One of the amazing things about WJPZ is how many of our illustrious alumni actually grew up listening to the radio station. This has been true for decades. Liverpool native Corey Crockett, from the Class of 2015, is no exception.
Upon arriving on campus, Corey quickly got involved with the sports and research departments. He eventually became GM at a pivotal moment for the radio station - the construction of the new studio. FoodWorks was going away, allowing for an expansion of WJPZ and Citrus TV.
For a semester, WJPZ had to broadcast remotely from voice-track studios in Newhouse, while the new station was built. Corey credits folks like Liz Doyon, Rob Crandall, Josh Wolff, Alex Silverman, and Stephen Kurtz for the rapid install of the station while the construction was still being finished. You'll hear the re-launch in this episode, and you can see it on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/wE9wfQZ6TgQ
When the new studio was operational, Corey and his staff had to train a new group of talent who'd never done live radio before. He talks about that.
Like many of us, Corey describes his career path after graduation as "wonky." He spent a few years in radio in Virginia Beach, before getting the itch and moving to New York City. There, he worked in television and dabbled in radio, before getting an opportunity to work for the Audacy (formerly Entercom) Corporate Program team in New York. There, he supports Audacy's local stations. From his current role, he offers some great advice to current students. And he shares his perspective of what radio needs to do going forward.
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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. Joined today by the class of 2015's, former general manager of the station and current Audacy New York employee. That will be Mr. Corey Crockett. Welcome to the show.
Corey: Oh, hey there. How's it going?
JAG: There's so much to get to with you in just the short time that you've been out, which I can count on both hands as I'm doing the math and the fly here. Real quick, tell me first the beginning, how you got to Syracuse and the radio station.
Corey: Yeah, I'd like to keep it at both hands please. If we can stop the aging process, that would be great.
JAG: Oh, there are alums a lot older than you that are cringing right now and shaking their fist and I'll get my cane and my walker and shaking at you angrily. Corey, go ahead.
Corey: I'm a Syracuse native, actually born and raised in Liverpool. Not too far from the hill. And grew up with the station being around. I can remember driving to Liverpool High School with Joey Cosco, future Z89 PD at the time, and listening to the station on the way to school.
So it was something that was always around and always had an awareness of the station. And it was when I was in high school that the station really came on my radar as someone who was looking to potentially go to school at Syracuse University and meeting Craig Hoffman, who was the GM, I think at the time.
He had come to my high school to do a remote. We had gone through a huge renovation of our football field. And so it was a big deal for our community. Like we had been playing at the Dome high school football as like home away games for a while. So they launched this new state-of-the-art facility.
He came there and was like, Hey, you seem like you like this. Do you wanna come tour the station sometime? So I met him and Alex Brewer, who ended up becoming a great friend as well, and Neph Rivera. They were doing some fantasy football show, and that was my first time in Watson Hall in the building as a senior in high school.
JAG: So growing up in Liverpool, was SU always the plan, on your radar or only once you found out what you wanted to do?
Corey: I had always thought that I wanted to be in this business in some way, shape, or form. And so when you grow up with the Dome in your backyard, it's okay, this is where you go to do this.
JAG: That's fair. So you knew about the station right outta high school. You, I assume you got to campus and you were just in the doors of the station right away, right?
Corey: Yeah. I started out on the sports staff as a producer of one of the sports talk shows, working overnights on weekends and stuff like that. And then started doing a DJ shift, I think the next semester.
I worked like a midnight to two or a 2 to 4 or something like that. And It was a blast. It was amazing. Even in the middle of the night when obviously no one's calling, no one's probably listening. It was just so cool to be sitting in that chair and press those buttons and be behind the mic.
It was like nothing I'd ever felt before. It was incredible.
JAG: So how did you get more involved with the station eventually rising through the ranks? I'll ask you that, and I'll also ask you what significant things the station was doing at the time that you were there.
Corey: So I was lucky to have people that said, Hey, you can do more if you want to do more.
Rashaud Thomas was the PD at the time and just what a smart guy. Wise beyond his years at the time. And knew radio. And I think now so many times I look back on working with him and I was like, oh, he was right about that thing. That thing that I probably gave him a hard time about. He was right about that.
