In the first of two episodes featuring original JPZ'ers from the 1970's, we sit down with Greg Hernandez. In addition to being one of the key figures at the start of WJPZ, he's had a fascinating career since, working with some of the top names at ABC News and having a front-row seat to some significant events in history.
Like many of us, Greg first got in front of a microphone in high school, and worked his way to Syracuse. He started at WAER, but Bill Bleyle told him about a new station they were putting on 1200 AM - WJPZ. As the sales manager, Greg sold spots (yes, commercials) to Acropolis Pizza - even though they couldn't hear the station from their original location on Westcott Street! On the air, Greg hosted a Friday and Saturday night show, taking calls from students partying in the dorms and elsewhere.
Greg also sent over some perfectly preserved documents from those days - which you can link to here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gl0q0m93n2bzi2k/AABrf8_TU9oH3mcio-kQx1qua?dl=0
After a few Central New York radio gigs, Greg tired of the snow and headed south - to Washington DC, eventually landing a gig at his dream employer - ABC News. He tells us some amazing stories of working with Peter Jennings, Sam Donaldson, David Brinkley, and Ted Koppel. These include the Challenger disaster, Reagan's Iran-Contra affair announcement nearly derailing a Syracuse alumni tour, and more.
Following his time at ABC, Greg worked as a media contact for several government agencies. He was at NOAA when they recovered John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane, and was the media contact in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He then moved on to the US Mint, where he visited Presidential homes to promote the new dollar coins. And finally, he ended up at the FDIC during the height of 2008's financial crisis.
Now, Greg narrates audio books full time (when you hear his voice you'll see why it's a perfect fit for him.)
As we wrap up, Greg reflects on what he learned at WJPZ, and how it informed his career since. And he marvels at how this little radio station he helped start 50 years ago still endures today.
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 WJ PZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. So happy to have today's guest with us. One of the originals. He is a hall of fame inductee in 2014. He is the class of 1976 and if you've met him as he's been coming back in recent years, you know what a great guy he is. And I feel bad that we only have limited time with him today cuz when I get on the phone with him, we seem to talk for hours.
Mr. Greg Hernandez, welcome to the podcast,
Greg: Jon. Thank you very much and thank you for putting these podcasts together. They are just incredible. I've enjoyed all of them thus far. And you're just doing a terrific job. It's a, I believe what Scott MacFarlane said. I know you from school, but decades apart.
JAG: Exactly. Let's go with that. And I appreciate the fact that you are in your audiobook narration studio, which makes my job as an editor of course, a lot easier. So the sound quality is fantastic. Tell me how you first ended up at Syracuse and the radio station.
Greg: In high school in junior year I took a journalism class.
And that was when the bug hit. I went to the local library to find out what reporters did. And it was really funny because it was a little index card that the librarian gave me that said, reporters work long hours for low pay.
JAG: They knew that even back then. Okay.
Greg: Yeah. And so at the time I thought, okay, this thing, eyewitness News, WABC in New York started.
And I said to my journalism teacher, is it all right if I called them to do an interview with the two new anchors, Roger Grimsby and Bill Butell, and everybody else in the class said, oh, they're not gonna talk to you. And I didn't realize it, it was my philosophy at that moment, but I said, it doesn't hurt to ask, right?
So I called and Roger Grimsby said, yeah, come on in. So here I am in the ABC studios in Manhattan. And we did an interview with my little tape recorder, and then he introduces me to this young reporter, Geraldo Rivera. Who had just made his name with this big Willowbrook, New Jersey story. And Howard Cosell and Tex Antoine, the weatherman.
And it was just amazing. And so I'm sitting there, he takes me around in the newsroom. And not only does he let me see the live broadcast, he lets me see it from inside the studio. Oh wow. Feeds from where he's sitting at the anchor desk. And so I'm this, 17-year-old kid, just couldn't believe this was happening.
So then I write a story for the class paper, and then I become a reporter for the school paper. And then I thought let me do an interview with Bill Butell. So I call, and he said, come in. And then all of a sudden, this guy who was doing sports at the time, former New York Yankees pitcher, Jim Bonton, walks in and he says I saw you talking to Bill Butell.
Tell me what he told you. And it was just like, amazing stuff. So it's you're this kid. And I thought, I gotta keep calm, take it all in. And had a great time. So I became editor-in-chief of the high school paper. I also convinced the principal senior year that I should be able to do a job, a little show called News and Music for the lunchroom.
