Brian Lapis refers to himself as the "court jester" of WJPZ, but in today's interview, you'll hear the true passion he has for the radio station. In fact, he starts by telling us about his biggest regret from his time at Syracuse - not joining Z89 sooner.
Brian actually came in as a freshman working for Y94FM in Syracuse, before really becoming more involved with WJPZ in the second half of his career. This was in part thanks to some peer pressure from some folks who would go on to do very big things in their own careers.
Lippy talks about doing engineering off-air, including a great story from the top of Day Hall with Scott Meach. Eventually he came to be Chief Announcer at the station in addition to his on-air work.
Following graduation, his radio career took him from Hartford to Philadelphia to Providence. But he was simultaneously exploring another career route - television meteorology. Thanks to some advice from classmate Dave Roberts, Brian became certified in broadcast meteorology, and joined WWLP-TV in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1996. And he's been there ever since.
WJPZ's favorite "Weather Entertainer" takes us through a day in the life of a television meteorologist in 2022, before we circle back to the many lessons learned at Z89.
And you know I had to ask Lippy for some of his favorite funny stories from the station. You won't want to miss those!
Join Us in Syracuse 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. Syracuse has a reputation for being gray, 300 plus days out of the year, but nobody in our alumni association has a sunnier disposition than today's guest, and he has known by many nicknames. He's known as Brian B. Wild to some folks. He's known as Sweet Lippy Love to others.
You may know him as the meteorologist and weather entertainer at WWLP TV in Springfield, Massachusetts. Brian Lapis, welcome to the podcast.
Lippy: Hey, JAG Great. Really great. Hey, hey, podcast. I've gotta get into the habit of saying, Hey podcast or good podcast, instead of saying, Hey, radio or good radio.
JAG: That's exactly the case when Friedman and I call each other. We, used to always say, broadcaster, when we pick up the phone. Now I've started saying podcaster.
Lippy: I love that! Fantastic! Our JPZ alums are constantly evolving.
JAG: As with the times. There are so many things I wanna ask you about. I'm gonna start at the beginning. How did you end up at Syracuse?
How did you get involved with the station? What was it like getting started?
Lippy: You know, it's funny. When you sent me that list of questions about memories, the things that pop up in my mind are often the regrets that I have of things that I didn't do when I was at Syracuse. So one of my biggest regrets was not actively getting involved at WJPZ early on. I got involved in professional radio when I was a teenager. I worked at WILI FM in Willimantic, Connecticut, my hometown, as a 15 year old. I think I started as an internship there, and then when I turned 16 or 17, I had a weekend air shift. So I kind of thought I was pretty good.
I wasn't very good, but I figured, hey, I'm going to Syracuse University. Great communications school. There are radio stations in Syracuse, New York. I'm gonna send out my tape to all of these different radio stations in Syracuse, and luckily enough, I got a call the summer before I went to school this, so this is the summer of 1987, probably late summer, from a guy by the name of Jeff Brown, who was the program director at Y94 FM, which at the time was the giant in Syracuse. I mean, they had a 17 or 18 share, 12+ in Syracuse. They're owned by a great company by the name of New City Communications. And I took that gig and just for hahas, I went to the WJPZ informational session as a freshman.
And for whatever reason, I talked with Kevin Martinez briefly. I'd sent them a tape and they never got it . So I kind of thumbed my nose at WJPZ at that point. And there were some, I think that in 87, 86, they were going through a little bit of tumult or coming out of some tumult of some sort. So I was like, you know what? I'm not gonna do this. I am gonna go and work weekends at Y94 FM, which was fine. But now hindsight, I wish I had gotten involved much earlier with WJPZ because those are my people for sure.
JAG: Yeah.
Lippy: And we can talk more about that later. But anyhow, I ended up, after much, hassling and pitching from two friends of mine. When I was a freshman, I lived in Sadler Hall when I was a freshman.
JAG: Me too. There you go.
Lippy: All right. Sixth floor, by the way.
JAG: Fifth for me, but it was close.
