John sent some great 1990's pics from the station. You can view them here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/zxxnn6pconq7p45fvidd1/h?rlkey=ny9i0u512pve0tf915i58xtl3&dl=0
John Beck, Class of 1995, has gone on to a prolific writing career in Hollywood, having worked on everything from The Hughleys to Fuller House, to Liv and Maddie, and more. A TV guy through and through, it was actually Dave Gorab who approached him, over at then-UUTV, to come do the Crazy Morning Crew at Z89.
John is very honest at the start of the show, sharing his hesitation for coming on the podcast. Because his path was non-traditional, not having toiled in overnights, etc, he wondered if he was "worthy," but BB Good talked him into it, and we are so glad she did.
Soon, John, Julian Keel, and their other teammates were pulilng serious ratings, finishing in Top 10 in the Syracuse market. We talk about some great bits that made the air - from Professor McPhibious and Love Pumping Horace - to some bits that...well, were not approved for the WJPZ airwaves.
John also tells the story of the "We Own a Giant Trampoline Club" - and how they collected enough money to buy one from Sam's Club and granted all members free access to the trampoline in their yard - no matter the hour or their level of sobriety. And if you don't know how the trampoline met its demise, it's worth hearing. And yes, it's another WJPZ lesson applied to the "real world."
We turn to John's Hollywood career - starting off fetching lunch for Corey and Topanga on Boy Meets World, to eventually landing in the writers' room with his fellow SU-alum writing partner Ron Hart. And his career is littered with alumni stories along the way - from meeting BB Good's family to spotting Dion and Kafele at a taping of The Hughleys - to a very cool connection with Kid Michael Rock, and his daughter.
John also explains the recent Hollywood strikes - in layman's terms. A lot has to do with codifying some of Hollywood's "unwritten rules" and making sure the playing field is fair for all with the advent of large streamers such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney and more.
In addition to some classic Rick Wright stories, we conclude with John's advice for writers coming up in 2024. Yes, it's about who you know and being in the "right place at the right time," but there's so much more to it than that. Writers write. Always be writing. And spend equal time working on your job and your career . John explains this in the podcast.
Jag: Welcome to WJPZ at 50, I am Jon JAG Gay Full disclosure, I am meeting today's guest for the first time. I had him tell me who he has stayed in touch with either from school or since school, and I asked, full disclosure, all those people about him. And what I kept getting over and over from everybody were the same three things.
That John is as talented, as he is kind, as he is successful, as he is funny, and on down the line from the class of 95, John Beck, welcome to the show.
John: Thank you. You forgot handsome. They didn't say handsome. How dare they?
Jag: I should say handsome because it is only audio and they can't see you. So I apologize for leaving that out.
John: You gotta paint the picture. It's radio.
Jag: Radio, baby. We can get in to Rick Wright impressions later on for sure. Hey, baby. So let's start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? How did you find out about Syracuse and then the radio station?
John: Let me actually start, if you don't mind. I wanted to start with an apology.
Because you've been asking me to do the podcast. For forever. And I haven't quite gotten back to you and I apologize. I have to say, I I feel a little bit like a fraud coming onto the Z89 podcast because I was never like a Z89 guy. I loved my time there, but I was actually a UUTV guy and was recruited by Dave Gorab, outside the system.
I was the general manager over the TV station. And one day Dave Gorab kind of came over and I had done a bunch of different comedy shows over there. A sketch comedy called Null and void and just a bunch of comedy things there. And. My good friend, Julian Keel had been working at Z89 and Gorab came and approached us about coming in and taking over the crazy morning crew, which seemed like fun to us.
I didn't realize that was the position that everybody worked towards getting was the morning show. I just assumed that nobody else at the radio station. Wanted to get up that early in the morning and they needed somebody to do it. So I said, yeah, okay. So we came into the station and could feel like these eyes who are these guys?
He doesn't even know what overnight is I'm like, yeah, I don't, I have no idea what overnight says, I'm here. So I always felt a little bit on the outside of this fantastic family which I really enjoyed. Being a part of, but never quite felt like it was my place to come in and celebrate that history.
Cause I was just there in a completely different way than most people got there. So I apologize. I am here now. BB good twisted my arm a bit and decided I was being silly and. Nine times out of ten, BB is right, and the only time she's not right is when she thinks she isn't, anyway, I'm here.
Thank you for inviting me, and I apologize that it's taken this long.
Jag: Not at all, and for the record, the only criteria to be on this podcast is you have to have worked at Z89. We have had WAER folks, we've had UUTV folks, and the various iterations of UUTV, and no matter how you got at the station, no matter what you did at the station, you're fair game.