And Alex and Craig and Liz Doyon was the GM at the time, and so I started on the exec staff as the research director, which I don't think there had been one in while. And I used that as an opportunity to like just do whatever I wanted. I made that job my own. I would just be like, oh, I'll research that, even though it had nothing to do with ratings or any data. I was like, I'll just, I'll take that up as a research project. And that's how it started. And from there I became the GM the following year.
JAG: Wow. You're not the first research director to become GM. I know there are folks who gotten on the ground floor there and ended up rising to the top. So what do you remember from your time as GM, Corey?
What was the station doing? Take me inside the station in that time.
Corey: So it was actually like the changeover when I was elected GM and started to take over was exactly the time when we opened the new studio. So we had been in Watson Theater for many years, and there was like, I live in New York now, so the first thing I wanna say is Bodega, I guess convenience store.
That was like in between where the radio station was and where the TV station was at Citrus TV. And there was a group of students a little older than me who had devised this grand plan. Once that place closed down, instead of letting another store go in there, they said, we wanna take this space.
So they essentially split it in two and the station expanded. And so it was for the course of at least a semester, if not a year, where the station was on the air, but was fully in the can from Newhouse, and it took a huge undertaking. And the people that kept the station on the air printing out paper logs and bringing them to recording booths and laying in tracks by hand, it's crazy to think about now, the students that kept that station on the air.
All the while, contractors and alumni volunteers like Tex and Alex Silverman and Rob Crandall as well, putting in the hours and manpower and thought behind what this new studio is going to look like. So it was in that, I think December, January, over Christmas break when we finally launched the new studio and it was incredible.
And so to be the GM and welcome a whole bunch of students back into this brand new state-of-the-art gorgeous space that was roughly twice the size. And then also new students who had never seen what a college radio station looked like. They were sitting in like crummy production booths at the top of Newhouse. It was amazing.
JAG: Oh wow. Okay. What, so what year was that? When the new studio opened, Corey?
Corey: Oh, I think it was 2012 into 2013. So it was like December 12, January 13.
JAG: When did you take over as gm? That January. Oh wow.
Corey: So it was, it was literally right then.
JAG: It still had that new studio smell when you walked into it. I see. Okay.
Corey: Oh, absolutely. I was there. It was me and Liz and we were there when Tex and Alex and Rob did what was essentially like the final build out. Like the construction was done, the furniture was in place, and so then it was time to be like, okay, let's turn this from an office space into a radio station.
We were there. I didn't know anything about whatever cables they were plugging in, but I was there to like, hold the flashlight like I was in my dad's garage again or something. But it was incredible. It was like several long days. And I was local, so I was still in Syracuse and I would drive my car from my parents' house back up to the station every day and work with those guys to put the finishing touches in and make it, sound like a radio station.
And I remember that night, whatever it was, when we put the station on the air for the first time. I think it was Diamonds by Rihanna was the first song that we played from the new studio, cuz it was like, a number one song at the time, probably. And oh, it was incredible. It was so cool to see it built in real time.
And also too now, walking through the halls of Audacy in New York, I'm like, oh, I know what that box does that I see through this window. It looks a little bit different, but yeah, those guys put that in at Watson Hall too. I still don't know how it works, but I know what it does.
JAG: We had Alex, on a previous episode of the podcast. I'm hoping to get Stephen on an episode as well, or Tex as most of you know him, and talking just all about all that technical stuff that they've done to help the station over the years. I think back to when I was a student my junior year, they rebuilt the studio when we were in a off-campus house on Ostrom for a year, which was just a disaster.
But makes sense. I guess, that they'd have you guys in Newhouse for a little while. One of the things we dealt with, we came back from the house into the new studio, and I imagine it was the same for you, Corey, is you probably had to build the staff back up, right?
Corey: Absolutely. And the first thing too was we had to train all these people that had been, especially like freshmen or underclassmen that had joined the station that were working in these Newhouse studios, pressing record in Audacity or whatever they had in Newhouse.
We had to teach these people how to use a board, how to use this incredible equipment, which by the way was nicer than what I have had at any of my jobs in radio so far.
JAG: He says sitting in market one right now.
Corey: Still, honestly, and I know Alex Silverman would probably agree that yeah, that's why they got all this nice stuff is because it's even nicer than what they have in New York.
JAG: I'm talking to you in New York. I talked to Alex in Los Angeles, and you're like, yeah. The stuff the station has is the best.
Corey: I mean it's incredible. Even now when I go back, I don't like to take the time out of the alumni shows to play radio cuz I'm lucky enough to still get to do it. So I want people to have that visceral experience that you have when you were in college.
