Bill Werndl (born December 29, 1945) is a sports talk radio host, currently broadcasting from
WCHE 1520 AM and
WBCB 1490 AM. Bill Werndl has been broadcasting for over fifty years and was the first full-time sports producer in the
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...
market. He also teaches a class at
Widener University
Widener University is a private university in Chester, Pennsylvania. The university has three other campuses: two in Pennsylvania (Harrisburg and Exton) and one in Wilmington, Delaware.
Founded as The Bullock School for Boys in 1821, the school ...
.
Career in Broadcasting
Bill Werndl began his broadcasting career on May 9, 1966, at
WFIL
WFIL (560 AM) is a radio station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, with a Christian radio format consisting of teaching and talk programs. Owned by Salem Media Group, studios and transmitter facilities are shared with co-owned WNT ...
Radio and TV working in the mail room. In December 1966 he was promoted to newsreel and he covered over 3,000 stories over the next 30 years. His first interview was with basketball player
Wilt Chamberlain
Wilton Norman Chamberlain (; August 21, 1936 – October 12, 1999) was an American professional basketball player who played as a center. Standing at tall, he played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 14 years and is widely reg ...
. He then became an Associate Producer on various sports programs before becoming the spotter on
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team play ...
radio broadcasts in 1973. He worked under Charlie Swift and then under
Merrill Reese
Merrill Alan Reese (born September 2, 1942) is an American sports radio announcer best known for his role as the play-by-play radio announcer for the Philadelphia Eagles on SportsRadio 94.1 WIP-FM. He has been the voice of the Eagles since 1977.
...
, whom he is still close to. As of 2016, Werndl spots for Reese during Eagles home games. He has spotted over 800 football games, including an Eagles pre-season game against the New Orleans Saints in Japan in 1993.
In September 1974 Bill became the first full-time Sports Producer in the Philadelphia market. Bill has worked with such notable sports broadcasters, including Joe Pellegrino,
Don Tollefson, "Big Al" Meltzer, Jim "Sports" Kelly, Ron Burke and Ron Franklin.
In July, 1996, Bill moved to San Diego to work for Extra Sports 690. He replaced the late Chet Forte on the Loose Cannons program with
Steve Hartman. Werndl also worked at XX1090 before returning to his native Philadelphia market in 2008.
Bill Has worked for
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...
,
ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
/
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...
,
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
,
FOX
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
,
NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and NF ...
,
Comcast Sports Network,
WPVI-TV
WPVI-TV (channel 6), branded on-air as 6 ABC, is a television station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the stati ...
,
WYSP,
WCHE and
WBCB during his over fifty years of broadcasting.
He currently hosts the "Sports Chatter" on
WCHE and co-hosts "Jolly and the Loon" on
WBCB with Paul Jolovitz.
In 2017 he was inducted into the
.
Career as an Author
Bill began working on the publication "Ourlad's Guide to the NFL Draft" in 1982, which at the time had 44 subscribers. By 1996, it was up to 6,000.
[ ]
In 2016 Bill Werndl released his memoir
"No Curveballs: My Greatest Sports Stories Never Told,"co-written by Joe Vallee. The book is an autobiographical look back at his encounters with many figures that he has covered and become friends with throughout sports history.
References
External links
WCHE 1520 AMWBCB 1490 AM
{{DEFAULTSORT:Werndl, Bill
1945 births
Living people
Widener University faculty
American sports radio personalities