Lippy: All right. Anyhow, two guys who were sports folk at WJPZ, worked in the Sadler snack bar. Scott Cordishi and Howie Deneroff. Now Howie is huge. The guy is a sports God. And I remember I had this memory of Howie Deneroff shaking his spatula at me and going, Brian, when are you gonna go over to WJPZ?
JAG: Wow.
Lippy: And I didn't listen. Here's some advice for all of you young broadcasters out there. When the future executive producer of Westwood One Sports shakes his spatula at you,, listen. So anyway, I finally did get involved with WJPZ junior year, so my junior year, and I went to the information session.
Because I wanted to kind of diversify my skill set. I was interested in sales and a little bit interested in engineering, and I ended up starting at WJPZ on the engineering staff. So people like Dave Roberts and people of that era will often talk about this weird kid that would come in and clean the heads during an afternoon show, you know, Jim Remeny and probably Hal Rood.
I would come in there, Todd Harris, and clean the heads and check on the equipment. And actually what was cool is that as a student I was able to go up to the transmitter. And there are only a few of us who have been up to the top of Day Hall. Breathtaking. In fact, one of my most clear memories as a student and as a WJPZ broadcaster is Scott Meach and I and the engineering chair, who I don't remember his name anymore, and one of the contract engineer, and I can't remember his name, I think his name was Paul.
We went up to the top of Day Hall to check on the transmitter, and we were in the process, I believe, of evaluating whether or not we needed a new transmitter. And sometime in that era, in the late eighties, early nineties, we did get a new transmitter. But anyway, I remember, to talk about kind of the power of this institution.
I remember Scott Meach and I rode up at the elevator.
JAG: You could only take the middle elevator, as I recall, cuz I was the only one that would go up to the top and get to the transmitter. Right?
Lippy: Correct.
JAG: Needed a key and all that.
Lippy: Yeah. So it was really special. And I remember we were at the top and we were at the door to go outside into the roof and Scott Meach paused and took this breath like, ahh. This is a powerful thing that we were here at this transmitter that this student club owned and operated, and I don't know why that has stuck with me, but that really has stuck with me and I have so much respect for Scott Meach at all the people who have been general managers of our radio station.
Because there is so much responsibility in stewardship in taking care of this institution. Anyway, I thought that was a powerful moment. So anyway, I got on board as the assistant to the engineering director, and that didn't last very long. I mean, I did the thing, but clearly I was a jock and loved being on the radio.
I started as an 11:00 PM to 2:00 AM jock. And then quickly moved into afternoon drive and I actually, the first name that I used on the air was Sweet Lippy Love. And after one or two shifts of that, I thought, you know, this does not lend a lot of credibility. This could be my nickname, but it can't be my air name.
So as a tribute to my favorite boss of all time, Jefferson Ward, who hired me at Kiss 95.7 in Hartford as a college student, and eventually hired me at Q102 in Philadelphia. I changed my name to Jefferson, so that's what I used most of my career at WJPZ.
JAG: I did not know that. Okay.
Lippy: Yeah. Yeah. Jefferson jamming 14 songs in a row on Z89.
JAG: Love it. You still got the voice.
Lippy: I still got it. Although I have no idea of how to work the equipment now. So that's kind of how I got started, and I kind of found my home as the chief announcer my senior year at WJPZ and had a blast doing that.
JAG: Were you still at Y94 at that point, or did they give you pushback or did they say one or the other? How did that play?
Lippy: Interesting story. Yes. The short answer to that question is yes. And back when I started at Y94, I was the only Syracuse University student in the building, I believe. There may have been a newscaster or two at WSYR, which was our AM'er at the time.
JAG: Those of you listen and he's putting his hand over his ear as he says WSYR.
Lippy: Yes. Yep. AM 570 WSYR, the weather station. Anyhow, no, there was no pushback. In fact the Y94 people, Tom Langmeier in particular, who was the operations director there, were very supportive of WJPZ because in no small part, we were taking shares away from 93Q at the time, which was their chief competitor.
So, we got engineering help from Y94 FM and certainly moral support from Y94FM and from that New City cluster, which was two, and then eventually three radio stations.
JAG: So the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Lippy: Exactly. We were definitely stealing some of those fun CHR shares away from 93 Q, which only helped Y94.
