I’ll give 3 quick examples.

1. Keith reached out to Opie through Twitter for a collaboration with Anthony. This comes across as a ratings grab for CPM, but also seems as a desperate attempt by Keith/Anthony to get ratings, realizing that no one gives a shit about anybody in the O&A-verse without the original crew being re-United. They have overhead to worry about though.

2. There has not been a response that was honest from Anthony or Jim since Gregg started opening up about how there were issues with the structure of the show. They originally came out strong, stating how big of a Faggot Opie is. How is was unfunny (true). How he used the soundboard too often(true). Unbelievably, Opie has come out recently with comments about how shitty they were as well, by not showing up on time, as well as being general pieces of shit towards later interns. This was met without a response by baby boy or ANTH. They lost all ammunition by instantly dumping their dirt several years ago.

3. Compound media had 13k subscribers during Keith/A/O negotiations around the time of the Artie rumors. While these negotiations fell apart, it’s telling that CPM has the subscriber count stated. Anthony also never came out and denied these numbers, which Opie stated were generous at that time. Also worth mentioning Chippers Podacast has been outranked by Opies shitty podcast in several of the most recent episodes.

Tl;dr : These sopranos Wannabees aren’t shit without Opie, they know it, and want to capitalize on it. Opie isn’t shit without them either. But if Anthony and Opie made things work, The Worm would turn again.