You may know today's guest as a former General Manager of WJPZ. You may know him for his major market news career, between Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, and now KNX in Los Angeles. But you may not know how much of the current station was built with his hands. We cover all of that today with Alex Silverman, from the Class of 2010.
Alex talks about getting to Syracuse and loving radio, but not being sure which career direction that love would take him in. He became VP of Operations and GM at Z89, tracing every wire and learning how everything works. Meanwhile, he ended up getting an opportunity to anchor weekends at WSYR-Syracuse, and that cemented his love for news radio.
Alex talks about networking by accident. And how a tweet about 4/20 as a student led him to Wayne Cabot at WCBS New York, eventually leading Alex to a job as a reporter then into station management. We then trace his career to Philadelphia and now Los Angeles. (There may be a question about Philly sports fans in today's show.)
There are a number of lessons today's guest learned at WJPZ that have served him well - from how to manage people to how to handle the University bureaucracy when they overstepped their legal bounds.
We spend a fair amount of time talking about Alex's technical contributions to Z89 as an alum. Most notably, he was part of the station rebuild in 2012, when they secured funding to revamp and expand the entire station. He, Rob Crandall, Stephen Kurtz, and more worked with the staff over winter break to do a month's worth of work in a week. Alex also talks about a new transmitter, upgrading our 100 watt flamethrower to 1,000, and more.
Finally, we talk about the current state of radio. For radio to survive and thrive, Alex feels two things must happen. Provide the content our audience wants, where they want it, and do a better job of marketing where to find it.
Join Us in Syracuse for Banquet on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. You may know today's guest as a former general manager of WJPZ. You may know him for his major market news career in New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, and now Los Angeles. What you may not know is how much of his personal time and effort he has given to WJ PZ to keep them modernized for current times over the last decade or so.
Welcome, Alex Silverman.
Alex: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
JAG: And we're gonna cover all of these things, but let's start at the beginning. Alex, how did it come that you ended up at Syracuse and at WJPZ?
Alex: Well, I was looking at schools. Syracuse was always on the radar because I knew from, you know, the time I was in middle school that I wanted to be in radio.
I didn't know what exactly in radio I wanted to do. Going into school I kind of had the idea like a lot of kids who go to Syracuse that I wanted to be a sports broadcaster. And I got to school. I started, you know, doing that in various ways while I was there and kind of realized that that wasn't the path for me.
But I knew that I still loved radio. And so I was trying all sorts of things out at JPZ. I was doing a music show. I was doing a Z morning zoo. I was working in the sports department. I was doing a little bit of news stuff. I was taking classes and radio at the same time. I was doing basically everything you could possibly think of to do in radio.
And, then I also became the operations guy and the general manager at Z89. So all of that experience has sort of, you know, found its way into the career path I eventually took.
JAG: Absolutely. And I think I can imagine how many lessons you've learned when it came to managing people and leadership, and we'll cover that here shortly.
Tell me about some of the stuff that you dealt with as general manager. Some of the stuff that was happening at the station around the time you were there between 2006 and 2010.
Alex: Well, the station was kind of going through a technological transformation. We had just installed the first digital audio consoles when I got there, the first digital automation system. And so that was a big transition for the station and we kind of oversaw the progression from, you know, just as was happening in the industry at the time, the progression to, you know, modern digital technology at the station. So all of that was going on. We installed a new transmitter in my first couple of years there and, I knew none of this stuff when I first got to JPZ and I had no interest or not, I wouldn't say no interest, but really no baseline knowledge or understanding of any of the technical aspects of a radio station.
But the idea of radio, of the mechanics of radio broadcasting had always sort of fascinated me and it just so happened at the time that there was a vacancy in the VP of operations position and the current general manager at the time said, you know what? I think you'd be good at this and you can be the VP of Ops.
I said, I have no idea how to be the VP of Ops. I don't know how anything works. And he said, well, you know, that's how it goes for everyone who gets into one of these positions. Nobody knows anything.
JAG: That's how it was for me coming into that exact same position 10 years prior. You're preaching to the choir!
