Today's episode reunites three members of the WJPZ Class of 2002, as Jag is joined by Jana Fiorello and Beth (Berlin) Cohen. You'll hear themes of lifelong friendship here that are likely reflected in your own class.
Beth originally showed up at Syracuse to audition for their musical theater program, but on her high school tour, she found herself talking to then-dean David Rubin at Newhouse about their Television-Radio-Film program. Jana, on the other hand, always loved radio and knew that's what she wanted to pursue at SU.
Beth joined the station earlier than Jana, but both were part of the freshman class that Harry Wareing created to save the station from the tumult of two format changes and receievership - you can learn more about that in his episode with Dena (Giacobbe) Laupheimer here.
Soon, Beth joined Matt DelSignore and others as programming assistants. Jana joined later and was put in charge of production, where she found herself working frequently with Beth, when she became development director. They were at the station at a huge time for music, 1999, as you'll hear about.
Junior year was the "house on Ostrom" year when Jana became VP of Programming, and her unofficial title, "party planner," began with a massive party to clean up this place the University had dumped on us.
Senior year, the Class of 2002 began handing the reigns to the next generation of station leadership, but maintained a strong presence, including a donation drive after the 9/11 attacks - and a story about white butcher paper.
Following graduation and some time on the record label side, Beth really found a passion working with kids and pursued a career in speech pathology, where she's been working with kids in her home state of Maryland for 17 years.
Jana stayed in the WJPZ family immediately after school, going to work for Chris Bungo and Rocco Macri at Promosuite, which further stoked her passion for radio. You'll hear about her career in the New York market, and how it eventually led to her current role as a digital content maven for political campaigns.
Throughout today's episode, you'll hear about life lessons learned at the station that are still applied every day, and just how special the relationships formed are, across any number of miles.
You'll also hear a hilarious small world radio story, a story about a brick of cheese, and a rare moment when Hall of Famer and classmate Matt DelSignore was angry.
Mentioned in this episode:
Matt DelSignore's Summer 1999 Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6HbF5OilemvmkfxePsJXbA?si=-uqR_A41ShCyM5RqAAMhfw
Jana's Batcave Bangers Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4kpRYBnhwxiRrwYwKTUeNw?si=yZZAoRPfRC-Y3Cq0zuhdQA
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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Want to be a guest on the pod or know someone else who would? Email Jag: jag@jagindetroit.com.
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JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. This podcast has in a way, become an extension of the Banquet. And what I mean by that is when you go to the Banquet, people that you haven't seen and whether it's five days, five months or five years, and you pick back up where you left off.
And that's how I feel about both of today's guests. They are classmates of mine, full disclosure. From the class of 2002, Jana Fiorello and Beth Berlin Cohen, welcome both to the podcast.
Beth: Thanks.
Jana: Thanks for having us.
JAG: We had said before we hit record, this could go completely off the rails cuz we all went to school together and we're such great friends and I feel like if anybody else were hosting this podcast, they would feel the same way about their classmates.
So I'll try to stick to the script and we'll see where we go. But the first question that I always ask is, how did you come to Syracuse and how did you come to Z89? And Beth, since you popped on first, I'll start with you.
Beth: So getting to Syracuse, I think I'm the lone person at JPZ who probably applied originally as a musical theater major.
I was applying to musical theater programs, and you don't just apply and visit, you have to audition. So I'd already auditioned at University of Michigan. I'd auditioned at NYU, and then I came up for the weekend.And Saturday was supposed to audition at Syracuse. And then Sunday at Ithaca. I went to my musical theater audition and I was like, wait, I think I really wanna have a job for sure when I grow up.
And I walked up to Newhouse with my parents and we asked if we could talk to Dean Rubin. And went in, had a chat with Dean Rubin. Talked a little bit about my high school stuff and my grades and my SATs. And asked if they could change my application from VPA to Newhouse. And lo and behold, I end up at Syracuse in Newhouse as a TRF major.
JAG: I have known you for over 20 years and I did not know that about you.
Beth: Yeah, that's a fun fact.
Jana: I didn't either.
Beth: Yep. It was a very different career path planned
JAG: originally. Okay, so you get to Syracuse, Beth, and how do you find the radio station?
Beth: So I had a friend from home who, that weekend that I was up visiting for my audition, I actually was staying with him in Day Hall and he had an overnight shift at Z89.
His name's Brian Billig. He did not come back to the station after his freshman year, but I was like, this is fun. This was cool when I went to the station for the shift with him. And so I really looked out for how to get involved right away in the fall freshman year.
JAG: Awesome. And Jana, how'd you end up at Syracuse and then the station?
Jana: I. So this is actually really funny because listening to Beth's story, mine is almost the exact opposite of hers. I actually always knew I wanted to do radio from the time I was little. Like I was the girl who used to record Casey Kasem with a tape recorder and a clock radio with a vacuum in the background.
So I was looking for communication schools, and I went for a fall visit to Ithaca and Syracuse. And Ithaca was nice, but I think the second my parents and I drove on campus at Syracuse, I was like, this is it. This is absolutely where I'm gonna go. So fast forward, I got my acceptance letter, but I actually did not get into Newhouse.