JAG: Here I am thinking you're gonna say something to the effect of, you know, they realized that we were training the broadcasters of tomorrow and they wanted to support that. No, you were screwing their competition!
Lippy: Yeah, and I'm sure there was some of that. And I don't mean to speak ill of Y94 because I think that I could have managed my time a little bit better.
It was more that I didn't get involved with WJPZ earlier. The experience of WJPZ, the learning opportunities there were just fantastic. And certainly there were learning opportunities at Y94 FM, but they were different learning opportunities and I just, that is one of my big regrets is not getting involved with WJPZ sooner.
JAG: I understand. I took me until October and November of my freshman year to get involved. And I wish I'd gotten involved in August, so I totally understand.
Lippy: Right?
JAG: So you end up at Q102, legendary, legendary radio station in Philadelphia. Tell me about your career arc of graduating in 91 and where you went from there.
Lippy: Graduated in 91. I didn't spend summers in Syracuse, which I quasi-regret, although I had a really good time working at my summer camp in Connecticut during the summers of my college career and also working at Kiss 95.7 in Hartford during my college career.
JAG: Another big station still is.
Lippy: So I was working for Jefferson Ward at Kiss 95.7 in Hartford the summer before my senior year of college. And then, after I graduated, I was working during my senior year I worked holidays and, when we had vacations at Syracuse, I was working in Hartford for Jefferson. And then the summer that I graduated, I worked for him as well. During that summer, Jefferson left Kiss 95.7 for Q102.
I think he left in September or October or whatever. So he hired me to come down to Q102 in December of 1991, so the December after I graduated, I landed at Q102 and I really wanted to do something in radio station management. I didn't know if it was programming or if it was sales or whatever, but eventually it became clear to me that I was on a programming track.
So Jefferson hired me to be the call out research director and weekend jock at Q102, weekend swing jock. I'm a 22 year old kid managing a staff of 10 people that spent Sunday through Thursday calling people in their homes, playing hooks of music on cassette. And we were, that's how we did our music evaluation.
JAG: Back when radio stations had budgets for research. Those of you on the younger side listening right now, and that's how it was done, you'd call people up and play them 10, 15 seconds of a song. What do you think? Right?
Lippy: Exactly. Yeah. And we asked them a couple of qualitative questions too, I think. But anyway, that was my job. I had to manage those people and collate all of that information. And I'll tell you, it was hard. Because these were all entry level positions. The people that were working for me that they had to call people in their homes and it was telemarketing. And that has not really changed much over the course of the 30 years.
JAG: Although fortunately that might have been before caller ID. So they weren't gonna screen you out before they picked up the phone.
Lippy: Yeah, it was at the dawn of cell phones, so that's true. That's what I did. And I had a blast. I had a great run. Jefferson, my boss, got fired. And within six months after that happened, the company eliminated our callout research department. So I was laid off or marginalized or fired or whatever.
JAG: You got the zig.
Lippy: I got the zig and knock on wood, it has been my only zig in my career. So here's a Wjz story for you. I get fired in Philadelphia and that's scary, by the way.
JAG: Many of us have been there.
Lippy: Yeah, I remember sitting in my car. Geez, if I start my car, it's gonna burn gas and gas costs money and I dunno if I'm gonna have enough money to put gas in my car next week. So anyway, they kept me on part time at Q102, so I was able to do hourly, you know, per diem work at Q102 as a jock filling in and all that sort of good stuff.
And I think within two or three weeks I had another gig. Sharon Goodman, BB Good. World famous WJPZ broadcaster. I was on the phone with her. I don't know how she learned of me getting fired, but she called me and said, Hey, I'm in Providence at Kicks 106. Or she was doing weekends at WZOU. I don't know. She was somewhere in the Boston Providence corridor.
And she said, TJ Knapp, who was the night Jock, 92 Pro FM in Providence, is leaving. Do you want that job? And I said, "Well, yeah!" Somehow she connected me with the PD there. But Sharon Goodman was essential in my survival in the winter of 1995. I think I got laid off in December of 1994 and ended up with this new gig in February of 1995 at PRO FM. So let's hear it for the WJPZ Network.
