Particularly in the days before podcasts and Sirius/XM, morning radio stars in major markets such as New York and Chicago, Philly and Boston could become as popular as athletes, as polarizing as mayors and as wealthy as the top TV anchors in town. (It’s still the case with some top performers.) They attracted hundreds of thousands of intensely loyal listeners, racked up huge ad revenues for their station and could draw large crowds to remote broadcasts and personal appearances.
Craig Carton is a not a household name in Chicago, but for a decade he was a wildly popular radio star in New York City as the co-host (with former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason) of “Boomer and Carton,” a sports talk/guy talk juggernaut on WFAN-AM that held the No. 1 spot in the ratings for men 25-54. As the wisecracking, sometimes offensively blunt clown to Esiason’s straight man, Carton had an enormous following, was making $2 million a year and was riding high when it all came crashing down in a scandal of his own making — a rise and fall chronicled in the solidly made documentary “Wild Card: The Downfall of a Radio Loudmouth,” debuting Wednesday on HBO.
Director-producers Martin Dunn and Marie McGovern know a good story and how to tell it, with Carton serving as the narrator of his own story, which begins at the United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg (Pennsylvania), where Carton was serving time after his conviction for multiple felonies tied to a Ponzi scheme. “My name is Craig Carton [and] I have lived through the most public, vicious, self-inflicted fall from grace,” says Carton as we see him mugging it up with Esiason, posing for photos with celebrities and beaming in pics accompanying flattering newspaper pieces — contrasted with stark images of a barbed wire fence and a cinder-block prison cell.
“Wild Card” then takes us through Carton’s biography, from his childhood in New Rochelle, New York (which included a horrific trauma) through his steady rise through the radio ranks in Buffalo, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Denver before he returned home and (along with Boomer) eventually replaced Don Imus on The Fan in 2007 after Imus was fired for racist comments. Co-host Esiason, former members of the show’s production team and even superfan Chris Christie provide insight and context through extensive interviews, as we see footage of Carton engaging in outrageous Morning Zoo hijinks such as insulting superstar athletes and public figures, making outrageous wagers and walking across the Brooklyn Bridge wearing only a Speedo and New York Giants jersey.
It was Carton’s penchant for wagering that landed him in trouble with the feds. He was pulling all-nighters in Atlantic City casinos, betting $10,000 a hand on blackjack and (at first) racking up seven-figure win totals, and then returning to the studio just in time to jump in the co-host’s seat and light up the airwaves. Eventually, though, Carton was borrowing a half-million dollars here, a half-million dollars there, and moving money around in blatantly illegal ways in a desperate effort to climb out of a deep and very dark hole. To Carton’s credit, he takes full responsibility for his actions, admits he was a real, let’s say, jerk, and seems committed to making a new start. He was released from prison on June 23 of this year, a lot more humble and much quieter than he was in his “Loudmouth” days.
