NJ Radio: Report..Craig Carton Was A "Cancer" At WKXW

Longtime New Jersey 101.5 morning host Jim Gearhart had a “singular relationship” with former New Jersey 101.5 host Craig Carton, recently arrested on federal fraud charges.

“Singular” is a kind word. Jim’s not foul-mouthed enough to use the words he’d really like to.
Jim couldn’t have been happier the day in 2007 that Judi Franco told him Carton was leaving. “This guy is a cancer on the radio station,” Jim recalls thinking in the latest installment of the Jim Gearhart Show podcast, available here as well on iTunes and Google Play.

Jim Gearhart

According to a posting on the WKXW website, then Gearhart was on New Jersey 101.5’s air, most days, he left by noon. Carton wasn’t in until the afternoon. The two men just about never had direct interaction.

But “for some reason he singled me out for just a blind hatred. He would get on the air and insult me every day,” Jim says.

He remembers Carton making up a story about Jim insulting women with breast cancer: “Nothing like that ever came close to happening.”

He remembers Carton going around yelling that he had the highest ratings in radio — when Jim’s own morning show was doing better. So were current afternoon hosts Deminski and Doyle, then on another station.

Jim remembers Carton having an outsized sense of his own importance. He remembers Carton screaming at brand manager Eric Johnson, “treating him as if he was a dog” because the station had the gall to promote some of its other hosts.

Jim says it took him a long time to get over his anger at Carton. News of Carton’s arrest has all those feelings bubbling back up.