It’s Jon Ritchie and Sleepy Joe on SportsRadio 94 WIP’s midday show. What’s worse – falling asleep on-air, or oversleeping and missing the open? Because WIP’s midday show has an issue with the latter.
On Wednesday, it was co-host Joe DeCamara who overslept, forcing program director Spike Eskin to put in some extra work and open the show alongside Ritchie. Eskin noted it was the second time DeCamara was late, with traffic being the previous culprit. But Ritchie probably shouldn’t be too hard on his co-host, because he once fell asleep on a train to work, missed his stop and the start of the show.
Eskin, Ritchie and midday show producer James Seltzer noted their legitimate concern for DeCamara when he was late and unreachable Wednesday morning. Citing his frail, slender physique, they each admitted the thought of DeCamara dying in his sleep ran through their minds.
“I was sick-to-my-stomach concerned, if we’re being honest,” Seltzer said.
Fortunately, DeCamara was a healthy scratch for the start of the show, but that didn’t stop Eskin from roasting the midday host both on-air and on Twitter.
Eskin’s ruthless tweet was in jest and it doesn’t appear that DeCamara is facing any real disciplinary action. The WIP program director said Ritchie and Seltzer are in charge of deciding the penalty. But again, Ritchie was also once late for sleeping.
Ultimately, WIP made a string of phone calls to get in touch with DeCamara’s girlfriend who called the maintenance department of his apartment building to wake up the radio host.
“I feel like a world-class dufus right now,” DeCamara said after joining the show about 10 minutes late.
According to DeCamara, his cell phone went through an automatic update overnight, canceling his scheduled alarms. We’re all glad to hear DeCamara just overslept and was healthy enough to make it back on-air, but I would guess he invests in a backup alarm after the blunder.