But sometimes still just sitting in that chair, I'm like, oh my God, even pressing these buttons is way more fun than the buttons we have in the studio in New York. So it's still incredible. So getting those people to be able to use the tools that they had, who learned maybe the basis of a jock shift, right?
Like how you're gonna talk up a song in seven seconds, but had never done it live, had never had to push the button, had never done it with a microphone that was worth as much as these were. And getting them in the feel of being in this new space that, for lack of a better word, might have been a little sanitary too.
A radio station has character. And has all this feeling. And this place had been open for all of 48 hours. So getting it to feel like ours again was really important. And it took a while. And I'll say now, coming back as an alum and seeing the station, I'm in awe of what the current students have done to make this place feel like theirs.
They've painted, they've put up pictures and posters and all the things that we started to do. They made it work and made it theirs. And I feel like I did when I was a freshman walking in to the old, dingy, crummy studio that had so much character and love even behind it. Now you feel that again.
JAG: It's funny, we had a previous podcast guest talk about the station as a well worn couch. Sounds like you had to go from sterile, like you said, back to well worn couch and give it a little bit of character.
So were there recruitment efforts to bring folks back or were people just excited to have an actual radio station after being in Newhouse for however long that was?
Corey: It was a little bit of both. There was a lot of like operational stuff that needed to happen and it's boring for a podcast, but like we had to rewrite the training rule book and we had to redo the schedule from scratch and we had to figure out how to have meetings again. Where are they gonna be? What's the space gonna be like?
Like we had this brand new home and we were like, how are we gonna use it? Everything we've been doing was without a home base. It sounds silly to say now, and we've been remote for two and a half years at most of our jobs and stuff like that, but at the time it was like, Okay. We don't have a facility and so figuring out how we were gonna get back to the old way of doing things in this new space absolutely was a big deal.
And I'll say that it was even after the studio launched, I'll give Allie Gold a lot of credit, who was the GM after me. She was like in my head, the morale GM. She was like the person that made everyone feel like a family and feel like this is where they belonged and this is a place they wanted to be and wanted to hang.
And there was the competitive kickball game that derived from that with Citrus TV and so it was once we started to get all back together again, that was when it was like, all right, the station is thriving.
JAG: And that really, I think, came through in the episode of the podcast we did with Allie.
And it's funny when you think about throughout the years, there's the technical side and then there's also the personnel side and having to learn, the hard skills, quote unquote, but then also the soft skills of how to run a radio station and how to be on the air. But then also how to deal with people.
And the best leadership, and I'll include you and Allie in this, get a feel for both of those aspects as you run the radio station.
Corey: Absolutely. And I think, I think back a lot on my time and think about how seriously we took things, and I'm sure you've had this experience too, right?
This was a professionally run top 40 radio station with a bankroll and a facility and a staff totally run by students, right? Like we are keeping this afloat. And so often it was like, this is a business, this is what we do. This is the most important thing we're gonna be doing today, more so than our classes, more so than anything else.
And looking back on it, I'm oh man. Like some of those little things probably didn't matter that much. Could have had a little bit more fun.. Could have enjoyed it. Don't get me wrong, it was the most fun years of my life. But looking back on it, you have the hindsight of, oh, maybe all that stuff didn't matter so much where it was such a huge deal.
On the flip side, that's why the station has the success and the longevity that it's had. Is because you do have students who care that much.
JAG: That's very well put. So take me through your path since graduation, Corey. So you graduated in 2015 and now you're in New York. Fill in the blanks here for me.
Corey: Yeah. I had a wonky career path and I like it that way. I like that it was somewhat untraditional. When I first got outta school, it was like the week of graduation, I got a phone call with a job offer and I moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia. Never been there before, except for like once as a kid with my family moved there, packed my life in what I could fit into my Toyota Camry, and I went and I did nights at a top 40 station there for iHeart.
And I stayed there for almost four years. I loved it there. It was an incredible place to live, especially as a 21-year-old living at the beach. Oh my God. In like in a very transient town where it was so easy to meet people in the military is really big in that part of the country. Norfolk is the largest naval base in the US and so you meet a lot of young people that don't have any friends either, and so I loved it.
I loved living there and that was an interesting career because in a short amount of time, I got to do so much. I did nights. I was the music director. Then I did afternoons, then I became the APD. Then that station went away and I kept my job. And I did mornings on a rhythmic AC for a little while and was the APD there.