Since you mentioned Dave Gorab, I want to read you this from Dave Gorab, in reference to you and the Crazy Morning Crew. I just remember a show that was always prepared and substantially smart funny. The ones who make it seem easy, and the only reason it's easy is because they took the time to do the work, not just winging it.
So you come off as modest here, John, but that's a pretty high compliment from somebody like Dave Gorab.
John: Listen, there is very few people in the world that I respect more than Dave. Not only now, but back then. This is the guy who always felt like he had his shit together. Like a grown up amongst all of us idiots.
So when Dave asked us to do it, of course, we said, yeah, maybe the first mistake you've ever made, Dave, but yeah, we'll come do it. Like I said, Julian Keel was our friend who had actually gone through training at Z89 his big claim to fame on overnights is he was the DJ on air when comedian Sam Kinison died, which was, I think one of the greatest moments of Z89 history and how wildly inappropriate.
Julian broke the news, he had a high squeaky voice Ah, it's I'm sad to report that Comedian Sam Kinison has died. Beat. But we're still rockin here at Z89! Here's Freak Me!
Jag: Oh, that's great.
John: Somehow, that, that was the guy who was allowed to run the board. And the rest of us just kinda hung out and goofed around and yes, came in with prepared stuff.
But I don't think ever quite realized until much later on what a position of privilege we were put in because Dave showed faith in us and knew that we were. Funny guys who he thought could handle this. And the crazy part is, and again, I, again, I'm not a radio guy. I don't even know necessarily what this means, but we're sitting there after we had done this for a couple of months.
And Dave comes flying into our office over at the TV station the books just came out. I'm like, what is that? I have no idea what that means. He's Oh, it's like the ratings, but for radio and like our tiny little. Station for the morning show is now in the top 10 beating most of the professional stations in the market, which sounded great to us, but we didn't realize what a big deal that was until much later, because again, we didn't know what we were doing.
And frankly, shouldn't have necessarily been given that position, but Dave had faith in us and it was a pretty cool to know that the things that we were doing were actually getting out into the greater Syracuse area. And like we had schools that were requesting us to come in and teach. Science, because we had a character named Professor McPhibious that Brian Gewirtz another guy of ours, did the, this guy just loved frogs, and they were studying frogs, and wanted him to come in and teach their class, and it was pretty cool.
If you could withstand the glares of the people who were like, I did, I have done Overnights for three years, these guys suddenly waltz in and do the morning show.
Jag: So you mentioned professor McPhibious what are some of the other bits you remember from the show?
John: Oh God. A bunch of truly ridiculous things that we had a lot of fun doing.
There was Professor McPhibious there was Love Pumping Horace, it was basically a Monotone guy who would just speak the lyrics to popular songs. We stripped out all the lyrics to Mama Said, knock you out and put the hip hop beat kind underneath a guy. Just, I wouldn't even say it was spoken verse, it was just
Our friend Rob Schrader, just reading the lyrics. Most we thought it was funny and people enjoyed it. I don't know, it was just whatever came to mind that week. We went out of our way to make sure we were engaging. Our audience on their level, which is, we're all junior high and high school idiots at heart anyway.
So that's where we lived.
Jag: I'm told there were a couple of bits that did not get approved by Neon Dion and Dave Gorab.
John: Probably.
Jag: Let's see. I've got it in my notes here. Do you remember any off the top of your head before I come back to my notes?
John: No, go ahead. I'm a little nervous. Let's see.
Jag: In reference to Brian, there was a WWF bit that you wanted to do that didn't quite make it past muster, which you can tell with where Brian ended up, that makes sense, right?
John: I am quite sure that there were several of those. Every week Brian was, I think he and Mike Konner were also pitching a wrestling talk show that also didn't make the grade .I'm not sure of that specific bit, but I'm positive that is correct.
Jag: That tidbit did come from Mike Konner so you're spot on. See, I'm jogging your memory here. He also says he believes, you can tell me true or false on this, there was also a contest not approved. Name BB Good's breast.
John: That is true. That is true. I frankly felt I should have won with Starsky and Hutch.
Jag: Ha! Okay. Now, outside the radio station, I'm told there's a story of a trampoline. You recall that one?
John: Yes, that is 100 percent true. My friend Julian and I were walking through Sam's Club in Syracuse, and we're very proud that we had gotten accepted into the Sam's Club.
And we walked in, And as we walked through the aisles, we just see this gigantic trampoline hanging from the ceiling. And it was like, Oh, like the skies open up. I'm like, oh, Julian wouldn't it be great if we had that? I'm like, oh, we're going to get that. “We don't have the kind of money to buy that.”