JAG: Anytime I have been laid off, the first people I hear from are JPZ alumni, and the layoff always happens in December, right in the holidays, by the way.
Lippy: Right? Sucks. So I will forever love BB Good. There are many reasons why we should love Sharon Goodman, but I actually had the honor of delivering the keynote address at the birthday banquet back in 1997, I think, and I mentioned that in my talk, was that we look out for each other here in the WJPZ family, and I will be forever grateful to Sharon Goodman for that help that she gave me in that moment.
JAG: Need to get her on this podcast.
Lippy: Right? Anyway, so I spent a year and a half at 92 Pro FM. Legendary radio station in Providence. I did nights there, had a blast, but already by the time I got fired in Philadelphia in 1994, my career was starting to shift. I was getting bored with radio. And my very good friend Dave Roberts, who was a fellow WJPZ alum, while he was in school at Syracuse, he was also taking classes to become a broadcast meteorologist at Mississippi State. And Dave always had a thing for weather. And after graduating he had some opportunities in radio, on the business side. But he ended up taking a job in Kirksville, Missouri at this tiny little television station doing evening weather in Kirksville, Missouri.. And Dave and I talked every day on the phone.
We were thick as thieves in the early to mid-nineties, and as I became more disfranchised with radio, I thought, wow, I've always been interested in television, always been interested in weather. Didn't really know much about either. Anyway, when I was toward the end of my time in Philadelphia, I started taking classes essentially through correspondence through Mississippi State University and continued that education while I was in Providence.
And then in the summer of 1996, I got my certificate in broadcast meteorology. I've got about 50 some odd credits in meteorology from Mississippi State University. So I started looking for a job. I had a great time in Providence was making no money.
JAG: Well, yeah.
Lippy: It's kind of scary actually. And ended up landing at WWLPTV. My first day was September 30th, 1996. So it's been 26 plus years at my first television job. And, I love living here. I still love television. I don't know that I love it as much as I did in 1996. But it's still a fun way to make a living, and so far so good. They have not kicked me out yet.
JAG: You might be one of the first people I've talked to that has had the same gig the entire time that I've known you, because if you were there in 96, I got to Syracuse in 98, I would've met you then.
And your reputation precedes you because I remember talking to one of the students recently and she introduced herself to me and she said, I'm from Western Massachusetts. Brian Lapis is my weatherman. That was the first thing she said to me.
Lippy: Oh, that must be Maddie from South Hadley!
JAG: It was Maddie. It was Maddie who I'm also gonna try to have on the podcast. Hi, I'm Maddie. I'm from Western Mass. Brian Lapis is my weatherman. That was the first time I'd had a direct conversation with Mattie, which was hysterical.
Lippy: She's an executive at WJPZ. . A proud South Hadleyan. I love that.
JAG: Your job fascinates me, and I wanna come back to WJPZ in a second, but take me through a typical day in your job.
Lippy: Okay. Typical day in my job, I arrive around 2:30 in the afternoon and I like to tell the school kids when I visit schools. My job is a nice mix of science and showbiz. So I start with the science, I get into work and go through email, all that, and I literally write stuff down on a piece of paper.
So I go through, and these days, all of these maps and charts and numbers, it's all publicly available on the internet. So I'll go through a series of forecast maps. I'll take a look at four forecast models that are computer representations of what we think the weather's gonna be like, and those models have maps with illustrations of the atmosphere and different parameters in the atmosphere. So wind and temperature and humidity and precipitation and pressure and all that sort of stuff. And we also have text data that we use with temperature and wind and pressure and all that sort of interesting stuff. So I'll go through all of that.
I do my own forecasting. I process the weather for the next seven days, so today through the next seven days, and I literally write it down on a piece of paper. And that is the foundation for the rest of my day while I'm forecasting, I have little internet video forecasts that I do. I do a couple of those between 2:30 and 4:00.