I got accepted into VPA for their speech pathology program. So my parents were trying to convince me to go to Ithaca because I could go straight into communications. But I knew already that, nope, goin to Syracuse. So my whole freshman year I was in VPA studying speech pathology, and then I guess it was summer of freshman year, I had to take a couple extra courses at Villanova so that I would have enough credits to transfer into Newhouse in the fall of my sophomore year.
JAG: So you got into Newhouse and how did you find the radio station?
Jana: I don't know.
JAG: You don't remember?
Jana: This is where my two, this is where my too many years of party at Faegan's comes in. So I think it had to have either been a flyer in the dorm or I have a vague recollection of being at an event in the Dome where Z89 was.
I have to go with one of those things. And I remember grabbing my Floormate and good friend Greg Dixon and going down to the station. I have a feeling that Beth and Matt DelSignore had already been there, but Harry was there and that was, I know, beginning of freshman year and I was in Harry's recruiting class of 98, and the rest is history.
JAG: We're just gonna give Harry credit based in episode with Harry, cuz he was the one who recruited our class like gangbusters to get bodies into the station cuz they needed them so much. And I came in a couple months after the both of you. It sounds like Beth, you were there slightly before Jana, but you both got there pretty early.
I didn't come in until probably October, November-ish. I was the poor, homesick kid, lonely and I got to the station and as so many of our podcast guests have said, I found my tribe and that includes the two of you. And everybody just felt so welcoming. I feel like that was probably the vibe you both got when you arrived as well.
Beth: Completely. So I started early on with Matt DelSignore and then there was also Dave Easton, who ended up transferring to UPenn after freshman year. The three of us, Harry had pulled out as like program assistants. Harry didn't just make sure people got recruited. He was so smart in the way that he looked at people and saw where is this person gonna fit in the places where we need support.
And so he made us each program assistants and we learned to do Selector right away. So when he was GM/PD, Dave, Matt and I were all doing a couple days of selector a week along with other stuff. That we then, I think after a semester, he figured out, this is where I need everybody to go.
Jana: Yeah. I think I drew the short straw because if you guys were already in programming, Harry didn't have anyone for production, so I remember him making me production director in this little tiny room. That had a window into the studio and a window into the office, and it was just dingy and there was a reel to reel and I was basically handed a razor blade and a roll of scotch tape and learned how to do my thing in there.
JAG: Who taught you the production stuff with the scotch tape and the razor blades? Jana?
Jana: Some of it was I remember Dustin. Dustin Everett was in there too, and I know he did a lot with the public file, but I think he had some experience in that as well. And it's such an antiquated process these days, but I remember at the time thinking how cool it was that you could literally cut or slice a piece of tape and tape it back together and make it flow and sound like perfect.
Beth: Another one of the things, Jana, I remember one of our other duties as program assistants was to call around to help fill the schedule. And I remember, I think the first time that I called you and talked to you and I was like, hi, can I speak to Janna? And you immediately corrected me. It's JANA like Dana.
Jana: I still do that. I still do that in my daily life.
Beth: In my defense, the only person I knew who spelled their name the same way is you said it Janna. So now whenever I see it, I call people Jayna.
Jana: And I remember getting a phone call once. I think it was Spike Eskin and Pass the mic. And DJ Steel, Steve Selleny, were all in charge of filling the schedule.
And they had called me one night and they wanted me to do the 4:00 AM which had to have been the worst. I'm okay with 2:00 AM. Half the time I'm awake till 2:00 AM anyway, but by 4:00 AM I wanna be in bed. And they were begging me to come in and Steve goes, Just eat some peppermints. Peppermints, keep you awake.
I'll never forget it. And now if I'm dragging at work at three o'clock in the afternoon, I'll go pop like an Altoid because of that stupid thing that he had said about peppermints keeping me awake for 4:00 AM overnight.
Beth: Wait, Jayna, what was your first shift?
Jana: It was definitely an overnight and I came in, I actually came in after two people, one of them being Rich Davis and the other one being Marty Dundics. And I had the biggest crush on Marty, and so I was happy to go in for that shift all the time. And it was fun, like even if that beginning shift was 2:00 AM just running the board, it was the interaction with the person before you and their encouragement to get you going. Like it just, it made 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM worthwhile.
Beth: I'm laughing cuz my, when you said 4:00 AM is the worst. So that was my first shift, 4:00AM to 7:00 AM Sunday mornings. So I had to finish up Saturday night and then be up at four and I was always letting Rabbi Rappaport in the station for his 7:00 AM Jewish Sounds show.
JAG: Oh man. I remember having to cover the shift before him as well, and it's just such an awkward like transition from the rabbi and the gospel show after it. How did you two become such fast friends and such good friends, aside from you butchering Jana's name Beth.
Jana: I forgave her?
Beth: A forgiving heart. That's important.
Jana: I think we all just became fast friends because we had this thing in common and we had this place that we all wanted to go to between classes and on the weekends. And I think for me, I had a little bit of that home sickness thing too. I was terribly excited to be on my own and meeting new people and doing my own things.