I got my first introduction into doing alternative music, which I ended up doing later. I was like the fill in production director. I got to do everything and become the utility player, and I think that was so important to learn all those skills and to learn how to be the person who can just say yeah and do anything.
And being there was amazing. I loved it. And it's funny, I had a good friend from high school who one day said to me, Hey, I'm ready to do something new. I'm gonna move to Virginia Beach and move in with you. And I was like, okay I don't know how long I'm gonna be here, but good luck.
And now to this day, however many years later, she met a guy, got married and has a house and a family all down there. So I always think about man, that one job I took, like changed my friends' lives too. It's crazy.
JAG: Wow. Okay. So now you've been at Virginia Beach. What's next
Corey: after? So I Went through something that I'm sure a lot of people go through where you're like, okay, what's next for me?
And I decided to bet on myself, and I left my stable, good job, doing mornings in Virginia Beach and sold my car, sold everything I had, and I moved to New York without a plan, without a job, with a place to live with people I'd never met before. And now it's also been about four years that I've been here.
It was the best decision I ever made. I love being in New York. I love it. I got a job after a little while working in tv. I was a digital content producer at WPIX. , which is one of the oldest independent TV stations in the country. It's been in New York for a gajillion years, channel 11.
And working in news again was exciting. Flex my Newhouse roots and build up some of that news muscle. And it was great. It was one of those things where you feel like lightning in a bottle. The people I worked with were fantastic. I loved what I was doing. And it was really great. And then after a while I was like, okay, I don't wanna work nights anymore.
I'm ready to do something new. And actually I should stop because while I was working at the TV station, I ended up having an opportunity to come and meet with a program director who was working at the time Entercom in New York. Mike Kaplan programmed Alt 92 3. And we had talked over the years, just like emails back and forth while we both were with iHeart.
And I had, said, Hey, I'd love to get coffee sometime. I don't need a job. I have a job. I'm not one of those people saying, Hey, I wanna work at your station, I just wanna chat. Yeah. And so we did and I ended up getting offered a job. And we had a really great meeting and I started doing weekends and fill-in and stuff on Alt 92 3 in New York.
And man to work in alternative was so cool, but like to be on the air in New York and get paid to do it was just like, that's what we've all dreamed of at some point. And so being able to not just check that off the box, but sit and do it and live it and be a part of it was so cool.
And so after a couple of years of doing it, ended up turning into a full-time role where now I work on the Audacy Corporate programming team on the central team. I get to do a little bit of everything. I think of the job as like an OM or a PD of the national programming group where it's keeping the train on the tracks for all these individual projects and ideas and research and organization and it's a great bird's eye view of how a company handles programming.
And so it's a long story, but yeah, it was that one little meeting with Entercom at the time and getting able to do weekends. That has turned what was me getting back into radio full-time, which I never really anticipated when I got out of it. I didn't think I'd be back. And and here I am about to celebrate a year.
So it's funny,
JAG: They preach to us at Newhouse and the ladies at the CDC who are wonderful, always talk about how to network. And people get afraid of that word networking. And you wanna build your network when you're not looking for a job. So I like that you approached this, big dude at Audacy or Entercom at the time and say, hey, I'm not looking for a job, I just wanna talk.
You were on his radar immediately. You weren't going to him saying, Hey, can you gimme a job? You always hear that at. But it seems as you're weaving through this story in your career arc so far, Corey, I'm just thinking of the lessons you probably learned at JPZ and the stuff that jumps out to me immediately are obviously doing a lot of different things and multitasking in your role now, I'm sure was, part of your role as GM and then even, you alluded to this earlier, but having to be off the air during Covid and doing everything remotely. Probably like when you were at Newhouse during the Syracuse years, right?
Corey: Oh yeah, absolutely. Being able to get your hands in as much as you can is so worth it. And I don't have a lot of great advice to give now, but still people will call me or like young alumni, send an email or something and say, Hey can we talk a little bit?
And one of the things I always say is, if your resume says you produced this sports talk show where you cut highlights for this. That stuff is always transferrable to something else. If you think, yes, I wanna get a job in this industry, but I haven't done this exact thing, you know what? I bet the skills that you used in your last job are going to apply to whatever it is that you wanna do next.