And he agreed. And there I was through the intercom doing a music show and news items for the students. And from there I started researching schools. Syracuse always popped up as a really good journalism school, so it was a no-brainer. So the only big hurdle for me, was making sure that I continued to be the nerd that I always have been, and maintained that average because there was no way I could afford Syracuse.
I got in with a full scholarship. I was very lucky. I got full scholarships to Columbia and Fordham, but I said, Syracuse is it, and the rest is history.
JAG: You lived that story before many of us did. Of doing the high school announcements and things in high school and talking to journalists in our hometowns and getting it bitten by the bug.
Wanted to go there. You were a couple years after the original guys. Were you there when the station first started or was it there when you got there?
Greg: It was already there, but I wasn't part of it. I got lucky because freshman year, which now is 50 years ago at this. 50 years ago, I was wrapping up my freshman year at Syracuse University, which is amazing to say that, when you start saying 50 years, half a century, all that stuff.
But I was lucky that I was the only freshman that semester to make it to an On-air anchoring position at WAER. Okay. And so I did the news on Saturdays and then in the spring, Bill Bleyle with whom I was going to school with in the Newhouse School. said, hey, we're thinking about starting this other station.
Would you be interested? And then I thought, yeah, I was doing news from the Quonset huts at the foot of Mount Olympus. And literally those things leaked cold. I literally would write the news with my coat on with a red nose as red as Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer. And then when word came out that WAER was going to get this state-of-the-art studio in the new Newhouse II building, Bill showed me all this equipment laying on the floor, at some point later in, in 73. I said if you know how to put that together, I'll be on it.
And so I credit Bill Bleyle with being the visionary for this thing. it was just amazing, how it just began and we were at Campus Conveniences, which was basically, if you look at the picture, it's like a single-family home. Next to the brand Newhouse two building. Okay. And it just towered over this building and we were on a second floor with all this equipment scattered all over the place.
It wouldn't be unusual for me to be doing a show and Craig Fox, literally crawling underneath all the equipment, trying to tweak things. That's what we did. I could look out the window on the campus, at the time cuz there was no Newhouse three.
So I narrate audiobooks and there's a series called Yester Time, which is time travel. And so every time I go into New House three, I feel I'm going into a time portal and I'm gonna go into Campus conveniences there, and wind up on the WJPZ 1200 studios.
JAG: I will say, Greg, you have done a lot of prep leading into this podcast. You sent me some documents and I'm gonna find a way to link to them in the show notes.
You sent me a coverage map of WJPZ 1200 AM nonstop rock, a local rate card. You've got drive spots. $2.25 for a 60-second spot. A dollar for a 10-second spot. You've got all this great stuff you sent me about WJPZ, WJPZ is a commercial AM radio station under the supervision of Syracuse University. WJPZ operates continuously 24 hours a day.
Our programming consists of a tasteful blend of top 40 music and popular album cuts for a maximum audience of college age adults. WJPZ adheres to a strict commercial limit of eight minutes per hour. And then you've got a playlist on here. It's got Hooked on a Feeling from Blue Suede. It's got Piano Man from Billy Joel. Mockingbird from Carly Simon and James Taylor, Benny and the Jets from Elton John and so on and so forth.
This is really cool stuff, a really cool artifact that I'm glad you were able to dig up that I'm gonna link to here in the show notes.
Greg: It helps to be a pack rat. I've had that stuff. It's really some of the rate cards I've had 'em put away in such a way that they are still. Bright white as if they were brand new from 1973.
JAG: Yeah, they're perfect as I'm looking at them on my screen here. And then you've also got a list of advertisers or potential advertisers on here, Acropolis Pizza, which unfortunately just went the way of the dodo, unfortunately. But Varsity Pizza, Cosmo's, Hungry Charlie's, Orange Student Bookstore. Jreck Subs. University Smoker, I assume that was cigarettes and not barbecue in those days.
Greg: Yes. It's a head shop as they used to call them in those days. Yeah.
JAG: Emerson's Limited, Aetna Life and Casualty, Air Force recruiting. This stuff is gold, so I'm so glad you were able to hang onto it and share it for the podcast.
Greg: Oh, yeah. I have to give credit to Alki Maverakites who was the owner of Acropolis Pizza.