But I'm one of those people who, I like to have a schedule. I like to have something to do. I like to know where I'm gonna be and who I'm gonna be with. So to have the station as that sort of thing to hold me down, and to have other people there who were as equally enthusiastic and excited about what we were doing.
It just fit and I think we all just became a really tight knit group really fast.
Beth: And I think part of it is because we had to spend so much time there. So I remember when I was saying that Harry tracked us into different roles by second semester. I would go to the music meetings every week.
And I think you went too, Jana, right?
Jana: Yep.
Beth: So there was like the music meeting every week to listen to new stuff. And I remember early on at one of the first meetings it was our first introduction to Britney Spears with some Baby One more time. And I remember, I think my comment was like, ew, what is her voice sound like?
Like this, her voice is so annoying. And I pretty much destined myself never to be put into programming. I think with that one comment. And Jana, you were production director by second semester and I was development director, so I had to be there trying to get sponsorships. So we just spent a lot of time being at the station to do our jobs, which I think naturally makes you closer friends is the people you're spending all your time with.
Jana: I think we bonded. I mean we had the best music and I think we bonded over that. And I'll talk trash on Britney Spears with you any day, Beth. I know Jag, it's the unpopular opinion, but Team Christina. But to go along with that I remember being in the production room and we had those white mail bins.
Where if you got a lot, so in that bin was all these like CDs of like things that we would use for beds and they were just like a whole ton of crap. And I remember in there finding No Scrubs by TLC.
JAG: Oh my God.
Jana: And I remember playing it and being like, why is this in the bed bin? Like why is this in the bin of crap music? This is a hit! And I took it to Matt and we were listening to it. And like to this day, I'm pretty sure Beth and I can quote every lyric to that song.
Beth: A hundred percent.
Jana: That song blew up. Like Matt knew that it had to go into the rotation. Like we all were just so excited about what we were doing and yeah, we were not forced to be there, but like we were there all the time, but we wanted to be there and like we had the best era, I think. Not to toot own horn. It's my personal opinion.
JAG: If you go back I linked to it in his episode, but Matt Del Signore has a Spotify playlist of Summer 99. That was right after our freshman year. And if you look back on the amazing songs, you mentioned, TLC and Britney, Backstreet Boys, NSync, that was all coming in right around that time.
That was the summer of, I Want It that Way from the Backstreet Boys. These huge hits.
Jana: Everything. And then Nelly and Ja Rule.
Beth: I was gonna say, as far as Spotify playlists go, we have another Spotify playlist that I think is all encompassing of our entire time in school. I think it, it might kick the Summer 99's playlist, butt.
JAG: Send me the link and I'll put it in the show notes. Beth.
Jana: It's the Batcave Bangers playlist because I think as alluded to in Matt's podcast, our house senior year was the Batcave. It's the music that encompasses 98 to 2002. And man, like it's so weird to hear those songs coming back around now. Like hearing them sampled in music now it makes me feel old, but it makes me feel like yes, like we were playing the best music that we could have been on that stage.
JAG: This new crap sucks. They've gotta sample the stuff from back in our day. Exactly.
Jana: Yep.
Beth: It's not just the samples, it's all the stuff on TikTok cuz we were, I was driving my oldest, who's 13, to dance a couple weeks ago. We were playing the Batcave Bangers playlist cuz she likes to show me that she knows some of the songs. And Ms. Jackson is on and she in Perfect time, hits her. Woo. And I was like,
I was like, how do you know that? And she's TikTok. So all of this music that we listen to, all these like teenagers are hearing. Because it's all on TikTok.
JAG: So you alluded to this a moment ago. I always ask our guests about the different things you did at the station.
Beth, your first role after being a programming assistant was as development director. And we've hit on this in previous episodes from this timeframe, but we were self-funded at that point. We weren't University funded. That had to be a very stressful job trying to land sponsorships and make money for the radio station.
Beth: It was definitely a challenge, but I feel like the skills that I got learning to cold call places and to try and just get some sponsorships on the air, those are really good skills that I've probably carried with me my whole life. Just that confidence to toot your horn to somebody new.
And I'll be honest, like I don't remember too many of the sponsors that we got. I remember always it was like consistent was Holy Shirt. We were always running sponsorships from them. So from freshman to sophomore year, I moved into being the VP of business. And that year I was VP of business.
Matt was GM, Tracey Chilandese, who's now Tracey Turner, was our promotions director. And I feel like we did a lot of amazing stuff that year. My biggest contract, I think for sponsors where we had Peppinos Pizzeria, where we were doing these really. Small sponsorship things of like $600 or $700.
I remember doing a $5,000 contract with Peppinos and we ran a promo for Monday Night Football, so we would give like a pizza and a two liter bottle of Coke from Peppinos away every Monday. All those winners got entered in like a bigger prize for Super Bowl Sunday and then Jana. Isn't that the Shake Your Bon Bon for Ricky Martin?