I've also got two radio stations that I take care of in the afternoon, and then I have to build the graphics. So, usually around four o'clock I'm done updating our internet site and I build the graphics on our graphics computer. A lot of it is just plugging numbers into a template. But there's still some stuff. There's still some creation that happens there. And then I write down a little weather rundown of what graphics I wanna show and put on some makeup. And five o'clock is Showtime.
JAG: Showtime baby.
Lippy: And we do an hour and a half of news. We do a 5:00, 5:30, and 6:00 PM in the early evening, and there's a lot of weather. Our station is very weather centric. Weather still researches as, the number one or number two reason why people watch local news. Not only in our market, but typically universally weather is high on the list. Obviously the environment is much different than it was 26 years ago with weather apps and mobile devices and the internet and all that.
But that's our thing. And then between seven and nine is usually a little light. Unless there's severe weather, but there are other tasks that I do in the background gathering lists of weekend events that we can do, forecast for creating some more graphics, and then we have a 10 o'clock and an 11 o'clock newscast.
And thenI'm done. It's usually about 2:30pm to midnight. That's my day.
JAG: What network affiliation is it?
Lippy: NBC.
JAG: I thought it was nbc. Okay.
Lippy: We have an NBC station and then our digital sub-channel is a CW station.
JAG: Got it. All right. Let me bring it back to JPZ. Give me some lessons that you learned working at the station that you've kind of taken with you throughout your travels and all your gigs, including this, most, I'll say most recent one, cuz it is.
Lippy: Right. The primary thing that I learned from this experience. I really enjoy telling people that they're doing a good job, and I learned how important that was as the chief announcer and as a person who had to critique and teach people how to be DJs, I felt it was important for me to lead with the positive.
You know, the best bosses, you'll have a conversation with them and all you wanna do is work for them.
JAG: Run through that brick wall.
Lippy: Exactly. I remember when I was at Q102 my boss at Q102, he had us so fired up that all of us would, if he said, you know what? The best thing for Q102 is for all of you DJs to go and run and jump off the Walt Whitman Bridge right now, we would've done it.
So I think one of the things that I learned at WJPZ was that if you're in a position where you're leading people, it's best to lead with positive and be encouraging to people and not be negative, and hopefully the people that I worked with as chief announcer and I'm a programming staff, hopefully they came away with that, and that's one of the lessons that I learned was that it was a lot easier to motivate people with positive stuff than it was with negative stuff.
JAG: What do they call it? A crap sandwich? Where if you're gonna do an air check, lead with the positive. If there's something negative that you want to work in, put that in the middle and then finish the positive as the way I had it explained to me.
Lippy: Agreed. I think that's a really good point. And also all of us, you know, and we could talk forever about how remarkable this institution is.
All of us were kids and we were all working together. And it was really remarkable how much patience we all had with each other and how much positivity. And I know I was a mischievous guy. I was definitely the court jester on that senior staff at WJPZ, and I'm sure Henry Ferri and even Hal Rood to a certain extent, were like, oh God, Lippy, shut up!
But I think that there was some trial and error, but we did not make many mistakes at WJPZ. We really didn't. I mean, it's really remarkable how successful we were as these crazy kids. But I think, you know, learning to work with people, you can't learn that in a class. I was a Newhouse student and, you know, there were group projects, but there it's just a whole other level.
When you are in a room and in a meeting as young people with the responsibility, the stewardship of this broadcast license, this institution, and making decisions. So, you know, learning how to ask permission for things, learning how to ask forgiveness for things, learning how to solve problems in real time.
Those lessons, well, I can't think of one in particular. Those lessons were fantastic and things that I'm sure that I use every day today, but certainly the teaching. And learning how to lift people up has been important to me.
JAG: Back to your court jester comment, you're teeing me up for the question that I have been dying to ask you most probably of any guest so far. Give me a funny story or two from your time at the station. That's maybe appropriate for the podcast at least, right?
Lippy: Um, I don't have there, there's a lot, there was a lot of...
JAG: Don't hold out on me, Lippy, don't hold out on me!
Lippy: It's a lot of small, mischievous things. This is terrible, but Beth Gorab, who at the time was Beth Russell, brilliant broadcast talent who now is running some sort of athletic training facility for kids. Beth. Beth Russell is a small person. And this is terrible. But we used to give her a hard time a lot. And I remember picking her up and putting her in a garbage...
