Simply put, Harry Wareing and Dena (Giacobbe) Laupheimer are two people the radio station wouldn't have survived without. Both members of the Class of 1999, Harry first came to the station as a freshman and became a "utility player" for Jeff Wade and Dan Austin when they launched The Pulse in 1995. Dena joined later. working her way through the promotions department and up into management.
In 1997, Harry and Dena decided to restore the Z89 brand. They explained what went into that decision (a lot of it over Burger King in the Kimmel Food Court), and taking the risk to upend the station for the second time in less than two years. As with the change to The Pulse, some were in favor of the idea and some were not.
In the Fall of 1997, for several different reasons, the station was placed into receivership and had to fight for its survival. Harry and Dena explain the confluence of events that led to this, and the immense pressure they felt to keep the institution alive. Harry was recruiting every freshman on campus to supplement the skeleton crew of the radio station, while Dena was handling the business side of things and fielding calls from well-meaning but concerned alumni.
The station survived - and then some. What Harry learned in recruiting freshmen like Marty Dundics in 1997, he "perfected" in 1998, bringing in a new class, empowering them, and getting them excited about the radio station. Folks like Jag, Beth (Berlin) Cohen, Jana Fiorello, and the station's next GM, Matt DelSignore.
In fact, we close the episode with one of Dena's favorite Matt stories.
Join Us in Syracuse for Banquet on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
Jag: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon "JAG" Gay. I'm really excited about today's episode. We have two members of the class of 1999 with us. That is Hall of Famer, Dena Laupheimer, formerly Dena Giacobbe and if I can say this without getting myself in trouble, future Hall of Famer, Harry Wareing from the class of 99. Welcome both of you to the show.
Dena: Thank you.
Harry: Thank you very much, Jon.
Jag: Before we get into the real heavy stuff, tell me Dena we'll start with you. How you got to Syracuse and how you found the radio station?
Dena: I got to Syracuse a bit by accident. I knew that I wanted to work in media. I thought journalism.
I remember going to a college career fair. I want to say at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. And there was a Syracuse display and I stopped. My dad went to St. John's University. And I knew Syracuse and I didn't particularly like Syracuse because I was raised a St. John's fan, but then once I discovered, oh my gosh, they have a communications program and wow, I could actually watch games in the Carrier Dome.
All of a sudden, the school had a lot more allure and on a cold rainy day in October, when I went up on a campus tour, I knew from that very moment, that's where I wanted to go to school. And my acceptance letter came early decision on Christmas Eve. Was the best Christmas gift I got my senior year of high school.
Very cool. I found the radio station by another bizarre twist. I was very good friends with Veronica Reeves. Through a bizarre twist of events. My mom being the networker that she is, won a radio station contest at a radio station on Long Island on WALK. In the spring of our freshman year, she happened to mention to them at the radio station, my daughter's going to school for communications and they said, oh we're looking for interns.
So through this random conversation, I ended up interning at WALK and fell in love with the idea of working in radio. And because of my connection with Veronica, she introduced me to this guy, Harry, that worked at the radio station and I met Harry and his friend, Pete, at Media Play for a Pearl Jam Midnight Madness
Harry: Was it Pearl Jam? See, I can never remember because they do blend together. Cause we did a Hootie and the Blowfish one. We did Dave Matthews.
Dena: So it was opening weekend, sophomore year, Harry and I met at Media Play and ShoppingTown mall for a Pearl Jam Midnight Madness. He was the promotions director. And he needed an assistant. And because I had so much experience interning at a radio station on Long Island the summer before, I was instantly appointed his assistant.
And thus began my career at JPZ.
Jag: And Harry, over to you. How did you get to the station and to Syracuse?
Harry: All my life I wanted to be a sportscaster. I remember reading a Marv Albert book that had a page in it that everyone, there was like a hundred people it felt like, that went to Syracuse. I was like, I guess that's where I should go.
So it just happened. I didn't realize that the school was really hard to get into or that it was this great program. I just knew that's where I wanted to go. I got accepted through some miracle, we were able to afford it with different things. It was, I can't imagine what tuition is now.
Jag: Double what it was then, yeah?
Dena: At least, more than that.
Harry: I had run my high school radio station. I did announcing for basketball and football. And I remember working there, running it the summer before I went to Syracuse and they said, hey reach out to who's at the stations in Syracuse. And I found WJPZ. Dan Austin actually was the first person.
I sent him my resume. I said, hey, I really want to work at your station. I had no idea like what it was at the time, but Dan sent me a Z89 bumper sticker with a Coca Cola logo on the back, which made me go, wow, this is like a real radio station. He said, stop by the first time you get to Syracuse.