Alex: Right. And so I'll never. The way I tell this story was my first day. I have no idea if it was really my first day, but it was very early into having that job that I walk into the radio station and somebody says, the phones don't work. And I said, oh, great. Well, I guess that's my responsibility. And so I crawl underneath the console, you know, rat's nest of wires that's under there.
I find some wire that's disconnected and I plug it back in and suddenly the phones work again. And this was a blessing and a curse because I fixed the phones and everyone was happy, but everyone at the same time thought that I knew how to fix everything. And so I needed then to learn how to fix everything, just for my own, you know, pride . And so I started to trace every wire and understand how everything worked and, you know, leaned on Steven Kurtz, Tex, who had built all these systems before me. And really started to learn how every, all the pieces of a radio station come together. And that was kind of the basis for the technical background that I have in radio now that I still carry through, you know, to my present day job.
JAG: That is fascinating to me that you didn't know the tech stuff, because I think of you as one of these tech guys along with Tex and Rob Crandall and Josh Wolff and all this whole crew that goes up there so often, sometimes in the summertime to, you know, tweak things and help fix things and help modernize things.
And it's wild to me that you're self-taught with all of this stuff.
Alex: Well, it was out of necessity because, you know, there's no full-time engineer at JPZ, and yet the radio station has to stay on the air all the time. And so somebody's got to figure out how to have that happen. And I remember another instance in the middle of the summer, we got a call that the station was off the air and the transmitter had literally died.
And I am like trying to talk somebody through on the phone as I'm driving up to Syracuse, you know, checking the cables and connections in the transmitter facility. And we got up there and we basically had to fix a transmitter without knowing how to fix a transmitter. Those are the kinds of things you do out of necessity.
JAG: Wow.
Alex: And you know, that's how I learned a lot of the things that I know.
JAG: That is just wild to me as I'm thinking about, you know, trial by fire and I think you're telling a story that we've heard through other alumni for 50 years of the radio station. Someone that was effusive in her praise for you in a previous episode of the podcast was Mina Llona.
She talked about how many long heart to hearts she had with you at the radio station, and as you guys kind of started the transition over to Prophet and NextGen, all the stuff that you worked on so long together, a lot of long hours at the radio station. Talk to me a little bit about some of the relationships you built, both with fellow students, with your classmates, but also some of the other alumni.
Alex: It was immediately clear to me the second I walked in the door that this experience was gonna be so valuable to me. I didn't know that when I first walked into JPZ, I think it was probably my first Banquet when, you know, I saw alumni start to come in and I said, who are you? And they started to say who they were and where they worked and where they had been.
And I said, wow, this is huge. And this is a network that can really be helpful in a lot of ways. And it was interesting that you mentioned Mina because she was my program director when I was the general manager. And we learned, together, so many things about managing people. To learn how to manage people when all the people you're managing aren't even obligated to work there. They're volunteers, they're not getting paid, they're doing it, you know, in addition to all the schoolwork they have. How do you motivate people in that kind of environment? And that was something she was great at. And that we worked together on.
And, and I really got a ton out of that experience in, you know, what ended up being my management career 10 years later.
JAG: Let's talk about that career a little bit. You have been, as I mentioned, on the top, some major markets you know, Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, now Los Angeles where we're recording this on November 15th and I'm here in Michigan and I'm was looking at the window before we started recording and then looking at your window on the screen here.
And quite jealous, I might say, but I think you deserve it. A whole career in cold weather. Talk to me about how you got, you know, from Syracuse and your career path throughout all these different markets.
Alex: You know, there are these people who say to me, when I was about to move to LA, oh, you're gonna miss four seasons.
I say for 30, 35 years of seasons, I don't need seasons anymore. This is great.
JAG: This Sounds like a Seinfeld episode.
Alex: I'm definitely enjoying the weather here. But yeah, of course it started in Syracuse where, you know, I tell people here you get, it's probably less now because of climate change, but it was 140 inches of snow a year when I was there.
The fun fact that I always give is the most snow of any city of a hundred thousand people in the world, and that kind of blows people's minds.
JAG: I'm gonna steal that.
Alex: You should. I wonder if it's still true. It was a thing people said in 2006. We should fact check it. But yeah, I got my start at JPZ and I also worked at WAER and shortly thereafter I started working at WSYR kind of by accident.