Whether it's organization, whether it's project management, whether it's internal communication, all of those things you know how to do. Even if you like, oh, I just sat in front of Audition and I edited clips. That means something. What did you do? What does that say? Who you are as an employee? How can you bring that specific thing you did and broaden it to the next opportunity?
So I think doing as much as you can only helps bolster that toolbox of yours.
JAG: Yeah, absolutely. So let me dig a little bit deeper on what you're doing now, Corey. Tell me, I know there's probably no two days are alike, but what's some of the stuff you're working on in the current role you have at Audacy in New York?
Corey: The cool thing about this job is, yeah, no two days are the same. And I've been lucky to get to make this job my own a little bit over time. And I think that comes from a programming background. I think this job on paper, if you were to look at the description, you would think, okay, this is someone who has an ops background, but maybe not necessarily a radio background.
And so coming in as a programmer I think gave me an opportunity to grab the bull by the horns a little bit more and bite off different pieces of the apple, so to speak, of the company. And so the cool thing is we've got 200 plus radio stations. So getting to work on so many different things, projects at scale, work with really smart programmers on so many different creative projects.
And then also the flip side of optimization, like how do we do things so that it makes sense for an enormous company? This industry is changing so much and you've gotta keep a lot of things in mind as to like where it's gonna go in the future and how we're gonna make it so our people aren't being overextended.
There's less people in this industry than there used to be. There's less jobs and there's more work to do. And so I always go in the mindset of thinking like, okay, I work on a corporate national programming team. With a lot of people who maybe haven't been in local markets or working on the front lines in a while.
They're really smart programmers and great leaders. And so trying to be always thinking about how does something that we do impact the person that has to execute at the local level where they may be running four stations themselves? So bridging that gap between the company and the local station and the cluster and thinking about all of our people and our resources is, one big pot that we need to, we all have the same goal.
JAG: I love that idea. I love that attitude because I think back to when I was a program director and a different company, not the one that you were working at. And I remember these corporate initiatives come down from national, and I remember I was asking myself, have any of them been a local program director?
Have any of them, did they understand what's going on here? So I love that you're an advocate for the local level, in the national role that you're in. You're teeing me up to ask you this question, Corey, which is, there are a lot of naysayers when it comes to the radio industry right now. There are a lot of people who have very strong opinions about where the radio industry is right now.
Make the case for radio for me from where you sit in your role at Audacy right now.
Corey: I think one of the things that we have going for us is our people. The personalities. I'm of the belief, and listen, you can talk to 10 different program directors and you're gonna get 10 different answers, but to me, I can get top 40 music or country music or alternative music, literally anywhere I want.
YouTube, Spotify, whatever. The personalities that are a part of people's lives and that become the fabric of your community. That's what's gonna survive. That's what's gonna make the difference. And sure, podcasts are another way that people are getting so much of that content from the people that they love. But the personalities that have been on the radio for a long time, or the ones that are growing into the next phase of their career, whether it's a local show, a regional show, a national show, that entertainment quality, that personality, that's gonna be what differentiates us forever.
And so that investment in talent is going to be the thing that keeps radio alive and well.
JAG: As a former radio jock. I love that answer. Corey, before I let you go, give me a funny story that you look back on your time at JPZ, that you would go to Faegan’s and have a beer seven, eight years later and say, you know what?
Remember the time when? And have a laugh about it.
Corey: There's obviously lots, and the thing that I remember most is probably like the most minuscule story. Nothing big happened. It wasn't some sort of monumental accomplishment or achievement or joke, but I was doing Z Morning Zoo. It was probably my freshman or sophomore year, and I was working with Joey Cosco and Eileen Spath.
Who you know, Z89 greats. And we were doing the morning show, and at the time the show was broadcast on OTN, the Orange Television Network. The TVs at Newhouse were playing it. And I don't think anyone really paid attention to the fact that this was a radio show on tv. But I remember, like we were in the old studio and the song was Domino by Jesse J.
And that song's a bop as the kids say. And so we would stand on the chairs and dance on the chairs. Like spinning around trying not to fall. And I remember I link getting a text message from one of our mutual friends saying, we are all watching you guys in Newhouse dancing on the chairs like morons.
And I was like, embarrassed but not upset because that was the vibe and energy of the show. And I think the station to some extent.
JAG: I love that story. Corey Crockett, class of 2015. Thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate your perspective and look forward to seeing you in March.
Corey: Hey, you too. Appreciate it.