So that's what I did. I remember walking up to Mount Olympus and thinking it was up there, but I walked in the door and I never left after that over time. I met a guy named Pete Diebler who on my freshman year, we became really good friends and. He wanted to work there too. You could tell something was special about the place as soon as you walked in the door.
The old station had bumper stickers from all over the world. All over the place. But there was an energy to it and I knew I wanted to be there. I got involved in the sports staff I got involved on air. It was a really fun time looking back. Gosh, it seems like yesterday I walked in there and then I became promotions director at the end of my freshman year.
Just to tie it around to when I meet Dena., it was the coolest thing because this is a radio station that did things. They made the Final Four my freshman year. We did like a broadcast at whatever they called the Sheraton restaurant bar. But it felt real. We were like, we put up banners and we did call ins. Someone did. I think they did. And it was fun being the promotions director. And then we came back. After the summer, and it was it was back on and we had this broadcast at Media Play. There's a slight chance that we broke the tent that night.
Jag: Past the statute of limitations.
Harry: What Z89 taught me above all is that you can order parts for a tent. You don't have to order an entire tent.
Dena: It was opening weekend. And the funniest thing is we found out through the course of conversation that we both grew up on Long Island. We went to rival high schools. And we lived about 10 minutes away from each other on back roads. And it took this chance meeting at Shoppingtown mall to discover that we've literally lived around the corner from each other.
Harry: Possibly still do. It was a great experience to start there. There was just always something special. You knew the history of the radio station. They do a great job of the alumni coming back each year. And who are these people? And you learn that you're part of something bigger than yourself.
And I think that's really important, especially as a 17, 18 year old kid to buy in and to believe in something. And it gave me a home. It was a fraternity, so to speak, that I could literally work at and make the best friends I would have over time there. And really. It was an honor to be able to work as a real radio station.
That's very rare. It's one of the best experiences I've ever had. I still to this day work in a similar situation. And it's in a smaller type of market radio and I set up what I love personally over the years of working with a team of people. I made my lifelong friends there at the school, at Z 89, not necessarily Syracuse.
Jag: So you were there for two format flips, right? Because you got there before Z 89 flipped to the Pulse?
Harry: My freshman year, I was a part of a controversial format flip. I didn't know much at the time, I was a kid. And I wanted to be a part of something and Dan Austin and Jeff Wade were switching the format to alternative modern rock, 89 1 The Pulse, which was a hot format at the time.
Jag: We have an episode of the podcast with the two of them talking about that switch as well, so yeah.
Harry: It was an amazing time. It was controversial. There was a lot of articles and this and that I didn't know anything about any of that. I just wanted to do radio and I saw an opportunity whenever things change. I didn't necessarily know the entire staff quit or left or that did this and that it didn't matter to me it was, wow, we have a chance to work in a production studio until 3 in the morning creating a promo for a morning show. One of the best nights we didn't have digital equipment or computers.
It was reel to reel. Yep. I spent that, that format flip Dan and Jeff, they needed people and students to help them and Pete and myself, we were the guts of the operation. We were the board ops. We were in the production studio till literally four in the morning, creating stuff, building. Would sit there and I learned production that way.
I learned all these different things. I dunno if the promo was any good, but we learned a lot. We had fun. If any students are listening to this right now, enjoy the freshman year, enjoy those years where you're just doing it and creating and having fun and making friends and. It's not life or death. We might have thought it was life or death actually with the promo because we needed that promo to be good.
We needed Dan and Jeff to like us or at least put it on the air and give us shifts. And I remember the format flip. It was fantastic. Honestly, it's probably the one of the top five experiences I've had working in radio. I remember I was one of the first board ops because I was staying late before Christmas.
And I wanted to do it. There was no pressure. We were just doing radio. Being given opportunities and meeting the Scott MacFarlanes of the world who was a year older than me. Jeff Torial. I have to mention the people that were really instrumental. And Brett Eskin. And DJ Pass the Mic.
All of these people that I worked with as a freshman that were great to me. Andy Hecht. Oh, Andy Hecht. And here's the thing. We walked into a situation, and I think this is important. I walked into a situation that was really complicated that I necessarily didn't realize with a lot, and this goes to receivership and a little bit, we were part of a situation that there was a lot of controversy, the angry people, but what I saw was a lot of professionalism, at least in front of me, for me, they taught me they might have hated the Pulse and were against what it stood for and all of that.
And I thought it was good to get a mix of those people. And then the Pulse happened, we did that, I was terrible on the air, thank you though for clearing me, the only time I went home was after my freshman year and I remember coming back, meeting Dena being the Promotions Director, and I think I became the Program Director in November.