He was amazing. Acropolis Pizza originally was on Westcott Street. And I would walk out there and try to sell him the advertising because I was a sales manager, so I would get 15% of any sales . And so that was really good beer money. And especially when beer was like a quarter!
I would go there. He could not hear the station at all at Westcott Street. Because he was not facing Day Hall transmitter, but on faith, he would always buy advertising. And so the first year, basically a lot of people thought of WJPZ as the Acropolis pizza station, cuz that commercial ran ad infinitum,
JAG: And back in those days it was a commercial and as not a sponsorship. You could actually sell commercials, right?
Greg: Correct. Yeah. We sold spots and that was the beauty of the thing. With WJPZ in the beginning, we actually sold spots, made money. Just like a real radio station and obviously that went to buying equipment because Bill Bleyle, he also bought some of the equipment himself.
We were very fortunate that some of that income was coming in. But it was, I'll tell you, I wish I had a way of measuring my steps because I certainly put in, I didn't have a car, so I walked to all these places and sometimes in the winter can be a challenge there in Syracuse, walking from the campus to Westcott in the dead of winter.
JAG: Well that's probably a universal truth that anybody listening knows what a trek that would be.
Greg: So we were very lucky how everything was mirroring exactly what it is to work a radio station I used to have a show on Friday and Saturday nights from 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM and we could expand the playlist a little bit at night to more, a little bit, album-oriented rock as it was known in those days.
People were at the dorm at Day Hall and partying away and I would be packing my albums that I bought at Spectrum Records to supplement the music library. But I had a blast. And it was always fun when people actually called the studio. To say they wanted to request a song.
It was the most amazing experience that you could ever have practically, without having actually working at a radio station.
JAG: And how far had the station come technologically between when you guys first put it on the air? Up until when you graduated?
Greg: I think when I graduated, thankfully, Dr. Wright came along in 1974. So I call Bill Bleyle the visionary, and Dr. Wright the guiding light. Because without Dr. Wright, this could have fallen apart, but we gotta carrier current license, which increased the power because initially it was one-tenth of a watt. And we used to joke that your average light bulb has more power.
So if you were not facing Day Hall, you were not listening to WJPZ. But I was always amazed how many people were listening to WJPZ and telling us about it, on campus. And then as people got to find out about it in the Newhouse School, they were starting to volunteer in greater numbers. And so like in the fall of 73, that's where things really started to pick up.
We started to broadcast longer hours because in, in the overnight we would simulcast WAER. And then that changed in 74. It just became more of a constant WJPZ, non-stop rock.
JAG: Like you said, not a lot of people could hear the radio station, but people were coming out in droves to either interact with the radio station or be on the radio station, right?
Greg: Correct. And I found out recently cuz my daughter just graduated from Syracuse in May, and she was one of the SU 100 students who did the tours. And I went there and one of the women in the administration office. She grew up listening to WJPZ. And my daughter was saying that this woman was very excited to meet somebody from WJPZ.
I thought, oh my God. It's you don't realize that it's not just Syracuse University, that this impacted the city of Syracuse. WJPZ was another radio station that people could listen to in the city. It wasn't just a campus thing.
JAG: It's funny these generations that come, I interviewed Lauren Levine for the podcast.
She graduated in 2010. She grew up in Syracuse. I graduated in 02. We did the math and realized that she might have been listening to me on her middle school bus, back in the day or that Melody Emm who graduated in either 20 or 22, that her mom grew up listening to the guys in the nineties. It's funny how this cycle just perpetuates for 50 years.
Greg: To me, it's been such a gratifying thing because when you're a student, as you're thinking about your studies, the classes, friendships and stuff like that. And if you're working at WJPZ, that's another load you're carrying and part of your, daily life there on campus and you graduate and you move on.
You're thinking about career as next stop. Never did I ever think that 50 years later, that WJPZ, this little band of people got together, had this idea, made it happen. And little did we think it would continue after we graduated, because, once you graduate, you're moving on to other things.
You're not worried about what's happening to the station. I have to give credit to the W J P Z Alumni Association because I consider it one of the best organizations on this planet. Because they have. WJPZ front and center at Syracuse University. They have made it the organization where it just keeps this WJPZ family together because it is a family.
When I was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014, it was the first time I came back to Syracuse in winter. After I graduated, I worked at two local radio stations there in Syracuse. So I became a citizen of Syracuse. I really enjoy the city. But I had enough of 100 plus inches of snow.