Jana: I was just gonna say at a shopping town mall. Yes. I don't even remember what we modeled it after, but we got people up on stage in the middle of shopping town mall to literally shake their bon bons to Ricky Martin. And I forgot what the prize was there, but I remember being 18 years old and thinking there's a surprisingly large amount of people here for a college radio station. But we weren't just a college radio station. And I think that was the point.
Beth: I was listening to the episode about the Ostrom house. I went abroad the fall of junior year, so I missed the transition.
JAG: Lucky you.
Beth: I know, hearing all the direct details of how that started. By the time I came back in January. Things were rolling and it was still disgusting, but I don't think it was quite as disgusting as it was in the fall. So when I came back, I just had my air shift, but senior year I was public service director. So did a few different things throughout my four years.
JAG: She's teeing you up, Jana, for your roles. The station starting as program director and then it was our junior year in the house. There were some vacancies in the top leadership at the station. I took over as VP of ops. You took over as program director and we had some struggles that year.
Jana: Oh my God. That year. Listening to Ferracane's podcast, when he said that house was basically a beep hole.
He couldn't have said it better. That was a tumultuous year. Yeah. I remember. Everything was smooth and running great until we got to that house, and that house was just dirty and depressing. And I remember as senior leadership, I was like, okay, we gotta at least clean this place up because no one's gonna wanna come here like we did in Watson.
No one's gonna wanna gather and have that same sense of camaraderie. I remember getting into that house and the first thing that we arranged was a cleaning party. For me, I think my unofficial title at Z89 for all four years was the unofficial party director because everything, in some sense, in some way, form turned into a party, but we had to have a cleaning party. Literally sweeping the floors and someone had to go in and clean the bathroom because it was like, great.
The University handed us a place to run a radio station, but it was like, here's a house where there could have been people living off the street. Have fun. And so we did that.
JAG: They could have at least cleaned it for us for what tuition costs.
Jana: Oh, it was just, it was miserable. So I think that was really tough in the beginning was just trying to get everyone to want to be there like we used to.
But we did, we had this nice little living room that we cleaned up and we dragged some chairs and we used to sit in the tables and have our weekly meetings. And I remember we had, once the studios were built upstairs, we would do some music meetings up there for, my time as PD. And I feel like at that point, that was when I started to realize that younger classmen were starting to really pick up their feet and get involved too.
Like I remember Sam Orlando being fully involved in music meetings. And Josh Wolff coming in, and I knew like junior year is that midpoint, right? Where you're like, oh, my time is starting to go on the decline, but here's these. Awesome kids, right behind me who are ready to take over, and that to me was a really good feeling.
And then senior year, honestly, I don't remember. I think I'm just again, unofficial party planning got to my head entirely way too much. I think, like Beth, I stayed involved with staying on air and keeping. Involved with meetings and whatnot. But I did take a little bit of a step back senior year just to enjoy life.
JAG: I think we all did that, all three of us a little bit. And in the episode with Harry and Dena, where Dena talked about giving so much of herself to the station through receivership her junior year, that her senior year she had to step back and I'm not gonna compare what we went through to what she went through, cuz G-d, she went through a lot of stuff that she never should have had to go through.
But for all three of us in that house, and we said you know what? We've given so much of our time at the station. To your point, Jana, we had known that there were classes in 03 and 04 and 05 behind us that we're leaving the station in good hands. We were always there on call to help if need be, but we decided, hey, you know what?
We're gonna be involved with the station, but we also want to enjoy our last year as college kids too. I think that's true for all three of us.
Jana: I think that's what it was, and I think I had this sense of guilt about that for a while because, there's so many people. With the station who are still so involved to this day, and I felt guilty about not being one of them, but for me, I think it was what I needed.
And you're right, it's not to compare my experience to anyone else's, but I think part of me was so involved for so long that I just needed to live out the rest of my college days, just doing what I needed to do, which was partly going to class, and then partly enjoying my time.
JAG: Sidling up to the bar at Darwin's. RIP.
Beth: So one thing that I thought of that I feel like we have to share, to again, toot our horns a little bit for things we did senior year when Leah and Brett and Peterman were on talking about 9/11. We did do a campus-wide thing to get toiletry donations. That was like, I feel like the one big public surface thing that we did that whole year, that we put those bins out in a lot of the dorms to collect soap and toothbrushes and all this stuff that we then put into bags for them to take down to the first responders at ground zero at the World Trade Center. This was, I think, JAG, we were telling you on text, about the quest to get the butcher paper.
JAG: Remind me and explain that to our listeners.
Jana: I love this.
Beth: We knew we needed these big boxes to put out in all of the dorms, but you, it's like you can't write on a cardboard box.
Nobody notices what it says if you're writing. So I'm like, okay. I've gone to summer camp every year. All of our big banners were always on butcher paper. Okay? So we've gotta find some butcher paper to cover the front of the boxes with. Then we can label them brightly and distinctly so people will know what they are.
Now, if we needed it, we would just go on Amazon and order it and you'd have it right away. We couldn't do that then. So I'm like, okay. I think that we should start running to some of the grocery stores. And seeing if like the paper they would wrap your like deli stuff with yeah. Let's go grocery store and see if someone will give us some.