Dena: In very short order, I can take you back to this, just to piggyback on what you were saying, I remember very vividly walking into the station, and Harry it was just as you said, 3. 30, 4 o'clock in the afternoon, P. m. drive, we had sports going, there was news going the station was abuzz. The feeling in that place was electric, and I knew from the minute I walked in that door, That I wanted to be a part of whatever was going on there.
Jag: So Dena take me through how you got involved and got into the management levels, the station exec staff, and take me through your journey a little bit.
Dena: There was still quite a bit of controversy over the pulse change after Jeff and Dan flipped the format. In what was our freshman year?
Harry: Dan went to work at Clear Channel.
Dena: Yeah, that's right.
Harry: One of the great things, but also one of the, I say burdens. It's a good burden. Pressure is a privilege, but it's a lot. You have the alumni you have a successful radio station. You have all of these personalities. Think about this business in general. Yeah.
And all these people love this radio station when you're 18 years old, you don't want to screw it up and it was a difficult time and I do think too that the station straddles this line of, okay what should it be? Should it be a top 40 radio station? Should it be a rock station? Should it be this?
Should it make sense? It might not necessarily make sense for the radio station formatically to be a CHR in the middle of a market that has. Two huge CHRs, but if you step away from it, from that, it made sense from a teaching standpoint. There was a lot of different personalities and it's a lot, and there's a lot of change.
I will say looking back, it's like the most, I could care less about classes. The only thing I cared about at Syracuse was WJPZ and the people that were on the team. And it was so much change in this and that looking back at such an amazing learning experience, it really was.
Jag: Dena you come in, you're Harry's assistant promotions director. What titles did you take as you climb the ladder?
Dena: Yeah. So I walked in as the assistant promotions director because of the management shakeup that occurred then over the pulse change and the unsettledness that was going on at the station. At the time, the general manager left the program director left and the VP of business left.
There was a scramble among the staff to fill some of these key positions. Jamie Bell ascended to the general manager's role. She was VP Ops. She was technically the second female GM in the station's history and assumed the position at a very difficult time that year in particular. Harry took over as PD.
And I walked into the promotions director after I'd been in the station for two and a half months here's the job, you do it. We were there, I had promotions meetings and we gave away CDs and, we still went about our business, we had our meetings. We persevered through whatever went on. And there was a lot that quite honestly, I forgotten so much about. I'm so glad we're doing this together.
Harry: Your first year. My second year was this weird trying to figure out. We took over a station That Jeff and Dan had set up for a reason and with Modern Rock 89 1 The Pulse. And to be honest with you, we were always fighting the history of Z89 with it.
The request line was still 443 it was HITS. So it wasn't, you'd have people, The Pulse stinks, this and that, and you call it, you're like, all right, whatever. But that's part of the life lesson too. All of this looking back was an amazing experience, good and bad.
We got through it. And then we started to really learn a lot more about the history of what the radio station was at the very least as the modern rock station at the time, it wasn't performing necessarily what it should be the role for the students, whether it be for the contemporary hit radio aspect in the bylaws or in, in general, just as a radio station.
So it was a conversation that then led to bringing Z89 back and that happened during the summer. Before my junior year, I believe it was July 1st.
Dena: July 1st, 1997.
Jag: So July 1st, 1997 Harry, you're the PD and Dena you are the GM or incoming GM at that point. Do I have the right?
Dena: No, I was not. I was the elected PR director.
Harry: Thinking about this is going to seem on a good day, gutsy. On a bad day. Wow. I can't believe I did that. We knew that. Learning the history and speaking with the alumni it was clear that there would need to be a change to bring back the Z89 brand. Now, like I said, I'm not saying this was necessarily the best way to do it, but there was a rumor, actually, that someone was going to take the Z brand in the market, whether that be true or not, I don't remember.
But time was of the essence and in the summer, in the midst of upheaval, the midst of me thinking that I was a real program director and we needed to do this for the right reasons and this and that, we decided we were going to change the radio station. I had the support of the faculty advisor at the time Rick Wright. Dena was on Long Island helping me with imaging, I believe, writing stuff and getting some things going.
We had a, we had an In-Z-Pendence promotion that we did.
Dena: I wrote some press releases. My cousin, who is also a Syracuse alum, redesigned the Z89 logo. The original rebrand of the Z89 logo was created by Lisa Miraboli, who's a class of 93 alum from VPA, did that for us pro bono. Thanks, Lisa. I remember countless meetings with you at Kimmel before we got out of school, when the plan was to flip the format, hashing out over Burger King, how this was going to work and what it was going to be. And it was so exciting to be part of something like that.
Harry: That's right. You hadn't seen The Pulse.
Dena: No, I wasn't there for that flip and to be in on the ground level as the plans were being laid and being able to influence some of what that was going to be was so exciting. I remember that very vividly and it's really cool to think about now. It gives me a lot of pause all these years later to think back at what we did and what I do remember most specifically. I remember a being very upset that I couldn't afford to stay on campus that summer.
