Imus in The Morning - Cast Members

Cast Members

Imus in the Morning has a regular cast of members who supply news and comedy, and act as foils to Imus. Present cast members include:

• Connell McShane is the program's newsman. McShane, an employee of Fox Business Network, took over the post May 9, 2011. He had previously rotated as the business reporter.
• Diane Macedo and Dagen McDowell rotate as business reporters, both being provided by Fox Business Network. McDowell and McShane rotated business reports prior to May 2011. McDowell is distinguished by her thick southern accent; she hosts her reports from the same studio as Imus while Macedo files reports from the Fox Business newsroom.
• Bernard McGuirk, his producer, is the show's antagonist, whom Imus has sometimes referred to as a "bald-headed stooge"; he also performs character voices (such as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, former New York Catholic Archbishops Cardinals Edward Egan and John Joseph O'Connor, and poet Maya Angelou). McGuirk was the only other member of the cast to lose his job in the Rutgers controversy and was initially off air for the first few weeks of the revival before returning. He currently has an on-air role.
• Tony Powell, an African-American comedian, originally gave sports reports, but has since become a general contributor and celebrity impersonator, usually impersonating black celebrities such as Jesse Jackson and Charles Rangel. He was one of two African-Americans added to the staff when the show returned on WABC and RFD; Texas native Karith Foster was the other, though Foster was eventually dismissed from the show in 2009 just prior to the move to Fox Business Network.
• Rob Bartlett impersonates a cast of celebrities (Bill Clinton, The Godfather, Dr. Phil, Brian Wilson, Hulk Hogan, Rush Limbaugh, Scott Muni, Omar Minaya, Alberto Gonzales, Vicente Fox, Al Gore, Blind Mississippi White Boy Pig Feets Dupris, Liza Minnelli, Carl Paladino, and many others)
• Warner Wolf serves as the sportscaster. He had also served as sports reporter c. 2001 for the WFAN incarnation of the program; he reunited with Imus after several weeks on WABC, where Wolf had worked as sports reporter for the previous morning show of Curtis and Kuby before Imus had arrived.
• Lou Rufino serves as the program engineer; he has a considerable on-air role, but does not appear on-air as often as the other cast members.

Part of the appeal of his show is the overt display of office politics: cast members are frequently the object of Imus' sarcasm, largely because of their outspoken points of view. The idea of including production staff as an on-air cast of characters was the idea of Fred Imus, Don's younger brother, who briefly served as the show's producer and was a regular guest on the show until his death in August 2011.

Regular guests on the program include Bo Dietl, a private investigator, and "Blonde on Blonde," the pairing of Don's wife Dierdre and journalist Lis Wiehl.

From the 1970s until his retirement on May 6, 2011, Charles McCord served as the program's newsman. In character, he usually acted as either the straight man or, occasionally, as an Imus sycophant or antagonist. McCord affected a neutral, reasoned tone and thus usually stayed out of Imus' line of fire, compared to the antics of the other cast members. The show has also had a series of cast members with shorter tenures on the program. Previous sports reporters have included Chris Carlin (best known for "the fat boy lock of the week!,") Patrick McEnroe (who auditioned to replace Imus on WFAN), Don Criqui, Mike Breen (valued for his deadpan delivery of false sports news, and ridiculed after his head injuries during the 2008 NBA Finals), and Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo. Sid Rosenberg is a semi-regular correspondent to the program, usually on sports-related topics, reporting via phone from his home in Florida. He has returned to a regular position on the show after being removed from his own show on WAXY in early 2009. Rosenberg first joined the show as a sports reporter after Wolf's departure, but was fired in May 2005 for comments made regarding Kylie Minogue's battle against breast cancer. He made sporadic appearances as a substitute between those times.

Other previous reporters included Janice Dean, Christy Musumeci, and Tracy Burgess, who departed for Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and WFAN respectively. Karith Foster, a Texas-raised black woman hired in the wake of the Rutgers controversy, was a comedian and general contributor, but left the show in August 2009 after her contract was not renewed. Larry Kenney, an impersonator who (along with Bartlett) served as a celebrity impersonator (some of the voices Kenney impersonated Richard Nixon, George Patton, Ted Kennedy, Andy Rooney, Jack Nicholson, and Jerry Falwell), but was bumped from the program when it returned on WABC and RFD in favor of Foster and Powell. Alexis Glick briefly served as a business reporter for the show shortly after it debuted on Fox Business, but left the show and the network after two months. For years, Larry "Ratso" Sloman contributed humorous New York Rangers reports but after he collaborated with Howard Stern on "Private Parts" he was persona non grata on the show and became a whipping boy for Imus especially when Imus' guest was Kinky Friedman, who is a close friend of Ratso.

Imus had regular guests on the program to discuss upcoming sporting events. Typically, these guests appeared only during the season of their respective sport. Such guests include Jim Nantz and Phil Simms (of CBS) and Terry Bradshaw (of Fox) for football, and Darrell Waltrip (of Fox) for NASCAR. During an interview with Boomer Esiason, after ridiculing him, Imus chided Esiason with a trademark phrase "get off my phone," insisting he hang up. Esiason shot back with "no, you get off my phone."