And we went a couple of places. I think we stopped by Wegman's and we ended up at the Price Chopper on Erie Boulevard. Price Chopper. And the guy was so nice. He was like, yeah, sure. And he just gave us that giant big roll of white butcher paper.
Jana: Yeah. He didn't even cut off like some pieces. He gave us the whole roll. We could have wrapped 10 cows in that.
Beth: Yep. So we used it to cover all of the boxes. I think somewhere some pictures exist of what we had put together and we, we did I think we could feel really good that the station was doing something for the community. So now we're left with this giant roll of butcher paper and we're like, oh, I wonder. I'm really stupid cause I realize food safety, of course they wouldn't want it back now. But then I'm like, okay, we didn't use all this. We should go take it back to them. They're like no, we're not gonna do that. So what happens with the butcher paper? We start taping it up on our walls in our living room, in the batcave. And and every party that we had, or really pretty much at all times, anything that got said that was worth remembering our senior year got written up on the paper on the walls.
JAG: That's right. The big giant quote wall.
Jana: The quote walls for every party. And here's the kicker to that story. I collected them. So I would tear them down and roll them up. And then the next party, a new piece of paper would go up in the wall. And after graduation, I took them all home and they were just like rolled up nicely in a tube in my closet for years.
And then one day my mom decided that she was going to cut them all up into nice little quotes for me.
JAG: Mom?!
Jana: My mother.
Beth: I'm sure she was horrified at some of the things that were written on there.
Jana: I can't even imagine. It was the nicest gesture because I had this neat little pile that I could then like type up and send it out to everybody, but I'm going through them and I'm like, my mother just read this and she doesn't necessarily know who wrote it, but my mother just read this.
JAG: I'm sure some of those quotes were from me. I'm sure.
Beth: Pretty much a guarantee. I'm thinking.
JAG: Let me ask you about the batcave because Matt referenced it and I've referenced it in previous episodes, you two and Matt and Doug Dempsey and your other roommates. Tell me who was there and like how this came to be that you ended up in this house off campus and it became I don't know direction Z 89 East.
Jana: Yeah, there were six of us in that house and it was half Z 89. People and half not, but the half "nots" were Z 89 members by proxy, Z 89 adjacent. . They listened to the station and they helped us out with events like they were just as much a part of it as we were. It was just the place and it was huge.
And it was at the end of Ostrom, just down the block from that crappy dump of a radio station that we had. And it was like our refuge, we went there and we had a party and we gathered there on 9/11 to cry and just be with each other. And we'd go there after kickball games and after ice skating.
And it was, yeah, we had parties, but it was just it. I think it was the gathering spot for the station outside of the station.
JAG: I'd completely agree with that. Let's turn to after graduation. Beth, I'll start with you. Take me through your path and life since graduation.
Beth: I had always worked at summer camp every summer.
I was never going for internships, but I knew I was a TRF major and music industry minor, and when I left I knew I wanted to work for record label. And one of our alums, Adam Eisenberg, towards the end of senior year, had hooked me up with some interviews at Arista, with their VP of promotion for that assistant position.
And I went for one interview and then it was like delayed. I went on another interview. And I think I went for the third interview. And that interview was on a Friday. And basically got asked if I could move to New York over the weekend, essentially at start Monday. And I had already signed a contract to work at my summer camp, and I have one of the things that, kept me at Z89, I'm a pretty loyal person.
And so for me, I couldn't leave my camp in the lurch the day before I was supposed to report, so I ended up not taking that job. I wonder sometimes if my career path would've been totally different if that had happened, but after the summer I moved up to New York with no job and used my cold calling skills that I'd gotten as development director.
I went online and figured out who are all the promo people in the record industry. And I emailed every single one of them cover letters and resumes saying I would basically do anything. And I got two responses. There was one woman, I can't remember her name from Universal, who was like, how did you get my email and why are you writing to me?
JAG: Oh, geez.
Beth: And then I also got a response from this guy, Ed Green at Capital Records, who was like, you got a lot of guts. I wanna meet with you. And so I ended up Interning at Capital for a few months and then a job opened up. They were under EMI and I got a job as an assistant to the CFO for Virgin and Blue Note records.
So I was in that position for a couple months and then moved into a position in production where it was very exciting. I got to enter the data for what color ink should be going in all of the liner notes and what type of jewel cases should be used when they package the CDs.
JAG: Now kids a Jewel case. No, I'm kidding. Go ahead.
Beth: You're right. Needless to say, that was mind numbing. And I realized while I was there that my favorite days of work were when the guy in the legal department would bring his preschooler in for a few hours and I'd basically babysit. And I knew, like I think I needed to be doing something that was a little bit more service oriented.
Obviously, the world needs music, but I felt like the kind of cutthroat piece of the business and constantly having to scramble to push to the next thing maybe wasn't for me. And after only about a year and a half working in the music industry, I quit my job and I started taking prerequisite classes for a speech pathology graduate program.
Did essentially three years of school and then I've been a speech pathologist ever since. I'm in year 17 in Howard County Public School system in Maryland as a speech pathologist. And I've always worked in early interventions, so in that birth to five community, but mainly preschool aged kids.