I'm like, we're not going to pay a dime. He's what are you talking about? We're going to start a club. Just go with me on this. So I called literally everybody I knew and asked if they wanted to be. In the we own a giant trampoline club. I'm like what do you mean? I'm like we'll own a giant trampoline.
What do I gotta do? You pay five dollars and you get to be in the club. What's the membership get me? He's you can come jump on it anytime you want. Oh, anytime I want. So if it's three in the morning and there's three feet of snow and I feel like I want to jump on a trampoline what happens?
I'm like, you're trampoline, dude. Come on over. You're like, dude, I am so in. We literally raised enough money. To buy this trampoline and stick it to the back of our yard and then had like hundreds of dollars left over for beer money for the rest of the year for anybody who wanted to come over and jump on the trampoline.
Jag: Oh, that's tremendous.
John: Which was pretty fabulous, except for one thing. We never approved it with our landlord, so we just had this gigantic trampoline with everybody on the face of the planet coming in at, again, three in the morning, having just been out at Chuck's or Faegan's and jumping on the trampoline.
So it's a massive liability in hindsight as a grown up now, but at the time it was pretty cool. But. When we graduated our senior year, what are you going to do with a trampoline? There's still plenty of people on campus who are part of the club. So we gave it to a friend and their landlord wasn't nearly as as lenient as ours and said that take the trampoline down and piece by piece, the trampoline started to disappear.
Everybody's what happened to the trampoline? They were living in an area that also had some actual families living and one, one day their neighbor came walking down. I was like, oh, I just want to thank you so much for giving my son, Tommy, that trampoline. What are you talking about?
And it turns out this kid down the street saw the trampoline taken apart and came and stole the trampoline piece by piece and reassembled it in his backyard.
Jag: That's commitment.
John: Which I thought was the greatest way for membership of the trampoline club to finally close. And some other kid outsmarted us.
Jag: Oh, that's funny.
John: I will say the, we own a giant trampoline club is a story that I do tell a lot of high school kids, but mostly college kids about, and frankly, some adults are starting on this business. Sometimes things can seem completely overwhelming until you break it down into small pieces.
Once something isn't like a gigantic task and it's a series of small tasks, if you could just do one of those tasks over and over, eventually you get to the end and these big insurmountable things that you don't think you can make happen or break through. Eventually you end up becoming much easier to grasp once you break them down into smaller, more accomplishable tasks.
Jag: Some people eat an elephant. You buy a trampoline.
John: Exactly.
Jag: And you had someone that was there when I was there, I graduated in 2002, Professor Schoonmaker and his kids came and played on the trampoline too, I'm told.
John: Professor Schoonmaker was a member of the We Own a Giant Trampoline Club, and as talented and as handsome as that guy was, I was stunned at how coordinated he was on the trampoline. He got some serious air, and did some corkscrews, and seat drops, and you name it, he was fantastic.
Jag: You mentioned the whole, breaking a larger task into smaller pieces. Are there any other lessons you can think of from your time on the Crazy Morning Crew and at Z89 that have served you well in your tremendous career that we'll get to here shortly?
John: Don't be afraid to try things. They may not work. They may not be any good, but even if it isn't a home run You learn more by failure than you do by success. And if there's something that doesn't work, you could figure out why it didn't work. And the next time you do it, you do things differently. I think there's far too many people who don't put themselves out there and try something to see if they can make it work, especially in comedy.
It's tough to be perfect right out of the gate. You've got to give some things a try. You've got to be vulnerable and throw yourself out there.
Jag: You mentioned comedy. You have been associated with some very well-known shows throughout your career. Take me through moving out to L. A. after graduation and your career arc since.
John: You asked before, I grew up in a small town in northwestern Pennsylvania. After high school, I graduated with Syracuse for four years, and after that, realized I wanted to get into the entertainment business scripted television. So I packed all my worldly belongings into my shitty Ford Tempo and hit the highway.
And I ended up moving out to LA and crashing on couches for a couple of weeks before landing that first gig. I started out as a production assistant on a show called Boy Meets World. Production assistant is the person who does everything. They, at the time they would, we'd copy scripts, we'd get lunches, we would run errands, you literally do everything and you're there from, nine in the morning until two in the evening as the writers rewrite stuff. And then, back in the old days, then you would copy scripts for a couple hours and drive things around. Now, you email it and there's not nearly as much nighttime work, but that was my very first gig is after four years of. Glorious, Syracuse Education, I was getting lunch for Corey and Topanga.
Jag: Ah, Topanga, that's the seven-year age difference between us because I think in college many of us in the dorm had many conversations about Topanga. You were working for her at the time.