And that was my first professional radio job. I had a piece that I had done for class about smoking pot on campus, and that was definitely more controversial then than it is now. In terms of doing a piece for class about. And my friend who worked at WSYR happened to be playing this at his workstation in the newsroom.
And the program director overheard it and said, who is that guy talking about smoking pot on campus? And he was like, oh, that's Alex. He said, oh, maybe I'll, I'll hire that guy. And so that is how I got my job. My first professional job in radio.
JAG: Who was the program director at the time at SYR?
Alex: That would've been Jason Furst. And so he says to me, you can anchor the news on the weekends. And I said, no, I can't. And he said, well just do it . And so I learned that on the fly too. I was, you know, taking classes, you know, to learn how to do news radio, broadcast writing, and all that. I didn't think that I was capable of, you know, being on the air in, you know, a medium sized market.
But you know, that's again, learning on the fly and I learned a lot about, you know, what to do, what not to do, just by kind of experimenting in those weekend newscasts. And at the same time I was doing a music show on, on one of our sister stations there in Syracuse, under the pseudonym Brian Winter.
JAG: Brian winter. What station were you on?
Alex: Nova 105.1.
JAG: So was I.
Alex: Wow, I didn't know that.
JAG: I voice tracked for Nova 105.1 when I was at Clear Channel in Burlington between 2004 and 2006. So how's that for a small world, a short-lived station in Syracuse that we both voice tracked on?
Alex: I would've been slightly later than that, I think like 2007, 2008. But I didn't know that and I didn't know you at the time. That's funny.
JAG: Alex, I know this from knowing you well, but when you told Jason Furst, I can't do weekend news, this wasn't, I'm gonna be too hungover from partying, this was, you just didn't think you had the chops yet in your career, right?
Alex: No, I just, I didn't think I'd be good enough. And I also didn't know if it was the right thing for me, but it turned out it was really great because it made me realize that news radio was what I wanted to do. And you know, after going through this thing where I had, you know, kind of wanted to do sports, kinda not. Then kind of got into, you know, fallen into news that way.
I realized that it was what I loved, and around the same time, I was listening to a lot of different news radio stations around the country, including the station that I had grown up with, which was WCBS. And I remember this was early in the days of being able to listen to radio station streams on your iPhone.
This would've been like 2009. I'll never forget this? I was in the gym on campus and it was April 20th, continuing with the pot smoking theme. For some reason, that was a through line in the early part of my career. I heard Wayne Cabot on WCBS, one of the greatest broadcasters who's ever lived, make a reference to 420, like at 4:20 on 4/20.
It was April 20th and. I tweeted, which was also very new at the time, and I probably just joined Twitter very recently. I tweeted without thinking, without thinking of any potential consequences. I can't believe Wayne Cabot on WCBS just made a 4/20 reference. I just threw that out there thinking it would go into the ether and nobody would ever see it.
It turned out a week later, Wayne's co-anchor had just come back from some conference where he had learned how to search Twitter and had searched Wayne's name and come up with my tweet. And he replies and says, Wayne is very excited that you noticed his 4/20 reference. And so I said, terrific.
Wayne Cabot at WCBS, the station where, you know, it now is kind of my dream to work, thinks that I am some sort of degenerate pothead kid. This is exactly how I wanted this. And so I went and found Wayne's email address and I sent him a note and he wrote back within five minutes and sent me the nicest email and basically invited me to the radio station which kind of blew my mind.
JAG: Wow.
Alex: And it turned out that, you know, the next time I was in New York, I went to visit him. And, you know, long story short, a few years later after you know, a stop in Seattle, right after getting outta school, I was working there and you know, Wayne has become a great friend of mine. I was there for almost a decade and that was one of these little things that happens.
And the only takeaway is when something falls in your lap by accident, you know, make sure you take advantage of it. I could have easily kind of let that go and, and laughed it off. But what I always tell students in terms of network, something happens by accident. Some of the best things you can't predict will possibly happen to you.
And you know, you've got to take advantage and capitalize. And that's part of how I ended up working in New York.