JAG: Your speech pathology career is almost old enough to vote at this point. Wow.
But let me turn it over to you, Jana. So tell me about your life after Syracuse.
Jana: Oh, man. I went back home to right outside of Philadelphia and was looking for jobs. And I had heard this inside scoop through the alumni association that.
Rocco Macri and Chris Bungo of Promosuite, were looking for their very first client services representative. And so I applied for that job and I went up to New York for a day with my mom to have that interview. And I had that job by July, so I guess I was home by May and then I was up in New York by July.
So I worked with them for, I wanna say two or three years. And it was a lot of fun. I met so many different people in the radio industry and all over the country, but it, I think what it did was fuel my want to actually be in radio. And not for the company just on the outside.
JAG: It's almost the opposite of what happened to Beth.
Jana: Yeah, completely. See, our whole story is opposite, but maybe that's why we get along so well. So I left Promosuite a couple years in and kinda was figuring out what I wanted to do. There was an open position at Hot 97 in New York with Emmis that I applied for, and fortunately did not get that. So I spent some time bartending and waitressing just to pay the bills.
And I guess I wanna say maybe a year later, an opening at one of the sister stations, a rock station, which was my Roots, sister station to Emmis, that opened up. And so I applied for that. And once again, I didn't get it, but story of my life, I got the second best. So the position was for promotions director.
I didn't get it, but they allowed me to be on their street team doing promotions, which to me was not exactly what I wanted to do, but I saw that as my foot in the door. Sure. And so I took it and I worked with the street team and I went to all the different events and I was out there hustling. And sure enough, when the time came for the position to open up, It was mine, so I spent almost like four years at Emmis working for the Rock station, but I did help with Hot 97 and putting on Summer Jam and their different events. And then I wanna say 2010, 2011, I'm not quite sure.
WRXP, the Rock station got sold. So they got bought out by a news station and I got the the message that they were gonna be doing interviews to see who would stay on. So I quick Googled the person I was gonna be interviewing with, and I found out that they went Syracuse. So I turned on my best orange charm.
And long story short, I did get to stay on, so I did promotions for the news station. The news station switched to rock, which was very short-lived, and so right before, Hurricane Sandy. So 2012, right before Hurricane Sandy, I was unemployed. So rode out the storm quite literally, and through one of my contacts at that news station, I got a new position as the digital content manager for Greater Media in New Jersey. They're now owned by Beasley Media.
So I did that for a couple of years, and then I just sat there thinking, I don't want to get bought again. I don't want my station to flip again. I felt that every time I got a business card. Two months later, that job was gone. Oh, like I, it got to the point where I was like, don't make me business cards.
I don't want them. And so I had learned in my digital content role how to do some advertising, how to do some online advertising, which wasn't super big in radio at the time. It really wasn't. We had a website and there was maybe one ad on that website, but I had learned how to place that ad, and so I found a job doing just that at a travel company, really.
So I left radio in 2013, did some advertising for a business-to-business travel company, and then this past June, I took that knowledge and jumped to a political advertising firm in DC, where I am their senior digital campaign manager, and I've been running multimillion dollar political campaigns.
JAG: So I've gotta imagine last fall was pretty busy for you.
Jana: They spent all my time in this office campaigning for the Stop to flavor tobacco in California. The governor, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin, a Senate race in New Hampshire. And I found myself sitting in my DC office on election night watching Scott MacFarlane predict the polls. So it's been a wild ride in and out of radio, but I feel like when one door closes, another door opens and I found a new opportunity, and I think this one fits for right now.
JAG: So are you working remotely or you're in DC?
Jana: I'm remote but I go down to DC every once in a while, so for election night I did go down. Yeah, it's a two hour train ride. It's a 40 minute flight, so it's easy for me.
JAG: You're in Philly or New York right now?
Jana: I'm in New Jersey, north Jersey.
JAG: Okay. Got it. Since you mentioned Scotty MacFarlane, wanna bring it back to Z89. All the different roles you had at JPZ, Jana, what lessons do you feel like you took from your time there that have served you well in this wild ride of a career you've had to this point?
Jana: For me, I think it was, I learned how to be adaptable, right? I think in the very beginning, you've heard the stories. We had crappy equipment or we had, not enough people to fill a shift and you learn to put on many different hats.
And then, I think for me, when one opportunity wasn't quite there, I adapted to do the backup role, if that makes sense. And. I think the phrase that I always used to take away in life is, that phrase where they say, Jack of all trades, master of none. I don't think that's a negative thing.
I think Z89 taught me how to do so many different things in so many different situations. Some of them good and some of them bad, and I think you learn how to tough it out and power through and make yourself ready for the next venture.
JAG: Beth, you mentioned having that fearlessness of cold calling people. Any other lessons you took with you from the radio station?
Beth: I think the whole spirit of collaboration, right? Of being part of a team and some of those leadership skills too. The work that I do now, I am working collaboratively all the time with special educators and occupational therapists, and everybody has their different personalities and you have to know how to operate with all those different people and to make sure that there's not tension, that everybody's feeling like they're able to do the best job that they can. And then there's one other little thing. I still remember the first air check that I had with Harry.