And I had to come home cause I couldn't afford an apartment and stay up in Syracuse for the summer. But I remember on a very old 1997 cell phone. Calling the studio. At five o'clock on July 1st and Jamie Scavotto ran the first top of the hour into the jock jam and I heard it on my cell phone on my way home from work.
Jag: That's great.
Dena: I was crying on Sunrise Highway when that happened.
Jag: Those powerful moments and by the way, a shout out to the Kimmel dining hall slash food court slash whatever it was when you were a student there because if those walls could talk, they'd have their own podcast about what was discussed there among the 50 year history of this radio station
Harry: That is for sure.
Dena: That was huge.
Harry: It was, could have gone either way. I remember talking to different alumni. It's how I met Scott Meach. Hal Rood was instrumental in teaching me everything that I knew about clocks and programming the best thing. And I think this is why in my career, I've done this numerous times since Z89 and the pulse.
Seeing the format flip set me up for being able to do it numerous times, whether I did it at a couple stations on Long Island, out east that I work at, and over time. I think nothing of wiping out a selector database and starting fresh. And it was hard. I walked in there, and Dena was on Long Island. It was like walking into, I don't want to say enemy territory at the time, but it was scary because I literally flipped the format through Dena's help and through a summer staff.
It's how I met Rick Roberts, who's at 93 Q still he was a summer staff, a person that came in.
Jag: And now he's been at 93 Q for 25 years.
Harry: It's unbelievable. No, I remember when Rick was a little kid. Z89 had such a, and still does, has such a rich history with not just the SU Hill, but those towns, the Fayetteville area and all that, love the radio station.
They grew up with it. It means something to those kids. And it really does. And we had summer staff that wanted to work at Z89 because they grew up listening to it. And it was this big deal. So we were able to, think of this for a second. One of the things that I learned is filling a schedule.
I learned how to, by hook or by crook, get people to fill that schedule. And by the way, we didn't pay them. It was an all volunteer job. When we flipped the format, think of it this way. We had lost another staff, so we had to start recruiting again.
Jag: Yeah, so you said there was two recruitments with the new Z89, right?
Dena: Yeah, so fall 97, we get back to school, there was again, a management switch out because of a format change. . Quite frankly, although I had barely been the station for a year, I was the only one in any position to assume the responsibility and was elected GM.
Jag: So just so I have my facts here Dina, so Jamie had been the GM, Jamie Bell. Another GM had come in and that the format flip said, no, this isn't for me, I'm leaving.
Harry: The format flip wasn't for him.
Dena: Yeah, he stepped down, then pretty much as soon as we came back to school, we had an incident of fraud.
Harry: Keep in mind, this was a summer where we had no general manager or anything. We had a summer staff that we're keeping on the air and there's a byproduct of having a summer staff.
We learned a lot. We had people that really wanted to quote help. So we had some interesting characters pass through there. I don't want to get too into the weeds there, but we dealt with a lot of different things that 18, 19 year olds necessarily don't have to deal with.
Dena: As a result, there was an incidence of fraud with checks that were ill gotten from the station.
Someone that had worked on the staff over the summer had taken checks from the station and then was forging checks. Largely to his or herself, but then also randomly and out in the community, which was how we discovered that this had even occurred because someone randomly called the station one afternoon and said, I just received a check from 89 for $1,000. Do you know why?
Jag: Oh, boy.
Harry: Pretty sure we didn't have that money. To be honest with you.
Dena: We didn't even have $1,000 in the checking account. So it was a bit of a shock to receive that phone call because I did actually take the call from the woman when she called. And that's what then led us down this rabbit hole that there was fraud perpetuated against the station. That added a whole nother layer to the initial confusion and chaos that brought me into the role as GM.
Jag: So there's fraud, there's a format flip, and then there's a number of other extenuating factors, Dina, that ultimately led the station into this receivership.
Dena: I want to say, in October, November of that year, there was a judicial affairs complaint filed against the radio station by a group of weekend show staff. The weekend show staff ran a lot of urban programming that didn't totally jive with the Pulse and for whatever reason, and I think it's probably a by product to a certain extent of the Pulse and not that I'm blaming the Pulse for that. the formats brought in certain staff members to the station and it wasn't that it tried to be exclusionary.
And I don't mean that in any way, shape or form, but the format attracted the audience that listens to it, which. was contrary to the staff that ran the urban programming on the weekend.
Jag: Let me put a bow on this and make sure I get this correct. Because the station flipped from a more inclusive format in CHR to, let's be honest, a more white guy format in Alternative, it was a music flip.