JAG: And I remember being at a fall conference when you told that Wayne Cabot 4/20 story. And I remember every jaw in the room was on the floor. Like this dude tweeted about a 4/20 reference and ended up on the air in market one.
That always stuck with me and you know, it's probably the first positive thing I've heard about Twitter in a month, but it's still a really important story. You know, just be good to people and be nice to people. And I've made more contacts, you know, saying nice things to people on Twitter than by trolling anybody that's for sure.
You never know who's gonna see what you tweet. Absolutely. So you're in New York, you're on the air, and correct me if I'm wrong, it was in New York where you started to make the move from reporting into management.
Alex: Yeah, so I was a reporter and anchor for about seven, eight years. And I had always kind of had it in the back of my head wherever I had been.
And this was since my time at JPZ. And I remember one distinct experience in my first job in Syracuse where my boss got mad at me because I did something that was, you know, beyond what I was supposed to be doing. And the words he used were something like, one day you'll be in charge, but not today.
And he was right. Of course, I still maintain that I was probably right about whatever it is that I did or said, but he was right. He was the boss. I wasn't, but that put in the back of my head. You know, it combined with the experience of being the general manager at JPZ, which really when you are in that position, you are dealing with a lot of things that are, you know, way above the level of what a college student is prepared to deal with.
We'll talk about some of that. But I always had in the back of my head, If somebody put me in charge and let me sort of shape this with a vision to what I wanted it to be, what would I do? And I had that in my head throughout the time that I was in New York. And it just so happened that our assistant PD left to take another position and the position was open and I said, you know, let me take a shot at that. And they were, you know, dumb enough to trust me. That was my first job in management. I was sort of in a dual role being both on the air and APD at the same time.
JAG: And from there you got the opportunity to be the guy and go to Philadelphia.
Alex: Pretty quickly after that, it was kind of unexpected. A guy named Steve Butler, who was the PD, longtime PD at KYW in Philly, decided to retire. And I said, wow, you know, maybe I'll give it a shot. Again, I don't think that, you know, this would be a pretty quick kind of progression to a major market PD job, but, I would love to have that opportunity and they trusted me with it and I really, really loved my time in Philly and my time at KYW.
JAG: How long were you there?
Alex: Four years, almost exactly.
JAG: Here's a question that I could not have asked you when you were there, but I can ask you now. Are Philly sports fans as bad as they seem?
Alex: So when I got there, people said to me, are you an Eagles fan? Hmm? And the answer is yes, because I don't want to end up in a ditch somewhere.
That's the only acceptable answer. People in Philly are some of the best people anywhere. I love Philly people so much because you get what you sign up for. Everybody's real, everybody's genuine and everybody's nice. And yeah, they're crazy sports fans and they climb poles even though the police grease them and all of that, which is nuts. But they're great people and it's a great city.
JAG: You never actually saw Santa Claus booed while you were there, right?
Alex: I never actually saw Santa Claus booed.
JAG: So you're there for four years and then you get this amazing opportunity within Audacy to go to LA. You've been in New York, Philly, you've been a northeast guy most of your life. You, aside from that stint in Seattle, now you have a chance to come out West. Tell me about that.
Alex: It's another one that kind of came outta nowhere. I owned a house in Philly. I was expecting to stay there for, you know, however long. And again, a kind of unexpected, you know, these jobs in all news radio.
We only have about 10 of these stations around the country. And the people who run them tend to stay in the jobs for a long time. And my predecessor here decided that he wanted to move on, and that kind of came out of the blue. And you know, I'd never really thought about living in LA. I'd visited LA, I liked LA, I knew people in LA, but he was never really on the radar until this amazing opportunity came up and I said, that would be cool to give a shot and to be able to run KNX, which is such an iconic brand in Los Angeles. And I was lucky enough to get the position here. And you know, that was about two months ago now.
JAG: You've had this amazing career, and I'm sure there have been challenges, obviously working in management, working in major market radio stations.
Are there any specific moments in your career that you felt JPZ really prepared you to handle?
Alex: I will say, like I said earlier, learning how to navigate the people side of management was something that I would never have been prepared for. If not for my experience, kind of managing a hundred people who were there by choice and learning how to, to find ways to motivate those people and you know, really understanding that it is about more than the sum of the parts.