JAG: You were Skylar at that point on the year, weren't you?
Beth: I was, and I don't even know how that happened. I feel like I was like, somebody tell me what my name should be. And someone was like, Skyler. And it's okay, sure, why not? There was like absolutely no thought in that whatsoever. But I remember Harry telling me, when you are on the air, when you put that mic up, smile when you talk, smile when you say what you're saying on the air.
And it was the tiniest little thing, but I feel like it carries me through. Almost any, when you're around your friends, no matter what, you're smiling. But all of my professional interactions when I've had to lead trainings for staff within the county that I work in, I really think about that there.
They can see me, but like you really can hear the difference in someone's voice when they're smiling.
Jana: You can,
Beth: I think it instantly puts people at ease. So when you're, again, with my work, we're dealing with families who are concerned about their children's development and are worried that their child has autism or another disability.
If we are a calm and bright presence by just not having that resting, sad face and sad voice. It helps put people at ease. And so it's the tiniest little thing, but I feel like it's such an important one and it's stuck with me no matter what I'm doing.
JAG: I always ask our guests for a funny story from the radio station and I feel like we've already hit on several.And I always give you, the head is up ahead of time we're gonna ask you this question. Jana is already giggling, so is there a story you wanna share?
Jana: No, cause mine was gonna be the butcher paper story. I have so many funny things that happened. I remember rollerblading down the hallway of Watson one night with Jared Fialko. Like I just, weird things.
But I guess there's one little thing that sticks in my mind, and this one's super obscure, but my senior year of high school, right before graduation, we were allowed, assuming grades were good enough, to take an internship for the last four weeks of school. So I took an in internship at WPLY in Philadelphia, Y100. And we were like the little modern rock station, and I did promotions and so I got to drive their vehicles, which at the time was the Volkswagen Beetle, like the new Beetles, the super round ones.
I got to go to all these different events. And there was a competitor in the market, which at the time was WIP. They still exist in Philly, but they were a rock station and their vehicle was like the big yellow van with the stripes, and it just looked rock, right? I'm alt rock and they're rock. So I'm the little brown haired five four girl driving the Volkswagen Beatle.
And the guy who drove that van had like bleached blonde hair and big earrings. And we used to see each other at events and he would always kinda lean out of the van and glare at me or like he'd walk past our table and just give me dirty looks. And I'm like what did I do? Like I didn't know.
And so that was that. I went to college, everything's good. So I remember walking into the station one day and I was wearing my Y100 shirt and in the back of the room near, past where Matt's office would've been. Harry's office would've been, was this guy with blonde spiky hair and hoop earrings. And he looks at me and he goes, YOU!
And I was like, oh my God. So that guy was Spike. Spike Eskin, who was a couple years above us, but he was the guy who used to terrorize me in my high school internship. So I guess, I don't know what we did, but we put it past each other and we had a good laugh about it and I was like, you know what? I was like, if that guy can be here, I'm doing something right.
Like we finally met on middle ground and it just cracked me up cuz the world is such a small place.
JAG: And Spike has gone to Great Successes and Sports Radio in Philly, right? Yep.
Jana: And his dad is Howard Eskin, who's super well known in Philly. So yeah, He had his own radio career and we just happened to meet in some odd path in the middle and meet up again in Syracuse. So that to me was really funny.
JAG: Beth, any other funny stories we haven't covered yet?
Beth: So I know you guys know what story I'm gonna tell because I'm always surprised that. Nobody had heard about it. I think it must have happened so early on in our first semester freshman year.
Jana: I do think you're the only one who knows this story, but I love the fact that you bring it up at every opportunity.
JAG: This is before Jana and I were even there, if it's the story I think you're gonna tell,
Beth: it's like nobody actually knew was there when it happened. Except for like me and Matt, and I'm sure, I feel like Harry will remember it, that there was this guy who was not a student. And I'm not sure how he ended up doing shifts at the station.
He was not a student and I feel like on air he went by Keith Hernandez, but I don't wanna say his name cause I'm scared if he's gonna listen to the podcast somehow. And every time I would walk in the station, this guy would be there. Like, no matter what hour of the day he was always there. And sometimes in the production room and somewhere in the station he was there.
And it got to the point where Matt and I were like, is this guy like living in the station? is his coat laid out under the counter in the production office? And is he sleeping there? And then one day he's in the production office, I think when I was doing a shift and I watch him take one of those big blocks of like Cabot cheese, like not the pre sliced version, just an actual block of cheese, block.
Proceeds to unwrap it and then just go at this block of cheese, like it's a candy bar, take actual bites outta a block of cheese.
And I've never seen anything like it before. I've never seen anything like it since, but it's a memory that stands out in my mind.
Jana: What did you do? Did he know that you saw him do this?
Beth: I don't know. I don't know that he was like socially aware of a bunch of what was going on around him. But I have to tell one other again. Oh God. I have to tell one other story. That is not a time from when we were at the station. This is a banquet story that is like my favorite, hilarious banquet story.
JAG: Please.