I had many run-ins with real life-threatening times with snow. And I thought, okay, it's time to go. So when I left in 79, I said, okay, I'm not coming back to Syracuse anymore in the winter, but I would come back from my reunions. So I would started coming fifth, 10th, 15th and 20th. But in the summer when they used to have the reunions in June.
Because Syracuse in June is a beautiful time to be in upstate New York. Oh yeah. And so all of a sudden, I get a call from Scott MacFarlane out of the blue. And I had been watching him here and Washington Local WRC, great investigative reporter. And I thought, he asked me, are you one of the founders of JPZ?
I said yeah. And so he told me about the whole induction thing and I thought, oh my God, this is amazing. Because I have to tell you, Jon, that over the years, whoever put together the WJPZ Paper Newsletter was amazing, detective because every time I moved, that newsletter found me. And I thought this was years before internet and all that stuff.
They always managed to find my new address and that's how I kept track with what was happening with the organization because I would say, oh, they have all these listings from the eighties and it was like, Hey, what about us in the seventies? And it was also incumbent on us from the seventies to have said something.
But I was very happy to hear what was happening and how people were just like building this thing continuously. And when I got that call from Scott, I thought this is it. It was great to be back in 2014. And every time I go back, it's one of the highlights of my year. And I have to tell you, I've done what I consider some cool things in my career and life, but being inducted into the Hall of Fame at WJPZ is the greatest honor I'm ever gonna have in this life.
JAG: Wow. That's powerful stuff. You mentioned, Greg, other stuff you've done in your career. Take me through your career after graduation and what you've done in the time since.
Greg: Yeah. When I graduated, I moved out to the suburbs in Camillus. And I worked for of all places because there were no jobs at that time, AT&T.
Now they were in the beginning of digitizing phone records, customer phone records. So there I am, and this clunky little computer, digitizing this stuff, mind numbing stuff, but there were no radio jobs. So then in summer of 77, I got hired for WKFM and WOSC was a daytimer in Fulton, New York.
So it was about a 40 minute drive from Camillus, and so I did the overnight news on WKFM, and then at five o'clock I would start writing the news for the morning anchor at WOSC, the Daytimer. That lasted for about a year and then I thought it was time to move on. So I got a job over at WNBO and WRLX in Auburn, New York, where I was an anchor and reporter.
And I just had this thing, I have to work for a b ABC News. It was in my blood. I have to work for ABC News.
JAG: Back to your high school days. It was still in your head.
Greg: It was still there. And I thought, I started doing the long-distance interview thing coming down to Washington cuz I fell in love with Northern Virginia in 1978 when I came down here to do the tourist thing. And I thought, oh boy, that Northern Virginia is great, and I could, if I get a job in DC, it's right across the way. And it was the usual catch 22. You don't have Washington experience. It's yeah, but I'm a reporter. It's the news.
And so I finally thought, this is where I want to be. So I moved without a job, and a month later I started working for a Mutual Radio as a news writer. I worked there five years and that's where I got to meet Larry King, Jim Bohannon and just a wonderful cadre of reporters and anchors.
But I started knocking on ABC's Door and eventually, two years later, I got in. June of 84 they hired me as a news writer reporter and spent the rest of my broadcast career there where I was very fortunate. One day, World News Tonight used to be done outta the DC Bureau. And there comes Peter Jennings into the radio newsroom.
And the editor said, oh, can you work with Peter on his radio commentary called Jennings Journal? I said, of course. And so I'm sitting there, I'm reading a script, and I thought, oh my God, there's a grammatical error. Do I tell Peter Jennings that he has grammatical error in his script? Oh boy. And I thought to myself they assigned me as editor and I certainly do.
And so I, I pointed it out to. him, and that became a great working relationship. Five years later. I don't know why I thought of this. I said, Peter, can you do me a favor? Would you be willing to record my outgoing message for my phone at home? And I gave him a little script. He looked at it and said sure, as long as you promise me not to sell it.
And so I put it on my phone and it was really funny. One day I came home, was listening to the messages in the old cassette thing, and somebody called me and. This is a wrong number, but I'm glad I dialed it. Because Jennings, I added the World News Theme and Jennings said, "Hi, this is Peter Jennings. Greg's not here right now. He's out. Gallivanting. Please leave a message."
JAG: Oh, that's great.