But for some individuals, they would see that as exclusionary of certain groups going from pop to Alternative. Do I have that right?
Dena: Yeah. And, and I think too, quite honestly, I, not having worked at Z89 before the Pulse I think the CHR format made for a more inclusive staff. And unfortunately, because of the audience that the Pulse attracted and the staff that the Pulse attracted, it created division inadvertently.
No one ever intended to be exclusionary of anybody. We just operated in separate spheres. I was not at the station on Saturday night or Friday night at midnight. I just wasn't. It wasn't for any other reason than that.
Harry: I think a lot of this comes down to the mission of the radio station.
And this is why it is important that it is an inclusive CHR format. Is that part of the curse of it is, of the station, and I say that with love, is that you have to be professional, you need to compete, you need to do these things. And sometimes that could be at odds with what the radio station was designed to be.
And I know that sounds weird to say that because you want to compete in the ratings, you want, those things are important in a business. At the end of the day though, and I might get in trouble for saying this, it's just a college radio station. It's there to teach, more importantly than get a giant huge share.
That'd be great. And those years were awesome. And they did it in a very inclusive manner. But at the end of the day, it really wouldn't have mattered if we had the biggest ratings ever and no staff. Yeah, that wasn't the point of the radio station when it was created. It was designed to teach, to educate and to bring together.
And I think inadvertently, because we wanted to, let's create a format that makes sense right for right now on radio and the radio times. Let's create this product that's going to compete and do this and through what Jeff and Dan were doing. They did the right things in a vacuum or in a real business setting.
And you could argue that it was the right thing at the time, but what they didn't compete with was. 17, 18, 19 year olds who a are trying to figure out who they are as people, you're finding yourself, you think about this respect, people are finding out their beliefs, what they want to fight for in college and you're going to put all those people in a small place in Watson theater, a lot smaller than it is now, it's going to combust and it did.
I remember bringing back Z89 thinking naively, at the time this will make everyone happy and we'll all sing Kumbaya and all the ills will be forgotten. And that was not the case. And I learned a really valuable lesson by just sitting and listening to people like Dekeel who did the Saturday night show at the time.
That was probably my first chance being 18, 19 years old, coming from where I come from a Long Island, working with different cultures and different perspectives. And for me, I just want to get it right at the time. That's it. I was like, this will make everyone happy. And it didn't because there was so much more underneath.
And that led to with the receivership, with the hiring practices, but elections and how the station was running at the time, it was a by product of everything just smushed together and blew up.
Jag: So Dena when you made your Hall of Fame induction speech at the banquet a few years ago, there were jaws on the ground in the room.
Whether it was the folks who graduated before you, or the folks who graduated in the 2000s, the 2010s, after you. There are so many folks who don't know what you and Harry had to deal with in this era of receivership. So you're a junior, you're the GM of the radio station. Just at top level, some of the stuff that you had to deal with to fight for the survival of the radio station.
Dena: Yeah, we were placed in receivership because of this complaint filed with Judicial Affairs. There were concerns over electioneering, which I will still defend were not valid concerns. One of the members of the weekend staff ran for a vice president of business position, had never worked on the business staff, was not even known to the people that were voting in the election.
And was therefore not elected to the position. And as a result, it was viewed by that person to be racist, which couldn't have been further from the truth, but it was what was believed by the person at the time. So this was rolled into this this receivership complaint.
Jag: Everything else Harry's already talked about.
Dena: Yeah. So we had to meet with Judicial Affairs. We were placed under receivership which meant that we needed to rewrite our bylaws. They needed to reevaluate our student status. They temporarily revoked our student status on campus. And until we met the university standards for an acceptable student group, they would then allow us as a student group on campus.
Jag: So when you say not as a student group, you've just got to keep the station going with a skeleton crew or what does that mean?
Dena: Yeah. The skeletal crew got even more skeletal as I recall, because as all of this kind of went down, We also lost some of the other staff that were still there helping, plug holes and keep the fires burning.
It was very tough. I was a terrible jock. And I think by virtue of the fact that we were friends was the only reason I had midday clearance. I should have never been cleared out of overnights! But we managed to keep the station going. We had this fraud situation that I was dealing with the Syracuse police in the midst of all of this too, we were up for license renewal, which has always been historically a difficult time for the radio station at the FCC. . Some of the best practices for the public file and, general station operations got lost from one, one generation to the next, as people took over into new positions.
And unfortunately that kind of happens. And we uncovered that in the midst of the license renewal. Of course another name that has made its way to the podcast. Mr. John Oldfield also reared his charming head.
Harry: I think everything reared its head at once. We're trying to run a radio station at the time too.