John: Exactly. At the time you realize, oh, my job is getting 14-year-olds their lunch. I really worked very hard to make it in this business.
But at the same time, I like to say there's two things. There's your job and there's your career. And you have to work equally hard at both if you want to advance. So my job at the time was working as a production assistant, but my career that I wanted was being a writer. Once you're done for the evening, copying scripts and doing your job late evenings and weekends, we're dedicated to Writing sample scripts and getting good at putting pen to paper and Writing sample episodes of sitcoms that were on the air and spec pilots. I ended up hooking up with a Writing partner named Ron Hart, who's also a Syracuse guy, who's familiar to many of the Z89 people. So we started Writing out at the end of 95 Ron was a senior when I was a freshman at Syracuse and was the guy who threw cool parties at school.
So when I went out to LA, I'm like, I got to find that Ron guy. At the time he was working, he was waiting for LA to find him while doing the worst possible jobs you could possibly think of doing out here in Los Angeles. He was a maid for a while. He was a taxi driver for a while. Having that Kerouac experience while waiting for Los Angeles to discover him.
So by the time I got out, he was like, yeah, you might want to just get a PA job, which was probably the better idea. After Boy Meets World, I worked briefly on Ellen the year Ellen won the Emmy for coming out, but it was only there for about a month at the very beginning of that season. And then jumped over to a show called Unhappily Ever After as a writer's assistant, which was a step forward because I was actually, finally, in the writer's room. Wasn't a full-time writer yet, but I was Writing down what they say and got to be in a room and kind of see how those did. When I say a room, a writer's room where a bunch of writers, a bunch of funny people sit around a conference table trying to crack each other up all day and coming up with stories after that, I moved over to a show called Grace Under Fire for the final season.
And then it was on a show called Damon briefly, and then eventually ended up on a show called the Hughleys which is where I got my first staff job. Granted that if there's three-year journey where Ron and I were out pitching shows and writing freelance episodes of anything that could, would possibly give us any kind of a look, Hughleys is where we had made it to a place where it's okay, we can quit our day jobs. And now we're full-time professional writers. So the Hughleys lasted for four seasons four seasons, two networks, 10 different time slots, 90 episodes of a series that people are starting to remember it a little bit. Now it actually comes out on Netflix this summer, but it was one of those ones that people are like, oh yeah, I've heard of that show, but didn't quite always know what it was, depending on where you were after that, we jumped over to a show called According to Jim that lasted for eight seasons. And BB told a very fantastic story about how we got BB good on network television as the as playing herself as a radio DJ, which was so much fun. But I did not know... BB told the story during her podcast.
I didn't know she was going into contractions while she was signing her contract. And it's literally the first time I heard that story was when I listened to the podcast, so I adore BB.
Jag: And that's the beauty of the podcast and talking to so many people from 50 plus years of the radio station is, oh, I know that story, but oh there's a wrinkle that I didn't know.
And no better example of that one. If you haven't listened to BB's podcast, please go back and listen to it. You'll be smiling from ear to ear the whole time you hear it. But anyway, continue. I cut you off.
John: Speaking of wrinkles, if I could take a quick tangent, because there's a story that.
You'll see for many reasons. I don't exactly remember all of this story and I'm still trying to piece together, maybe somebody could solve this mystery. Back as Z89 there was a day where they decided to do for drunk driving awareness.
Jag: Yes. I want to hear your recollection of this story. Yeah.
John: Okay, great. They brought in the Syracuse police department. They're going to administer. Basically we're going to drink on the air. They were going to measure our blood alcohol for our breathalyzer. One person was supposed to be drinking hard alcohol, one was supposed to be drinking beer, one was supposed to be drinking wine, I believe.
And I was supposed to be running the board. Okay. And somebody didn't show up. And it was Carl Wiser Johnny Budweiser at the time Bette Kestin who was Goofy Betty. And there was supposed to be a third person who was supposed to be one of the people who was getting fed the booze by the cops. And that person didn't show up.
So they grabbed me from the board. Okay, you're going to be one of the people who is drinking today. Oh, okay. Show must go on. Now at the time I'm like 19 years old, but they told me, okay, this, I didn't want the show to not do well. Plus you just get drunk in the morning. Fantastic.
I had always thought for some reason it was kid Michael Rock who was supposed to be there and wasn't there. But we have since asked around, and he doesn't have any recollection of that at all. So I, somebody jumped in and ran the board, might have been Jeanne. And then the three of us basically got trashed on the air.