Greg: It was great. And because of today's digitizing of audio, I've never played it in public because it, it would be too easy to record it and probably, put your own name in there. But on occasion I'll put it on my phone and play for people and stuff cuz I did digitize it and it's a great memory.
And one of the best things was for 10 years I was the producer of the radio version of this week with David Brinkley. . And so it was 29 minutes, 30 seconds for the radio version. And one day the Challenger blows up. And they have a guest that has a model of the challenger. Every sentence began with, as you can see, and I thought, in radio you cannot see! And so I thought to myself, okay, I need to write a script and hopefully David Brinkley will come up here and record that so we can throw that into the radio version.
I called down to the TV desk and they said, yeah, he'll be right up. And there comes, David Brinkley goes into the studio, does it ala Brinkley style. And we began another relationship like that. And every time I needed anything for the radio version, David Brinkley would come into the studios and we'd chat.
And it was a wonderful time that I was there. And then of course, down couple of floors below me was Ted Koppel, who was a Syracuse undergrad. And one time I used to always do for a while there, tours of the ABC facilities for Syracuse alumni. There were big programs. So one time I had 50 alumni coming to the bureau.
It was this lineup of Sam Donaldson, Ted Koppel and John Bascom. He was my radio colleague who had just followed people who escaped the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. To say this is the trek that these people took to escape Nicaragua. But what happens that moment? Ronald Reagan decides that he's going to tell the world what he knew of the Iran Contra affair.
And so it was a special report at eight o'clock at night, and this was a seven o'clock event. And I thought, oh my God, what is going to happen to this program? I've got 50 Syracuse University from the university to alumni in this building. I thought, oh my. And so Sam Donaldson calls me from the White House and says, I'm sorry Greg, I can't do the program cuz they're asking me to do a live shot for the second World News Tonight feed.
And I thought, okay. So I went down to Ted Koppel's assistant and I said, how does it look for Ted? What happened was Peter Jennings, who was the anchor, he was in London. And so they tapped Ted Koppel to do the special report at 8. So he had to prep for that. And I thought, oh my God, this is all falling apart.
So John Bascom starts telling his story about the people he follows from Nicaragua. He told a great story and he was there for half an hour, no break. And then 7:30. Ted Koppel is at the doorway. John, without skipping a beat, says, and my colleague here, Ted Koppel, is ready to talk to you. He talked to the Syracuse folks for about 20 minutes.
Anchored the show. And as I'm giving people the tour of ABC facilities, he's on the air and so is Reagan. As we're walking around the building and years later people said, oh my God, I remember that tour. I couldn't believe it happened. And that to me was the first day of the beginning of my graying, of my hair.
JAG: So just so I have the timeline right, so Koppel comes in with you from 7:30 to 7:50, and then he's live on the air at eight. Do I have that?
Greg: Correct? It was seamless. It was as if it was all planned, all along. And I thought this was too much luck going on here.
JAG: That is something else. What's interesting to me is here you are in DC, you're at ABC and you're the radio guy.
You're working with this A-list talent. Names that all of us recognize from the business. I've gotta imagine some of your time at JPZ influenced you to be on the radio side of things as opposed to tv.
Greg: Yes, as a matter of fact, that's a good question because when I got to ABC, my original intent was to go to tv.
But once I got to ABC radio, I just fell in love with radio even more. And that's where I wanted to stay. So the whole idea of being a TV correspondent went out the window and I stayed. And it was great because I would do long form reporting for programs and and just do a lot of things that I wanted to do in radio interviews.
And one of my favorite things, because I worked Sunday through Thursday for most of my time there. After This Week with David Brinkley. If Sam Donaldson, who was the White House correspondent at the time, had something breaking that moment, he would come to radio. He would take his pen and hit the fire drill bell.
And I would know instantly that Sam is about to walk into the radio newsroom and he would say, Stop The Presses! He would sit down at the typewriter, write out his scripts and record it, and we would have breaking news. On radio. There were times where I was, we would air a story on ABC radio and I would, the phone would ring in the bureau and it would be Ted Koppel saying to me, Hey, I was in the car listening, and you might want to check this particular fact.
And I stayed there in March of 1994, the radio business had changed quite a bit. Especially at the network level. That's when I left ABC Radio on broadcast. . And for 24 years after that, I became a spokesman for three federal agencies, NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and then the US Mint. And then I spent my last 10 years in government at the FDIC, at the height of the financial crisis. And at NOAA, I got deployed to Cape Cod to find the plane where John Kennedy Jr. Had crashed. And it was a NOAA ship that crashed. And there I am in a scrum when we were about to distribute a map of where the wreckage was found.