It was very, you had to compartmentalize everything you did because we were, getting made fun of in the Daily Orange and it taught me skills. There was so much pressure. We didn't want to screw the station up. We didn't want to kill it. Yes, it was important to run the radio station and we did that, but what was more important was that it would exist in the future, to be able to teach students. And that's when my personally, my perspective changed. I remember going to the first receivership meeting and I don't know why I'm mentioning this, but I remember just being so full of emotion. Like I had failed the alumni at the time I remember crying in the meeting. And for me, I'm like, I'm not going to, no, one's going to see me cry.
And it was like, I remember it just, it was like, Oh my gosh, I have completely failed.
Jag: Wow.
Harry: The history in these alums that this station means so much to. It was the lowest point, but at the same time, with the perspective I have 20 or something years later, it was probably what was needed because it was a chance to rebuild again.
And Dustin Everett, I mentioned Dustin, who was instrumental in helping with the public file. And cleaning it up and organizing it and getting filing for license renewal with Scott Johnson, our lawyer at the time, who spoke really slow.
Dena: And was paid by the second. And he had the slowest conversations ever with you.
Harry: From there, we were able to turn a corner and say, okay, and that's where recruitment came in. You're not leading anyone. If no one's following you, there was no one at the radio station anymore for all these problems. We need to build another staff. And Marty came around.
Jag: You had two big recruitments, Harry. You had one in the fall of 97 and one in the fall of 98. Take me through the first one.
Harry: First one was, I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew that I had to be at every freshman event there was. The goal was just to get people in the door and get excited about this radio station again. Keep in mind, there were all these things going on around us.
So you didn't want to like people like "what's receivership? What's happening here?
Dena: It's pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Harry: Yeah. Literally. We joke that there could be fires all around me and I'd be like, no, we're doing great. We're learning. We're growing as a station. We're doing this and that.
But I learned those skills at Z89 by being in a crisis situation. The first recruitment I remember Marty came along we were hanging on by our, the skin of our teeth. We were just trying to get people in there. There was a time where we had no money in the bank account. They were threatened.
There's no heat in the station. The lights broke in the back. And I just remember sitting there thinking, Oh my God, I've killed this radio station. What do we do? And that motivated even more to go to more freshmen functions and more and get people in the door and rebuild the staff and rebuild and recommit to the goal of what this was doing.
And that's. I joke that my junior year, I tested things out, I figured out how to do it, and then I really, I think I hit a home run my senior year with the recruitment class, which you were a part of, and Matt DelSignore, and Jana and Beth, and Dave Easton, and I still remember him, he was a public service director, he transferred.
Jag: Greg Dixon, yeah, all these guys, yeah.
Harry: And that's where it all came from. It changed my perspective on the whole thing. It became about leaving a legacy and making sure that this radio station existed for the future and was doing stuff and receivership for me was the impetus to really change and also change who I think I was as a person and what I cared about too.
Jag: I want to pick it up from there, because what you said about both of you walking into the radio station, so this is now the school year of 98/ 99, this is you're both seniors, I'm a freshman, and there were folks who joined the station right away through your great recruitment efforts, the folks you mentioned, Jana Beth, Matt, etc.
I didn't come in until, I think, October, November. Andy DeCastro, who told me to come in. It was Bryan Person, whose little sister was one of my best friends from high school.
Harry: Wow. Great guy.
Jag: I come in. I was the homesick kid, five hours from home. I didn't really know anybody. I hadn't found my tribe. But I walked in. You're both mentioned being from Long Island. As most people know, I'm from Boston. I'm a diehard Red Sox and Patriots fan. And Harry, in the middle of everything he's describing as being the general manager. No matter what he was doing, when I would walk into the station, he would put it aside, say hello to me by name, make a snide comment about Mets Red Sox or Patriots Jets or whatever it was, and I was like, wow, this guy's like the senior, he's a GM, and the PD, by the way.
Harry: Little did I know what was to come in Boston sports, my goodness.
Jag: No, those were your good old days before we turned the corner, but anyway. You made the effort and made us all feel welcome and it's interesting hearing it from your perspective and how your perspective changed over the four years and how you really took it upon yourself to build for the future of the radio station because, as you both alluded to, there weren't a lot of people there.
Marty was the class ahead of me in 2001, there weren't a lot of 2001s. I feel like when you brought us in, you said, we have got to empower this group of freshmen to be the next generation of leaders. Or this thing ain't going to survive.
Dena: You know what? And that year I was broadcast consultant and the year before for me was so emotionally draining.
And I know I said this during my acceptance speech, I wrote my resignation letter probably three times that year I was GM. Yeah. I never submitted it. I cried every time I wrote it, the stress and the pressure. And the things that we had to deal with as 19 year olds, school aside, classes were like, not even existent.
Jag: Classes? What are those? Yeah.