And I had work I was supposed to go to directly after the show. And we ended up getting hammered and I think I might have bitten Carl Wiser on the shoulder at one point, and he got all kinds of mad because I didn't use his air name. And I'm at Denny's, trying to sober up and realize, oh, I never called in to work, to let them know I wasn't going to be there. And turns out they were listening to the show and realized there was no way in hell I was coming in. But I don't know who that third person was supposed to be. I can't remember.
Jag: I will say this. If you would like the answer to John's question or the rest of the puzzle.
Go and listen to Goofy Bette's episode, because she tells the story quite well in hers, so if you combine Bette and John, and a few others we had throughout the series, you'll be able to put that story together, but the cops never found out you weren't 21, right?
John: No, I was able to keep my mouth shut about that, just not about I know Carl Wiser was lividly upset.
That I wouldn't use his air name Johnny Budweiser. I kept calling him Carl Wiser he's you're gonna ruin everything. You're ruining the whole Mystique. I didn't know you had Mystique, Carl. Alright, go get him.
Jag: You mentioned Kid Michael Rock. He sent a really nice note when I asked him about you.
He talked about when you were working with the Disney Channel and you were working with Liv and Maddie. And he reached out to you I believe, so Dove Cameron was pitching her song at his radio station. You put in a word for Dove Cameron, and she had great things to say about you. But you actually ended up sending Michael an autographed picture of the entire Liv and Maddie cast, signed by all of them.
It was for his daughter, she was nine years old at the time, and she still has it hanging in her room.
John: Oh, that's awesome. That is one of the great things about, and we talked a little bit, I've worked in network television, I've worked in streaming television for edgy things, I worked on Disjointed which was about pot dispensary.
I worked on Fuller House, which is, bridge between family and kids, but I've worked a lot in kids television on Disney channel, on Nickelodeon. And one of the coolest things about working in kids television as much as I worked in kids TV, is you will never in your life have an audience more appreciative of your product.
Then when you work in kids, TV whether it's receiving a signed script or whether it's coming to a live show and getting to meet the people that you watch on TV, it's like getting to hang out with Santa Claus all day long because kids light up and you realize, oh there's not an audience in television that is more affected and appreciative of your product that you're putting out there.
Then, kids from six to 14. And it's a real pleasure for me to be able to provide that for. Especially for, the kids of friends of mine and you name it. BB came and brought the whole Goodman clan to set one day. So that was fun. You never know who's going to be in the studio.
I, I believe it was the Hughleys. I'm not positive. The Hughleys or According to Jim during a live audience at one point, I turned around and looked up and I'm like, oh my God, I think that's Kafele and Dion from Z89 sitting up in the stands. And it turns out it was, and they had no idea I was going to be there. I had no idea they were going to be there. You never know. It's just a fun way to reconnect over.
Jag: This episode of the podcast has a bit of a different flow to it because I've got all these notes in front of me. But you mentioned that. You are absolutely right with that memory. Because Kafele writes, Dion and I went to go see a taping of the Hughleys.
Beck saw us after the show wrapped and invited us down to the wrap party. Introduced us to the cast and let us roam free where we met THE Marla Gibbs. Who was leaving with a classic mama double plate when you use a second plate on top, full of drumsticks. Yes, they had wings, but it was all drums, no flats, baller.
John is one of the nicest people I know and one of the funniest.
John: Oh, that's ridiculously kind of him. But yes, Marla is a force of nature. We had a writer on the Hughleys who, and for those of you who don't know, Marla Gibbs played Florence on The Jeffersons was on a show called 227. She played DL's mom on the Hughleys and coincidentally not coincidentally, we did this on purpose. DL's wife's dad was played by Sherman Hemsley who played George Jefferson. So we got a little mini-Jefferson reunion, but one of our writers had actually been a writer on 227 back with Marla back in the day.
So when we cast Marla, you could see. This guy's name is Bootsy. And Bootsy, you could see a, like a hint of fear that suddenly was in his eyes. What's going on? And he's "Marla's tough." So Marla showed up on day one, hadn't seen Bootsy in probably 20 years, but handed him like her shopping list to type up for, because he was a writer.
And apparently that's the thing you did back on 227, but Marla got what Marla wanted, so it does not shock me at all she walked out with all the drumsticks.
Jag: Kid Michael Rock and Kafele and Gorab and all these names, are there names that you've formed good relationships and friendships with at the station that we haven't gotten to yet, that we haven't mentioned?
John: Yeah, like I said, my group was Julian Keel and Brian Gewirtz, the three of us were Crazy Morning Crew for, I think, three out of the five days, or two out of the five days, and then Carl Wiser, Johnny Budweiser, and Goofy Bette were the other day. Eventually Julian got an internship with David Letterman.
