impress management so that he wouldn't be fired. Ant was more torn that Opie despite trying to get a "better deal" still had fucked over both of them, Clear Channel was out of the possibility, and Howard didn't want "clones" doing his show in the afternoons on WXRK.

Fast foward to Sex For Sam, even though it was skated by management Opie had wrote down church on the list, while it wasnt their fault... in hindsight, could they had just pushed the dump button without mentioning mecurio. Again to preface this was a different moment in time where you could get away with a lot without breaking the FCC rules on terrestrial.

Fair point, Anthony was unsure about the Menino thing but Opie was not. Sex for Sam 3 was avoidable. Opie, for all his behavioural and personnel issues, understand the industry and the FCC extremely well.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Fair point, Anthony was unsure about the Menino thing but Opie was not. Sex for Sam 3 was avoidable. Opie, for all his behavioural and personnel issues, understand the industry and the FCC extremely well.

He did, but once Howard and Mel Karmazin made it clear (via the company wide gag order) that Opie was firmly in the crosshairs - he clearly needed to be more careful then he was.

Opie seemed fairly sure that Howard / Mel would not burn the $15-30 million dollars (in 2002 dollars) to fuck up his contract but boy was he wrong. Getting put on non-compete for 2 years really killed their momentum and left Howard nothing but time to consolidate his power and basically position himself (again) as the power broker on Satellite radio, even if he officially got there second.

Opie was the better Shock Jock, but Howard was a much better ruthless kike.

 

[basically gayer fez]

He did, but once Howard and Mel Karmazin made it clear (via the company wide gag order) that Opie was firmly in the crosshairs - he clearly needed to be more careful then he was.

Opie seemed fairly sure that Howard / Mel would not burn the $15-30 million dollars (in 2002 dollars) to fuck up his contract but boy was he wrong. Getting put on non-compete for 2 years really killed their momentum and left Howard nothing but time to consolidate his power and basically position himself (again) as the power broker on Satellite radio, even if he officially got there second.

Opie was the better Shock Jock, but Howard was a much better ruthless kike.

Howard had such a stranglehold over Mel and Infinity Broadcasting to fuck with Opie & Anthony, let alone any other show that tried to do his type of radio show; he'd be the one to go behind the scenes and run to Mel and or any other General Manager/Program Directors to silence anybody talking negatively about ol' Howie.

The reason why Infinity would not let Opie & Anthony out of their contract to go to Clear Channel, at least from my understanding, is that obviously they'll be talking and bad mouthing Howard to where he can't go to management to shut them up, and Infinity didn't want to take such a risk in the market share for the morning time slot having another big name like O&A competing directly with Howard.

 

[TheHarbinger]

At the end I'm sure Opie also realizes the medium has changed and has passed him by considerably.

Opie was way ahead of his time with viral videos and podcasting. Sirius could have purchased things like Twitter or Spotify for pennies if they had listened to some of their radio hosts. Instead they had no idea and ignored social media and podcasts and downloadable shows.

Fast foward to Sex For Sam, even though it was skated by management Opie had wrote down church on the list, while it wasnt their fault... in hindsight, could they had just pushed the dump button without mentioning mecurio.

It was the third time Sex for Sam had been done. Not even management thought it would go viral and make the news around the world. I don't think anyone anticipated that the show would end up creating a major incident that day. It was just another show for everyone.

The couple also weren't even in the church and were just faking the sex part. The cops that arrested them didn't see anything at all. If they had fought the arrest right there they would have been fine. But once it got into court the government could read transcripts of the show and it was impossible to prove what really happened. The guy who was pretending to have sex in the church ended up having a heart attack a year later over the stress and died.

 

[John Andrews Stan]

Sirius could have purchased things like Twitter or Spotify for pennies

Lol no. Those founding teams in particular would not have sold early and their investors wouldn’t have allowed it (typically investors want to see a minimum 10x return on their money). Way back in 2009, Twitter was already valued at $1B and Spotify hit that by 2011.

Not to mention that Sirius management would have no idea how to make either of those companies successful.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

Not to mention that Sirius management would have no idea how to make either of those companies successful.

Sirius management didn't even know how to make Sirius successful. Their strategy was to put all their eggs in the Howie basket, and look how that turned out.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Howard had such a stranglehold over Mel and Infinity Broadcasting to fuck with Opie & Anthony, let alone any other show that tried to do his type of radio show; he'd be the one to go behind the scenes and run to Mel and or any other General Manager/Program Directors to silence anybody talking negatively about ol' Howie.

The reason why Infinity would not let Opie & Anthony out of their contract to go to Clear Channel, at least from my understanding, is that obviously they'll be talking and bad mouthing Howard to where he can't go to management to shut them up, and Infinity didn't want to take such a risk in the market share for the morning time slot having another big name like O&A competing directly with Howard.

and I think while Opie knew that, he didn't think that Howard / Mel would spend $10-20 million dollars just to keep O&A off the air for 2 years. Not just eating the time left on the entire O&A show contract, but also losing their audience and money they would have generated over those two years as well. Opie always seemed to get (not in this case, but..) that as long as the business is making money from you - they're very inclined to keep you around.

It's never confirmed as such, but feels fairly obvious that Mel Karmazin was already looking to exit Viacom (who owned Infinity) and knew he was already going to Sirius (where he would be CEO over Stern's initial reign) and got Stern to buy in and go to Sirius while promising him the world. Howard not only got gigantic piles of money but got to turn his terrestrial contract into a full blown advertisement for Sirius for 2 entire years while Opie and Anthony only got to advertise on Wackbag Forums (in secret). Mel was likely all too happy to waste Viacom money and fuck Opie over at the same time.