And I have a picture in my Instagram feed where you see all these hands around me from reporters trying to grab at the charts, huh. And because there was literally an army of reporters there. And so I finally put my hand up. It's Hey, look, I'm gonna give you a chart, but stop grabbing. So I did that, and then they deployed me to Hurricane Floyd down in Florida.
And then at the US Mint was really interesting. I found out from being there and all these coins being put out for collectibles and gold and silver coins, I didn't realize I had so many friends who were closet coin collectors. They were trying to hit me up for any news on this particular coin coming.
So it was people who knew me just always trying to pump me for information about coins. The dollar coin, which never took off. Was at the time being promoted. And so we would go around to the President's homes. So I remember being at Andrew Jackson's home in Nashville, and we'd came up with this way of selling the coin.
So we called it the "money shot." for tv we would take a bag of 500 coins, dollar coins, and then we would do the pouring out of the coins onto a table. And so that was the big media thing, and they were all there. Andrew Jackson that went up into Albany Martin Van Buren. And so that was, I got the meet some interesting people at those Presidential homes.
My favorite story was the John Tyler home down near Richmond. I call Harrison Tyler, who was the grandson of John. He was still alive and it was the only house where the family of a former President from that era was still living in it. I asked him if he wanted us to do this event there, and so he said yes.
And all of a sudden, a day later I get a call from Paynie Tyler, his wife, and she had this very thick Southern accident and she said, Mr. Hernandez, if you wanna do an event in my house, I would say you speak to me from now on. And so that's how we worked it. We did the whole money shot thing. And the night before the event, we had finished the planning and as five o'clock rolled around Ms. Tyler said to me Mr. Hernandez, would you like a scotch? And I said it is five o'clock, but I don't drink scotch. And she says, how about a bourbon? I said, yeah, I could do that. So there I am drinking bourbon in John Tyler's home. It was just amazing, and then that was the last event for me at the Mint.
And then I was a financial reporter at Mutual and ABC Radio. It was really funny at ABC Radio, cuz I was always volunteering to cover the Paul Volker hearings. Nobody wanted to do that. They said, oh God, those things are boring. I said, yeah, they might be boring to you. They make a lot of news.
JAG: He was the chairman of the Fed at the time. When they raised the interest rates in the eighties. Do I have that right?
Greg: He was, yeah. The person that I bounced, whatever he said off, was Alan Greenspan. So when Volker would do his thing, I would call to the newsroom in New York and say hey, this is the news.
This is what Paul just said. Of course had the lead story. And so years later when Alan Greenspan gets tapped to be the Federal Reserve that number that I used to call 'em in Manhattan all of a sudden, like unlike today, was disconnected. So from there and then the FDIC when I left NOAA was because after Hurricane Katrina, I was the media contact for that storm.
Oh wow. We had put out the NOAA airplane, had done a survey of the Gulf Coast and we literally put on the internet a thousand photos, I think 3000, of the area that the plane took. They were all geo-tagged and everything, but they were not searchable. All of a sudden I get a call from somebody a t Google Maps and says, Hey, we could help you do a search.
And so they put together a little search engine and they could, they say, Hey I lived at 134 Canal Street in, in New Orleans. Can you look that up? And we could, and if we had a photo, that corresponded, we could say that somebody called me one day. Can you tell me if my mom's home is still there?
And I would look up the address and I would say, I'm sorry sir. All I'm seeing is a slab of cement at that address. And then the person on the other end starts crying. And that happened multiple times and I, that's what I became burned out with weather because weather happens daily. And I thought, I can't do this anymore. This is too much.
And so I started looking for a place to do more finance. And so the US Mint was my way station, and then the FDIC job popped up and there was no doubt, and it was great working with Sheila Bayer, the chairman at the time, at the height of the financial crisis, I was the media contact for at least 250 failed banks.
And it was really good because I was able to educate reporters on what the FDIC does. Regarding failed banks, because a lot of times the headlines were, the FDIC closes this bank, and it doesn't close the banks, it just acts as receiver. It just does the transaction from the failed bank to the new bank that acquires it.
And then in 2019, I thought, I did the math. Originally, I thought I would retire at 67. I did the math. And if I work an extra two years from 65 to 67, I would get a whole whopping $1.30 per month, more in my pension. And I thought, I'm out. And so I started narrating audiobooks in 2014 and, did it as a part-time thing.