It's about making sure that you're getting the most out of each one of those people. It really takes a tremendous amount of effort. And at one point, you know, some of the frustrations of management are, you know, those people management times when, you know, you don't have time to be somebody's therapist, but you have to be because it's part of the job.
And once in, you know, moment of frustration, I said to one of my previous bosses, you know, if you ever wanna replace me, just find a shrink with an accounting degree, because that's sometimes what it comes down to. But that's so important. Everybody needs that. And every good manager knows how important that is.
And that you have to dedicate a lot of your time to it, and not just to, you know, hearing people out, but finding solutions and finding ways to get the most outta people. And so I learned a lot of that at JPZ. And I think some of the things that came up, one memory that really sticks with me was when the university, in their bureaucratic wisdom, decided at one point they were going to not allow us to access our transmitter site anymore without somebody escorting us from the university. And because WJPZ is licensed as its own corporation separately from the University. They can't do that because the licensee has to have access to the transmitter site at all times.
So we had to explain this to them as students. We had to say, actually no, we have a legal right to not have you do what you have just said you're gonna do. And this became a protracted, you know, six month fight. And this was, you know, me as a student general manager up against, yeah, I'm framing it more antagonistically than it needed to be.
But that's kind of how it ended up being. It ended up being so silly because they just kept saying no. And we had to find ways to sort of nuance that and make them understand that A) we weren't just students, we were professionals who had the best interests of the university and the institution in mind.
And the background of this was that students apparently had had a kegger and the roof of Day Hall and which had nothing to do with us, but it brought to their attention that we had access.
JAG: These were Day Hall residents.
Alex: Day Hall residents.
JAG: Not JPZ students,
Alex: Not JPZ students. Day Hall residents had a kegger on the roof, and this brought to their attention that JPZ had access to that space.
And so they sort of lumped us all in as, oh, we couldn't possibly let students have that access. So eventually we negotiated with them. We let it play out for a bit where we kind of engineered a problem and tested their system with the escort, and it took forever, and we showed how it would be in violation of FCC regulations if we were in an actual emergency. So all of that kind of problem solving creativity, negotiating type stuff I would've never had if not for JPZ.
JAG: I love that story. That's incredible. Alex. As I mentioned at the beginning, you are one of several folks who have gone back on your own personal time, summers, and many other times as an alum to help with the technical side and help the current students and help the station remain the world's greatest media classroom.
I know you're not one to toot your own horn, but tell me about some of the stuff that you and the other alumni have done to help modernize the station and some of the work that you've done. I don't wanna say behind the scenes, but maybe off of some people's radar.
Alex: Well, when people say it's a labor of love, it's kind of a cliche, but for me it really is.
It not only allows me to contribute to the station in a way that I find rewarding and I think really does contribute to the value that is offered to the students, but you know, also lets me use a different part of my brain than I'm used to using every day in my day job. So the biggest thing we did, I would say, was building the new facility in 2012.
And you know, going back in my head to how that played out. It was originally, I think Alex Brewer, when he was the GM, he had gotten our facility issues on the radar of the Chancellor at the time, Nancy Cantor. And she basically came in and said, this looks like crap. We gotta do something about it. And there used to be a grocery store in between where JPZ was in a much smaller space and Citrus Tv.
And basically the Chancellor snapped her fingers and said, we're gonna shut down the grocery store and allow Citrus TV and Z89 to take over that space. And they brought in architects and they drew up a plan and they said, Here's the funding to build it. Oh wait! How are we going to actually turn the space into a radio station?
And there was no plan for that. So Stephen Kurtz and I and Rob Crandall, who's the, our kind of third partner in crime there with this project basically. We told them how much it would cost, told them what we needed to buy, and then once we got the equipment, we went up there and we spent one week doing what should have probably taken six weeks in terms of, and by the way, the construction wasn't even done when we got there, so we were on top of the construction people while this was going on.
And we turned an open construction site into a new radio station within one week, and I still don't know how we did that.
JAG: Summer 2012?
Alex: This was winter 2012. The station had, for the first semester of that year, had not had a studio because the construction ran late and they were basically doing an ad hoc thing from one studio in Newhouse while the station was running from a computer at the transmitter site.