So he was gone the second semester. I happened to have my radio license from a class I took in high school. So I was running the board. We brought in a guy named Joe Davis to take over Julian's spot and kind of finished out second semester with that. And it was nice. We started to get to know some of the other people there a little bit.
Again, like we were the outsiders who would show up at six in the morning when nobody was around and we'd be gone by the time people would show up. So we didn't know a ton of people which was why it was, it made such an impression on me when people like, BB and Bette and Dave Gorab and Kid Michael Rock.
And some of these other people reach out a little bit. Cause we didn't really know a whole lot of people. Tina Musolino just showed up one day. Tia Lino, I think was her air name at the time, but she showed up. She's I'm your producer. I'm like, what? She's like "oh yeah, I'm making a promo." I'm like, Oh, okay.
We've got like somebody showing up. Great. So she was always particularly kind and nice to us. We love Dion, we love Kafele. Big Daddy, Marvin Nugent another fun guy, Jordan Guagliumi. Who, I think it's Jordan Wilder was his air name. I know early on, he was always irritated that we like didn't know what we were doing.
He's you can't play that song on the A block of the, but where's your training? I'm like, he doesn't know. We had no training. I don't know.
Jag: I can picture this as you're describing it.
John: Yeah, but later on, once the books came out, it's oh my God, you're doing great. We got a, one point, I believe it was Jordan arranged for us to, we're going to go skydiving live on the air.
Jag: Oh, wow.
John: Which sounded like a blast to me. Never happened because Brian Gewirtz and one of our other guys. Wait a second. I don't want to do this. I'm like, okay, you don't have to. He's you guys should not do this. I'm like why should we not do this? It doesn't make any sense. We could just pretend that we're skydiving.
It's radio. Nobody asked. I'm like, but then we can't go skydiving. So he pitched such a fit that finally Jordan pulled the plug on the whole thing, I believe, which was a bummer because it would have been fun. But Jordan was always nice. I think it's Ed Brundage. He was always really nice to us. Our campus spotlight people, Mook and Hannah, were very nice.
Jag: Any Rick Wright stories that come to mind?
John: I have a ridiculous amount of Rick Wright stories. Rick, not only was one of the very first people I met on campus, I'm like, oh god, that guy's awesome. The only writing class I ever took at Syracuse was Rick's Writing for Commercial Radio class. And Rick came walking in that first day. I was like, hey baby, who likes to make money? Just started drawing dollar signs on the on the chalkboard in front of us. I'm like, I like to make money. Rick's Hey JB you get an A, JB gets an A for the day. Who else likes to make money?
And suddenly everybody else is raising their hands. Later on, Rick ended up at some Navy reunion thing and came in like the week after I was like, hey, JB, guess who I met at the Navy reunion. I met JB's grandfather at the Navy reunion. We had a blast dancing with all the ladies. We had a good time. Me and JB's grandfather. Hey, your grandfather's still wearing his Navy uniform. Hey baby. All right. All right.
So yes, I loved Rick, loved him to death. I ended up taking a performance class later with Rick, basically because we knew it would be a blast. The other people in the class didn't necessarily like to have us around because they were very serious broadcasters trying to learn how to deliver properly to the camera.
And it was me and Mike Murphy and others, you guys, there's a bunch of sports guys I got along with really well, it was me and Mike Murphy and Mike Konner and Brian Gewirtz. We're all in this class, just screwing off the whole time. And regardless of what we did, Rick always thought we were just having a great time and rewarded us for it.
Jag: Cause you're part of the family.
John: He's yeah, radio is supposed to be fun, baby. Performance. Look at the glass sandwich of love. You gotta be out there having fun.
Jag: Oh, I haven't heard the glass sandwich of love in a long time. Thanks for bringing that one back.
John: Glass sandwich of love, baby.
At one point we literally there's no way Rick. Should not have yelled at us because we screwed up the teleprompter for somebody else's thing and they were upset. And they're like, he looks at them, looks at us, looks at them, looks back at us, looks at them like, hey don't be a slave to technology, baby.
Sometimes a teleprompter is going to screw up. Got to have your hard copy. So we still ended up getting an A in the class,
Jag: You gotta lead the technology, was always something he used. Because I was there when voice tracking had started. Oh, you gotta lead the technology! I can't do a Rick impression.
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna debase myself. Because so many others do it so much better than I do. But yes.
John: The wild child has just been shot!
Jag: The wild child's been shot. We could go all day with this.
Forgive the hard pivot here, because this is something I want to ask you about. We've had a lot of laughs so far.
You've been involved in the recent strikes in Hollywood. For somebody who has never spent time in Hollywood, for somebody who doesn't understand the business of it, can you give me a 101 primer of what this was all about and why it was so important to you?