We had this big garbage can at the radio station and I remember picking her up and putting her in the garbage can and I don't know why. I think, you know, we were all Rick Wright disciples and Rick would used to tell us all the time about the stories about people getting fired. So Dave Roberts and I would walk into the radio station occasionally, and just fire Beth Russell.
We would say, you're fired. And then we would put her into the trash can. So ridiculous. And Beth was a really good sport and still is a good friend. I haven't seen her in a little while, but, and then there was like lunch with Dave every day. Just about every day, four or five days a week we would have lunch at Kimmel.
JAG: Kimmel Food Court.
Lippy: E xactly. And now it's a food, actually now I think it's like a COVID testing facility or something, but back then it was just a standard dining hall. And we would have lunch over there. So it would be Kendall, Lamar. Adam Shapiro, Dave Roberts, Larry Ross, an assortment of other folk would come up, come along with us, and we would tell the ridiculous stories.
And I would take a salt shaker and pour a little trail of salt on the table. I would say, guys, the road to success and broadcasting is paved with pain! And I would like draw little pictures in the salt on the table. I mean, you had to be there. But a lot of the hilarity was after we graduated, Matt Friedman, Dana Diederle, Dave Roberts and I stayed very close after graduation and we would take trips.
We did a trip to New Orleans over Halloween of 1994 that was just debaucherous. We did a lot of eating. And a lot of drinking. There was a drunken phone call to Rick Wright at two o'clock in the morning. I dunno how we got Rick Wright's home phone number but maybe it was his office phone number.
So I think Rick tells that story of walking into his office on Monday morning and getting a string of messages from the drunk broadcasters in New Orleans.
You know, talk about these small but powerful moments. I remember Dave Roberts, Producing this series of kind of like a Syracuse's Unsolved Mysteries.
He was the news director at the time. Maybe it was one case or a couple of cases of these weird unsolved mysteries in Syracuse. And anyway, this is a big project for Dave and he got permission from Hal Rood, the program director at the time to run this news series during the morning show.
I don't know how he got permission, but he did. So he's putting together this show and he has this piece of audio that just isn't quite right. And I was in the production studio with him, probably just annoying him. And I said, well, you want me to try to edit this thing? And you know, we're 21 years old.
I was a weekend jock, so I hadn't done a lot of tape splicing. . But I knew just enough about tape splicing to give this a shot, back when we literally spliced tape.
JAG: Reel to reel, right?
Lippy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had Otari tape decks in there. I mean, this might have been my third time ever splicing a piece of tape.
So I took his audio and you know, we're gonna grease pencil and cut, and connected it. And I was just like, I said a little prayer and we pressed play and it worked. And I remember both he and I were jumping up and down with joy that this splice was perfect and it was exactly what he wanted. And I think that moment really captures the ebullient ambition and joy that we had as young broadcasters at Z89.
That was just, we had this unlimited ambition and eagerness to make things work. And that was just a moment of, oh, teamwork, we did it!
JAG: I think that is a great place to leave it if anybody listen. Wants to follow you on social. You wanna plug any socials there, Lippy? Sweet Lippy Love?
Lippy: Well, yeah, I'm on Facebook. I don't have a, a tweeter account.
JAG: It's obvious by the way you said it.
Lippy: Right? The 22 News storm team has a tweeter that I use, but I don't do, I don't have a personal tweeting account. Find me on Facebook. It's Brian Lapis on Facebook. But wow. Such a, it is really amazing that this student owned and operated radio station, 50 years, so many eras, 50 years.
This place continues to thrive and it does. I was in there on at Orange Central on Friday afternoon at 5:00, this past fall and all the production studios were full of people. The on-air studio was full of people. The general manager was showing me around and the place was busy. It's different now, but the business is different now.
So that's probably a good thing that Z89 has evolved as the business has evolved. It's just really remarkable and I'm so honored that I have a piece of this history and so proud of all that we have accomplished.
JAG: Thank you so much. We'll talk soon.
Lippy: All. Good radio. And good podcasting.