Dena: In fact, Rick gave me a B in radio station operations while I was dealing with receivership. And I still have a bone to pick with him about that.
Jag: I called him out for giving me a B in TV and radio performance.
Dena: I don't care. I want that changed.
Harry: We were doing things that we probably weren't, we weren't equipped to deal with that amount of pressure.
Dena: Oh, absolutely. I was not equipped to deal with the stress and the decisions and the pressure. I remember the year I was GM getting phone calls from the alumni association, I would come back to my dorm room and I would see the answering machine light, because again, this is how old we are. The answering machine light would be flickering and it would be a phone call from Kelly Foster or it would be a phone call from Beth Gorab wanting to know what was going on and they were leading the alumni association at the time wanting to know what was going on with the station and how things were going with receivership and I dreaded those phone calls because it was embarrassing to have to talk about what was going on. And I agree. It was such a feeling of letting people down that the stress and the pressure of that year for me was prepared me for a great, for a greater stress in my life, but. That stress level on a 19 year old was astronomical.
Harry: There's still a part of me that feels that I let the alumni down.
Dena: I had a very hard time my senior year being at that same level at the station because I was just so emotionally spent from my junior year.
Jag: But to Harry's point when you come in as an 18 year old as I can tell you from our class We didn't know we didn't know what you'd been through the year before you we didn't know that you were burnt out You were the broadcast consultant. Harry was the GM and the PD You were the broadcast consultant and you guys were in charge and we took our cues from you
Harry: What does Harry have nine jobs?
Jag: Matt DelSignore in his episode when he followed you as GM and PD was like, oh, yeah. You're GM and PD at the same time. That's my normal. That's what I knew.
Anyone could do that. I just, I wished I had done more. And I always said that in retrospect, I think Harry, you knew that if you had a question or if you needed something, you could have always called me and I would have come running, but I just, I couldn't physically be there.
And I remembered having that conversation with you and I'm sorry. You know what? I'm sorry. All these years later, I'm sorry that I wasn't there physically. I knew, I know that you knew I was there in my heart. I just couldn't be there in body. I wish I was more present. I really do.
Harry: Of course. Some people would be like, wow, are you like a masochist or something? Like you went through all of this and I've been through this numerous times with different jobs and things like that. I think my mother who my entire life was really sick. She taught me how to fight through things and what really mattered. And no matter what the situation, you were just going to keep going.
And, my mom went blind when I was born. I saw her fight through being a mother and raising me. And, to me, I was never gonna quit anything. I still, to this day, will never quit anything because of her. That's who she made me. And I know it was tough, and I don't have any. Dena, I respect you for staying as long as you did during that time.
But for me, I was not going to accept this radio station to die. I needed to, be moving on and, at the very least starting to heal again, and that's where your class came in and we did radio at a very grassroots level that year, we sat every Monday for probably a couple hours and did music meetings and honestly became friends and learned to build a team of people.
Harry was pretending he was a program director. This is what we do and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At the same time, it was a great experience. That's how the staff got rebuilt. And I started to care about people to me, the legacy. When I first stepped on campus was, wow, I want to be the program director of the best college radio station in the country and have high ratings and blah, blah, blah.
And at the end of it, all I really cared about was making sure that there were people there. And they taught me to care about people. To be able to drop what I was doing, and it's good that I have attention span issues, is that I can talk to Jon about the Patriots.
I think we stole Parcells from you right around that time too.
Jag: Yeah, that's about right.
Harry: It's not just a college radio station. I did say that and I want to clarify this. It is so much more than a college radio station because you're working with these people, you're learning how to deal with people.
You have all these college kids who know everything, including myself, and we're all trying to figure it out. I look back at that senior year, I loved training you guys. It was hard. We demanded a lot of you guys and girls to be able to put the time in, you can't teach that it's a free radio station.
You're not getting paid, but those Mondays mean more to me. Now, one of the most rewarding things for me is to see that team of people that grew that senior year that took over and then passed the torch to other people. That's what it was about. And I say, to Matt, who had the guts as a scared freshman to take over the radio station and sophomore year.
Matt to me was a brilliant music mind and a really good, reliable, solid person. And I knew I could trust him and I knew that he would do everything in his power to keep the mission and the legacy going.
Dena: I have such a good Matt story and I can't think of the name of the song. It was very racy and it was like questionable.
I remember vividly that I'd not heard the song before and I was doing my illustrious midday shift. Matt was programming the radio station and he was in the back room. But I was horrified listening to the lyrics of this song as I was playing it. And I couldn't believe we were actually playing it. And I slammed open the door to the studio.
I walked out into the hallway. I looked down the hallway at Matt. I screamed down the hallway to Matt. I go, what the fuck am I playing? And he goes, "It's a hit, Dena. It's a hit!"