And so over winter break in December of 2012, we got the radio station back on the air from Watson Hall and you know, I can't believe it's been 10 years. And ever since then we've been maintaining it. But to have a radio station that you know, you and a couple other people built with your bare hands basically is a really cool thing.
And since then, some of the things we've done, we've installed the new antenna, which allowed us to increase our effective radiated power from a hundred watts to a thousand watts, which was really cool. And that was a fun project to be, you know, on top of Day Hall while the tower climbers are up there.
JAG: And you didn't need an escort, right?
Alex: Didn't need an escort, no. They knew about that one. But that was if I remember correctly, 2015, 2016, somewhere in there. And so between the new studio facility, between upgrading the power and we've got a new transmitter that we're installing this year.
So all those things together, you know, it's been a lot and to maintain a radio station takes a lot of money, takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort. We're fortunate the University has, you know, provided us with the funding to be able to do a lot of these things and have the state-of-the-art equipment that you find anywhere else in the industry.
But, to be able to put your heads together and put your hands on it and be able to build it and build something that the students can both enjoy and can help them understand what the real industry is like, is really rewarding for me.
JAG: The new transmitter is going up in the winter, or going up in the summer?
Alex: Probably in the spring, probably at Banquet time because of supply chain issues. We've been trying to get it for the past year, but we're moving our existing main transmitter to a backup and rotating the backup out, putting a new main in. Those are the kind of things you have to do after, you know, 10 years of service.
JAG: All right. A minute ago, Alex, you mentioned teaching the students about the industry. You are in the industry in market number two, working for a large company. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you from where you sit now, what radio as an industry has to do to maintain relevance and dominance as a medium.
Alex: Understand where the audience is and what the audience wants, and not put its collective head in the sand anymore. One thing that radio has done poorly is really been able to see ahead for where consumers are going to be and what they're going to want. We have thrown around this number for a long time.
You know, 93% of Americans still listen to radio every week, and that has allowed us to be complacent and has allowed us to not innovate. And the reality is, and this is something a lot of people don't realize. The average car on the roads is 11 years old in America, and therefore the average car. Still, you know, the easiest thing to do is get in and turn on AM/FM Radio.
That's a big part of why the radio audience listening numbers are still so high. We're going to hit an inflection point. You step into the average car and the first thing you see is Apple CarPlay or some other digital interface where the whole internet is open to you. And in those cars, the entire internet is our competition.
So what we need to do is stop saying, you know, people still listen to radio and start saying, It's about making the content as good as possible and making people want to find the content no matter where it is. If people step into that car that has CarPlay on it and they are able to say, Siri, play KNX and it will work, which it does, that is our future because it's about the content and the key is to get people to want to do that.
And to know that they can do that. And that's the big marketing challenge that we as an industry are facing now. We want people to not just default to listening to the radio stations that they're used to listening to, but want to get the content on whatever platform they are consuming audio on. And I think that's where our future turns.
JAG: So it sounds like you're saying it's a two-part thing. Number one, making sure the content is there. And then number two, the marketing message of that. You can get the content in the places you're typically going.
Alex: Yeah. Make the user experience what the audience expects, which is available on all platforms and available in on demand type forms.
You know, if you go to the Audacy app where KNX primarily lives. You can go and see the stream, which is what you're used to hearing from a radio station, but right below it, you see all of the on-demand segments of things we've done just in the past few hours. And if you just wanna listen to something about, you know, the mayor's race in LA, you can just tap that and you don't have to listen through the traffic report if you don't want to.
That's the kind of experience that the modern audience wants, but we have to put it in front of them. We have to make sure that that's what our focus is and make sure that they know that they can get it there and make sure that they wanna seek it out. So it's a two-part challenge. It's a product and platform and content challenge and it's a marketing challenge, getting people to understand why these brands that have always been there for them are still relevant to them now in this new environment.
JAG: Very, very well said. Alex SIlverman, wanna thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy Los Angeles Day. Go out and enjoy the sunshine.
Alex: Thanks for doing this. This is a really cool project you're working on. I appreciate being a part of it.