John: Yeah. There's A couple of different things, and I'll try to thumbnail these as best as possible.
It was important for the writers to make sure that source material, the things were not generated by AI, because once that happens, you take the writer out of the process. And once that happens on a very basic business level, you don't get health and pension contributions. You don't get any rights to any rewrites or residuals.
You don't get basically had we not had this strike, they very easily could have had AI generate one script and hire one writer to rewrite an entire season, instead of having 20 writers who were there to come up with a season. And regardless how bad the AI generated script was, you hire one person to rewrite that and you basically kill 19 jobs.
So that was the AI part of it.
The actors had a completely different AI part, which you're seeing a little bit now with the, there's the fake George Carlin podcast is coming out now where you can literally generate material images and voices that don't actually exist. So you can take the actor out of it, writer out of it. And if you don't need actors anymore, then suddenly you don't need directors. You don't need sets. It was a very existential thing as far as. Making sure humans still get to be employed to do this thing we do. The other thing that was a very big part, there are several unwritten rules or unwritten ways of doing business that had been going for 60 years in Hollywood.
Things like you need to hire writers. And none of these things were written down. That the showrunner had to be a writer. The way writers get paid is we're paid episodically. So you're paid by the number of episodes you're there produced. So if you're there for six episodes of production, you get a certain amount per each episode that's produced, but there's nothing that's said in the contract that you had to keep people around to produce the episodes.
So basically, majority of this strike was the streamers. When I say streamers, Netflix and Hulu and Disney Plus, you name it. More Netflix than anybody else. They decided, oh. If these unwritten rules aren't written down, we're not doing them. So what was going on is they would hire some writers to break an entire season of a series and hire everybody at minimum for, let's say, eight weeks and then fire everybody by the time you started producing episodes.
So nobody ever got the produced episode rates, you would just get your minimum for the 10 weeks that you were there. I see, which ended up being obviously a major problem for writers that as far as making the money that they used to live on. So much of it was writing things down like that.
Also, way back in the day when everybody talks about residuals and everybody knows, I think knows what residuals are. So you get paid for the reuse of the product that you create. That was initially an agreement between writers and directors and actors and the studios and networks where they said, okay, we understand that you're saying that the amount of money that people are wanting to charge isn't fair if you create something that people just aren't watching. So what we're going to do is cut you a break and it's a lesser amount for the shows that aren't necessarily doing well, but the shows that are doing well, that you end up rerunning all the time, and that are still generating business for you, here's some extra money that you get in success.
Jag: Okay.
John: And in broadcast, it was a certain amount of money, but once you got into streaming, that amount of money had been whittled down to next to nothing. Like I, I will get checks for 14 cents on things. Which is fun and nice to get anything, but those residual checks are the way that writers and actors and directors get through the amount of time that they're not working.
It's not a 52 weeks out of the year thing. And sometimes, there may be an entire year that you don't end up working on something. If you have been on something that has been out there and is generating profit for somebody else. You still get something coming in, but the streamers had such a low rate and it was all the same.
John: There was no, this show is doing extremely well. People should get a little more money on that. It was all exactly the same. And that didn't feel right for shows. Stranger Things should be getting a much higher residual then. To pick a random show, Big Shots on Disney plus that didn't do nearly as well.
So those were three of the more main things as far as a strike. And it made sense for the companies to hold out as long as possible for this, because it is a tremendous amount of money that they could have saved in the future. But the crazy part is the amount that we were asking for was so much smaller than the amount that they ended up losing cause they didn't want to engage.
Because it was worth it for them to potentially break a union. And everything at bargain basement prices. So hopefully that wasn't too convoluted, but glad it is done.
Jag: No, thank you for that. Because I think you, you hear the, you see these headlines or you might skim through social media and see, different perspectives on it and hearing it from somebody who is actively involved with it and has been doing the work and has those legitimate concerns, I think really explains it well for a lot of people.
John: Basically boils down to, it was forcing people to write down the unwritten rules that had been working for years and years and years and years. And you can't blame, these companies like Amazon and Apple and Netflix, they're tech companies more so than they are entertainment companies.
And a tech company, what they do and what they traditionally do is automate, get rid of people, reduce costs. That's how they're built. So you can't blame them for wanting to do that with this business, but this is a very human business. And that's basically what the fight was about is. How do we keep it so that people could still continue to do this for a living?
And, especially with the actors, the majority of the actors that you see on TV, not the big stars they're doing just fine, but your regular guest star actors, they're hurting. A lot right now because you're not getting the same level of residual that you get and you, if you're not a regular on a show, you're not getting that consistent paycheck. So basically just trying to get things to level out where they always used to be.