Beth: I live just outside Baltimore. Matt DelSignore was living in DC. And Jeffy K was down in the DC area. And so we're coming up for Banquet and I had booked a flight so that I could fly with Matt. And so we're all meeting at the airport and we're on the same flight and I always fly Southwest, so like I'm not used to the assigned seats.
We're not sitting together cuz we're not on Southwest and we're assigned our seats. We get on the plane and Matt was sitting I think somewhere towards the front and then I'm somewhere else and Jeff K is somewhere else. We have a nice relaxing, pretty short flight up to Syracuse. I get off the plane, Jeffy K gets off the plane.
We're like standing around waiting for Matt. We're like, where is he? And so I call him, I'm like, Matt, where are you? We're waiting for you. He goes, I'm in DC. Shut up. You're not in dc. You got on the plane with us. Where are you? He's Oh no, I'm in DC. Somehow or another, Jeffy and I had both missed the fact that I think there was a flight crew that needed to get on our flight, and so they removed Matt from the plane.
Booted him off and booked him on a later flight in the day. So he really was still in DC. Jeffy and I had both gotten to Syracuse and we're waiting for Matt to go ahead over to the Sheraton and Matt is still in DC.
Jana: I remember that.
Beth: So he didn't get in until later that night. And I just kept thinking like, how did you not text us?
Like as soon as he got off the plane, Hey guys, like
JAG: I'm, I've been removed from the flight.
Jana: You should have your phone in airplane mode.
Beth: I don't think I'd done that yet. Probably by the time he got booted.
Jana: Matt got in late. Matt didn't even show up till Fagans till after 10 o'clock and he was pissed.
Beth: Oh yeah,
JAG: he was pissed. And anybody on this, listen to this podcast, who knows Matt. Matt is always even keel. Cool as a cucumber. I can probably count in 25 years of knowing Matt, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen him get upset. That'd be one of them.
Jana: That was legit one of them he was so mad about. And I'm sure he was fine and polite with getting off the plane, but oh, he was probably fuming otherwise.
JAG: Any other relationships of folks that either one of you have kept over the years that you know because of Z89, either classmates of ours or alumni or before or after us that come to mind?
Beth: I feel like I've always stayed in best touch with Jana and with Matt, and I feel like Jag, you and I over the years, like to different degrees.
I still remember meeting you when you had a layover for a flight in Baltimore.
JAG: Yes!
Beth: Early on when you and Ellen were dating.
JAG: I think so, yeah.
Beth: Uh huh. But I feel like our crew from our class has been the constants in my life. Matt was a grooms made, or bridesman, whatever you wanna call it in my wedding.
And just those relationships are so important over the years. And like you said, when we started, you can go so long without talking to people. Jana and I just got to meet for brunch when she was in DC in December. And I don't think we had seen each other in person.
Jana: In at least 10 years?
Beth: Close to that. Yeah.
Jana: It was at least 10 years. And I will say, Beth, that was probably the best hug I have ever had. And I think, yeah, there's so many people that we're still very close to you, but I think, and this is just true in life in general, and it's another thing I think I feel guilty about sometimes, but like being an adult is hard.
I think in my mind, I think I'm still 21 and I'm still living in the batcave, and life is great, but the fact of the matter is, my best friends in the whole world are scattered all over the country, in different time zones. Some have kids, some don't. It's really hard. It's really hard to make schedules match and to be able to carve out that time to keep that relationship going.
And I think maybe I sometimes don't try as hard as I should, but I will say that I think because we spent such great times together and tough times in four years, the greatest four years. It's always really easy to pick back up right where you left off. And we have our little chat groups and we have Facebook, which helps keep some of us abreast of what's going on in our lives, but we always just pick right back up where we left off.
JAG: I do wanna say Jana in, three or four months of putting this podcast together. A text from you is something that's always gonna stick with me. You paid me the highest compliment I think anybody could pay me on this podcast when, as I'm sure is the case with every other class in 50 years, we have a group thread of five of us from the class of 02,o, which the three of us and Matt DelSignore and Brett Bosse.
And since we've been releasing the podcast episodes, that group text has fired back up. And Jana said, thank you for doing the podcast, because it's really gotten us to reconnect and chat more often than we had been in previous years. And you just warmed my heart with that text, Jana. So thank you.
Jana: It's the truth and I think what you're doing is great and to listen to the podcast and just even hear the voices of people I haven't talked to in a long time is so great. And to find out little tidbits of life that I never knew before. It's really awesome and it makes me really excited to want to go back and see everybody and to just really try a little bit harder to keep the communication flowing because that's where we all started, right? With communications. And I think I just, I want more of that and this is a really great kickoff point for it.
JAG: Well said. This is gonna air in the summertime, but full disclosure, we are recording this early February, about three, four weeks before Banquet.
So I will say and put a timestamp on this. I cannot wait to see the both of you in person, give you both a big hug and Syracuse.
Jana: I'm so excited.
JAG: And thank you so much for coming on and doing the podcast today.
Jana: Thanks for having us this is so much fun.
Beth: This was awesome. We can't wait to see you guys.