Craig Carton in a comfortable spot with FS1 show 'Breakfast Ball' and life as a whole

Craig Carton on the set of FS1's morning sports talk show, "Breakfast Ball," but it will emanate from Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Thursday and Friday in advance of Super Bowl LIX. Credit: Ben Hider
Craig Carton said it was “obviously hard” to leave WFAN, which he called “family.” But 1 ½ years later, he said he is in a good place personally and professionally.
“I'd be lying if I told you there's never a day where I missed it or wanted to be part of the New York conversation, because it’s in my blood,” he told Newsday.
“But schedule-wise, relationship-wise, with my family, my wife, my kids, it’s been huge. It's been a huge positive for me getting some level of normal sleep.”
Carton also is enjoying his current job on the five-month-old FS1 morning show “Breakfast Ball,” which will emanate from Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Thursday and Friday in advance of Super Bowl LIX.
The show, which also features Mark Schlereth and Danny Parkins, will get broader exposure with a one-hour special on Fox’s broadcast flagship at 3 p.m. on Friday.
“It’ll be cool to get out of the studio and be at a major event like the Super Bowl, which I did for so many years on radio,” Carton said.
He worked for three years in afternoon drive time at WFAN after spending a year in prison on federal fraud charges in 2019 and 2020.
But it was the last nine months of that stay that prompted him to leave the station a second time. (He co-hosted the morning show from 2007-17 before his arrest.)
Carton had joined FS1 as host of “The Carton Show” on mornings starting in August of 2022 while still working with Evan Roberts at WFAN. By the spring of 2023, he decided the split shift was untenable and left radio at the end of that June.
“I could have continued to do [both shows],” he said, “but I was becoming kind of a robot and a zombie, and I wasn't giving either vehicle probably my best performance every minute of every day.
“I'm able to do that now because I just have the show on FS1. But it was a transition, and like any transition, it takes time to get comfortable and get into a good rhythm with it. And I feel like I'm in that rhythm right now. It feels good.”
FS1 revamped its daytime lineup last August, and “The Carton Show” made way for “Breakfast Ball,” which unlike the former has a consistent cast, which Carton said has helped develop chemistry.
But there is a tradeoff. While it is nice to be on national TV, there is not the kind of immediate feedback one gets with local sports talk.
“You know immediately if it resonates with an audience, because they'll tell you,” Carton said. “They call you and tell you good or bad. If you have a crazy take, they tell you. If people agree with you, they tell you.”
Television studio shows operate in more of a vacuum. But Carton said social media has helped with that, because the show is able to get out its content that way.
“But it’s a delayed response,” he said. “If I say something at 8:30 in the morning, at 8:33 I may not know how people are reacting to it. But by the time I get home, I know exactly how people feel about whatever opinion, take or silly thing we might have done that day.”
Carton said the FS1 program exceeded his expectations.
“From a content standpoint, I put this up against any show on any network on TV,” he said, “just purely from an entertainment and compelling standpoint.”
He added “Everyone gets along. There's no fighting for the microphone. There's no ego.”
Parkins said he was a “huge fan” of Carton as a radio host when Parkins was breaking into the business. But he did not know what to expect from him as a colleague.
“I was excited about it, but I had never met the man, so you never really know what you’re getting into,” Parkins said. “But he’s embraced me. He’s hilarious on the air and he’s hilarious off the air. But off the air he’s just incredibly generous.”
Carton called Schlereth, a three-time Super Bowl champion with Washington and Denver, “the closest to Boomer [Esiason] I've ever worked with since ‘Boom’ and I stopped working together [in 2017]. He's great. He's self-deprecating . . . He gets the joke.”
Schlereth praised the leadership role behind Carton’s “on-air persona of craziness.”
“Unless you really truly know him, people would not assume that, but that’s exactly who he is,” Schlereth said. “I’ve just been blessed to be able to be a part of the show with him.”
Carton, 56, lived what he called the “thrill of a lifetime” calling three Yankees games with Suzyn Waldman last season on WFAN.
That was a one-off. But he still has a regular presence on the channel with his Saturday morning show, “Hello, My Name is Craig,” in which he talks to fellow gambling addicts about their stories.
He called it “the single most important content I’ve ever done. As long as they’ll allow me to do it, I will always do it.”
Carton also talks about the perils of gambling to young people in person.
“I couldn't be luckier,” he said, “for all the things I lost and gave up and ruined, the fact that I'm sitting here today doing what I'm doing, and my story is helping other people, has just been awesome. I’m in a really good place — mentally, emotionally, family.”
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