Harry: And that's why Matt became Program Director because he had the wherewithal and the confidence to say that. And that's invaluable to have people like that are willing to work hard and to do things. So thank you to Matt. Thank you to Beth Berlin. To you. Of course, Jon thank you to everyone. And Steve Lawson was there. We had such a crew of interesting characters and people, Jan a Fiorello, everyone worked so hard and they believed in the radio station.
You don't realize how rewarding after going through the awfulness of two and a half, three years. To have people that cared enough and were excited by it and speak of it to this day is one of the best things that they had in their college career. is incredibly rewarding, and it makes it all worth it.
It exists, it's there, it's educating students, it's a media classroom, and I'm proud to just be a small part of it. We got through a lot. The good parts and the bad parts teach you a lot, and so I learned a lot of things at WJPZ.
Jag: Briefly Dena let me start with you. Career arc in Syracuse.
Dena: I left Syracuse, I worked for Cox Stations here in Long Island as a promotions assistant, as an intern coordinator, as a sales assistant.
I then left there and actually got the awesome opportunity to work with Harry at the stations that he's currently at as the marketing director. I said that those years it was literally like Working at Z89, but getting a paycheck. There were so many similarities to our Z89 experience working at those stations at that time under different management and everything else.
In a different facility that you are in now. So much of it has changed for you, but all those years ago, it literally felt like we got the band back together again. I worked there for about six months. I then though had this massive calling to no longer give away CDs and concert tickets and write marketing plans and thought I would save the world as a teacher.
And I left radio to become a teacher. It's been a circuitous route in education, but in a way to tie this all back into a fancy little bow, I now work in Harry's former school district as an ESL teacher. I no longer work in radio, but you still teach. I still teach. The radio station has always been near and dear to my heart.
Harry's radio station is still on the air. And I had always wanted to work at the high school, only for the opportunity to continue to work in radio and to pull out whatever radio cards I had to help out the high school kids at the radio station, but it hasn't worked itself out.
Jag: And I don't want to forget mentioning the years that you chaired the banquet committee and you helped put together that big party every year and the blood, sweat, and tears that went into that because you hadn't had enough that year dealing with receivership.
You came back and ran the banquet for several years after. We appreciate your efforts there as well.
Dena: Thank you.
Jag: Harry, take me through your career arc since Syracuse.
Harry: I knew I wanted to be in a radio station. It worked actually in the city at 1010 WINS I was happy to get a job, but the the program director, Mark Mason at the time is the guy who put Mike and the Mad Dog together, and it was just a cool experience to be able to go to lunch with Mark and Scott Herman and these great, amazing New York city radio people at the time. So I was there for two years. I think I was doing traffic, commercial traffic scheduling. I learned operations of a huge radio station. So I was there for a couple of years. I came out East in 2001, right after September 11th. I never heard of the radio stations that were out in the Hamptons before.
There's a small group of stations. There are three of them and I was on the top 40 at the time. I worked there for a few years and off and on. So I was out there doing what I was doing at Z89. If I look back at the past 20 something years, there's these stages, and this is for everyone's career in life, where I've built teams, I've seen them change, I've seen them go away.
And Z89 taught me how to keep moving and to say, all right, where are we? Let's figure it out. And over the years I was there, I've been in my current role since 2007. A lot of different staffs, a lot of training, a lot of sports conversations about teams to get different part timers and become full timers.
Everything I learned at WJPZ, I used to this day and currently in the middle of another rebuild over the past couple of years with COVID and everything really has changed and radio has changed as well. So I, to this day, use the lessons I learned at WJPZ and internally grateful to that experience good and bad.
It's amazing to see the passion behind people like Alex Silverman and Tex and all those guys that they caught the bug from all the people that your class kept building and like a snowball effect. And I'm proud of that. In some level, I helped start that that at least that time period.
Jag: You both absolutely did. And the reason I wanted to go a little bit longer than I typically go on a podcast with the two of you is I really wanted the rest of the alumni, young and old to know there have been some moments over the 50 years of this radio station where we almost didn't make it. And you both certainly saw that moment firsthand and helped shepherd the station through it to continue the link in that chain, to keep it going through my class and the classes after.
Then build that foundation for us that we get the thing going and keep it going now, nearly 25 years later after that whole situation happened. And I really want to thank on behalf of all the alumni and even the current students. I get a little choked up saying this, but thank you both for all that you have contributed both as students and as alumni to this great radio station and kept it going for all this time.
So thank you both for spending some time together today.
Harry: My pleasure. Thank you.
Dena: Thank you.
Jag: I texted Matt. I got the song. Juvenile, "Back That Ass Up.".
Harry: He's right, it was a hit.