I would always tell any author that, look, I have a full-time job. I can't do this quickly. And they were, some authors that were great with that. I did the first two and I thought, I need to learn more about the editing side of audiobooks and. I'm glad I did because I took that pause and when I went back to it, I got this author who hired me for this one job, and then a week later he said, I had this other book out for audition.
I don't like any of the people that have auditioned. Can you do this one too? And now I've done 14 of his books. We have a great collaboration going and he's now become a full-time writer. And so I thought, I was backed up with projects and I thought, doing it at home and at what I called an acoustically treated space, not a booth. It was good until the pandemic hit. And my wife works from home all the time now.
And so I can't turn off the AC in the summer or the heat in the winter for more than 90 minutes because everybody either gets cold or hot, right? This June, I said, I like doing this. This is what I wanna do until my head hits the microphone, and just I bought a nice whisper room and this is where I live most days.
JAG: How do you take care of your voice on a day-to-day basis? Your voice is your money maker at this point. How, do you have a regiment for it or anything you do specifically to keep it healthy?
Greg: Yeah, I definitely warm up before I, I begin any narration. I found out that the hard way that if you don't warm up, it is like any muscle.
And if you keep it. And take care of it. It's gonna work for you. And as you said, it's like without a voice, I can't work. So I always am very conscious of the warmup and I don't narrate for very long at a time, maybe maximum of two and a half hours. It's a long time to talk. But the one thing I tell people about audiobooks, it's a marathon, not a sprint.
You have to like this stuff. Most of the books that Andrew Cunningham writes wind up being about six hours. But you have to do the math with audiobooks because they say at the beginning it's a multiple of three, meaning that if it's a six-hour book, it's gonna take you 18 hours to do it.
Between the narration, the editing, and the processing. Because Audible has certain audio specs that they want the audio to be, and so then, that takes a little time. But, and having it now for eight years that I've been doing it, I've really gotten the process of editing streamlined.
And so now with the booth, this is the shortest part of the process. Now, a six- hour book. I'm done in three days.
JAG: As we start to wrap up, Greg, any lessons you can think back to that you learned at JPZ that served you well over your really multifaceted career?
Greg: I always tell people about practical knowledge. I had a lot of professors who did not work in the radio business, taught from books. But then Rick Wright shows up. He knew radio. He knew it inside out. And what a personality we all know about Dr. Wright. And it's really funny. I'm, 68 years old. I still call my professor Dr. Wright. He just changed everything for me. And not only was I learning about the practical nature of running a radio station, doing a radio show, but it was something that I took with me forever because if I hadn't done all that work at WJPZ for three and a half years, I would've gone into radio probably as a desk assistant, somewhere, instead of going right into being an anchor.
And so that was the practical knowledge and it's great listening to all the people that you've already interviewed because it just seems that WJPZ launched everybody into careers that they wanted in the broadcast business with that practical experience behind them.
JAG: Any funny stories you'd look back on that you haven't already told that you think about?
Greg: Oh, remember the time when I sent you that playlist from 1974? So my roommate friend Jeff Micah, also was a DJ on JPZ, but he was a psychology major. And so this song was on the list from this group called ZZ Top. And we couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. There's no Google in that time, so we settled on the word "La Grangy."
So that's how we pronounce it, right? And so years later, after I graduate, I'm driving around Syracuse and I hear the album-oriented rock station somewhere I think in Utica. And the guy said, and here is ZZ Top with LaGrange. And I thought, oh my god, we called it La Grandy. So that was always something that I remember.
But I have to tell you, these podcasts are terrific audio history of the greatest media classroom. I appreciate all the work you've been doing on them. And I'm really enjoying hearing how much impact WJPZZ has had on so many lives. So thank you for doing this.
JAG: And thank you for being one of the folks there at the beginning to get this whole thing started.
And it's had a life of itself and an incredible family for 50 years, and that is a tribute to you and to your classmates and to the folks who've come since you've graduated. Greg Hernandez. Hall of Famer, thank you so much for spending some time today and it's really great to hear all these wonderful stories. And I hope anybody that has not met you since you've been coming back in the last decade or so gets a chance to chat with you in Syracuse in March cuz it really has been a pleasure.
Greg: Thank you, Jon. I really appreciate it.