Jag: I appreciate the explanation. And one of the things we've hit on the podcast is WJPZ being the world's greatest media classroom. So with that education piece in mind, you have had a tremendous career as a writer, showrunner, so many other things.
What would you tell a 2024 Syracuse grad who wants to get into Hollywood and be a writer? What advice would you have for them?
John: Writers write. You will hear over and over and over and over as you tell people I want to go out to Hollywood. You'll hear two things. You'll hear, oh, it's all about being in the right place at the right time.
And it's all about who you know. Those things are true, but I like to say them slightly differently. Yes, it's all about being in the right place at the right time. But I like to phrase that as it's about being prepared to take advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself because it will And with Writing, I cannot tell you the number of people who want to be writers, but aren't writing anything.
If you move out here. And you work your ass off, get yourself on a show as a PA, or you name it, eventually you'll get to a point where somebody says, Oh, you want to be a writer? I'd love to read something you've written. You want to make sure that you're able to say, here you go, get that to them. An hour later, a day later, you're prepared to take advantage of that opportunity.
If you say, Oh I'm working on this thing and I just need another, four or five months, blah blah blah. You have blown that opportunity. That opportunity presented itself and you weren't prepared because you didn't do the work. Like I said, it's got to have equal time on your job and your career.
If you spend too much time on just the job and not the career. You're not going to be able to take advantage of that opportunity. Flip side, if you spend all the time on your career and not your job, you can't afford to live out here anymore. Yeah. So it's gotta be both. And yes, it's all about who, I guess is it what you hear from people, but yes, it is a very relationship driven business, but you already know the people that you need to know.
You just don't know it yet. And they just don't know it yet. Building relationships is hugely important, whether it's the people that you graduated with. I tell everybody is okay. Everybody who you move out with here, you need to not only get yourself in, you want to get everybody else into your worst enemy.
Get that person a job. You can go back to hating them in three years. Once you guys are established, get everybody in. And it's ingrained in the Syracuse psyche. Get everybody in because that is going to be your relationship network. Somebody is going to get in and they're going to hear about other stuff.
They're going to pull you in. Every alumni who was out here has had that moment where somebody has helped them and given them advice and has pulled them in hugely important to give back and do that because, and they know what it feels like. We know what it feels like to be that person who's just come out here.
Yeah, you're going to help out whether it's with advice or whether it's with reading something or. Letting you stay in their couch, you name it. So yeah, it's about who, these people, as long as you're building relationships. You'll hear people's Oh, I've got a contact over at Warner Brothers.
If you have a contact, you don't have anything. If you have a friend over Warner Brothers, you got everything because a vouch is worth its weight in gold in this business. It has, I'm sure it is in any business, but it's especially out here. It's a very small town, Hollywood. Once you figure out how to get in.
And then once you get in, you realize like you've got a whole group of people over here is Oh my God, how do I get a job? How do I get a job? How do we get a job? Over here, you got a whole group of people saying, oh my God, how do I hire somebody good? How do I hire somebody good? How do I hire somebody good?
You just need one person to go from this side to this side and then bring everybody with you. That's your relationship network.
Jag: I love that and that is such an embodiment of everything that Syracuse, but Z89 especially, represents and that family and that network and helping each other out. Before we wrap up, what are you up to now?
What's next for you? We're recording this on January 16th. It's probably gonna air around the end of February, beginning of March, but what's going on with you?
John: End of February, I'm currently doing a show called That Girl Lay Lay on Nickelodeon. That should start airing the second half of season two, should be, I think should be out by the end of February.
Currently waiting to hear on a season three, then out pitching new things. We just had a Christmas screenplay option that we hope can get made at some point here. It's weird. The strike ended beginning to mid of October and the town is taking its time, getting back up and running again.
So we'll see. I think it's going to be a very different business. I feel like cheaper television is going to be important. And I don't mind that because frankly, TV doesn't have to be super expensive to be, at least on the comedy side of things. Doesn't have to be expensive to be funny. You want people to get paid, but you don't have to spend a ridiculous amount of money in special effects to make a sitcom.
So we'll see how things shake out. I'm a optimistic about 2024, which is good. Cause 2023 was not easy.
Jag: For so many of us for so many different reasons. John Beck, Class of 95. Can't thank you enough for coming on the show. This was a really, truly a lot of fun, and it was a pleasure to get to know you, hear your story, and get your perspective.
John: Thank you very much for having me. I'm really glad I did this. I was, like I said, I was a little nervous and felt like a bit of a fraud, but it's nice to feel part of something, and this podcast has helped me with that, and I really appreciate it,
Jag: Jag. That means a lot. Thank you very much.