WJPZ has formed many deep bonds and friendships - and that is certainly the case for Matt Gehring and Sam Kandell, who served as PD and GM respectively, for the Class of 2018.
As you'll hear, their origin stories differ greatly, but they've been thick as thieves since fate brought them together on Boland 8 as freshmen. Soon, Matt, a self professed music geek, and Sam, a die-hard sports fan, were treking across campus together for the 4-6am shift.
They learned from upperclassmen like Allie Gold and Joey Cosco, and were invited to the Z Morning Zoo by Jeff Kurkjian. They were also quickly tapped for exec staff. Matt became research director, and Sam took over legal. She tells the story of how that almost didn't happen due to a very big (and, in hindsight, hilarious) miscommunication about the application process.
Eventually, "mom and dad," as most of the staff called them, became GM and PD, furthering the passion for paying it forward at the station. Both made efforts to know the entire staff, Sam secured funding to upgrade the station's power, and Matt was honing his social media mastery, leveraging fan bases of artists to keep the station top of mind, even over the summer. In fact, his Twitter prowess led to a well publicized feud with Tomi Lahren during the 2016 Presidential election.
At graduation, Matt joined MTV for their reboot of TRL. When that didn't work out, he and his team were moved over to MTV's social media, and he was "given the keys" to MTV's Instagram. We spend some time talking about social media for brands in 2023.
Sam went to iHeart after graduation, but wanted to follow her passion for video and sports. She leveraged connections from a previous internship to land at SNY, home of the New York Mets. She had to rely on the adaptability she learned at Z, though, as she started in March of 2020. She talks about how the pandemic totally changed her job, and what it's become now, in 2023.
We wrap up with a story that we are pretty sure is unique in WJPZ's history - Matt and Sam getting legit married on the air, on their Valentine's Day Z Morning Zoo in 2018. And yes, we have the audio.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay, thrilled to be joined today by a couple of absolute rock stars from the class of 2018. Another story of great friendship developed at the radio station, and there's so many things to list. We have Matt Gehring, who runs MTV's Instagram and is looked up to by the current students as you may have heard in previous episodes. We have Sam Kandell, who is the Banquet chairperson, the senior producer, editor, and YouTube manager for SNY. She is a former GM. He is a former PD of WJPZ. Welcome both of you to the show.
Matt: Thank you. I feel like we've been looking forward to this day for a long time.
Sam: Yeah. Thanks for having us.
JAG: So I start with everybody, I'll start at the same place with you. We'll start with you, Sam. How did you end up finding Syracuse and then WJPZ?
Sam: That's a fun story. I always felt like a jerk when I say this, but Syracuse wamy backup school.
JAG: Okay. What was your goal school?
Sam: So my dad went to the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. And that was my dream school from the age of four, I would say. And through a long series of events I ended up getting wait listed for the second semester of my freshman year. So I said I didn't really wanna do that. I visited Syracuse. I wanted to pick an ACC school so that I could see Carolina play once a year. And so I said, all right, I'll settle for Syracuse. That sounds like a good second choice. And that's why I picked Syracuse. Like I didn't really know much about the communications program. I just picked it cuz it was an ACC school.
JAG: Wow. I did not know that about you. And how did you find the radio station when you got there?
Sam: This gentleman right beside us.
Matt: Ha.
JAG: All right, so let's start it over to you, Matt. First, how did you find Syracuse, and then how did you find the radio station?
Matt: Sure. I like to think that Sam and I have a lot of things in common, but one thing we certainly don't is how we went to Syracuse.
It was definitely the school that I had my eyes set on for at least two years before applying. Applied early decision. Knew I wanted to go to the Newhouse school. Got in thankfully because I did not even really have a backup plan. And the summer before going to Syracuse, I just got really invested in the radio industry.
I like to say that I was a bit of a Fifth Harmony super fan. A Harmonizer, if you will. Yep. I was the kid that was calling 92.3 Now back in the day in New York City, 94.5 PST with Rashaud. I really was that fan who was calling in and requesting songs as a 16, 17 year old.
JAG: The older alumni are thrilled to hear you say that, by the way, Matt, because that's the true of so many like nineties and two thousands alums. And to know that spirit still lives on is encouraging.
Matt: As a 16 year old, I was like on the Mediabase website looking up which radio stations to call because they hadn't added Fifth Harmony's latest single. So I really was that level of radio nerd before even getting to Cuse.
JAG: Oh God, you were probably somebody who was tweeting me in Detroit asking me, how come you haven't added "Work From Home" yet?
Matt: I can almost guarantee that. I was I know that I was tweeting Rashaud. But at accepted students’ day, I saw Z89 tabling and I heard what the product sounded like and immediately knew that the second I got to Cuse, I was going to join. Sam happened to be two doors down on my freshman year floor. Knocked on her door and the rest is history. I dragged her along to the general interest meeting and we were a pair from that day forward.
Sam: As I remember it, Matt, like he said, knocked on my door with his roommate and did the classic freshman like, hi, I'm Matt. I live two doors down. We're going around knocking on doors, so trying to meet people and we became, like Matt said, fast friends.
And I remember him saying to me, quote, I wanna be the next Ryan Seacrest. Let's go join the radio station. That was the goal. That's how we ended up at Z. So thank you Matt.
JAG: What floor were you guys on freshman year?
Matt: Boland eight.
JAG: Excellent. So you trek all the way up to the station from Boland. What's the extent of your involvement and how do you end up rising through the ranks at the radio station?
Sam: So we ended up going to the station. I originally went to join the sports department. Because I, like I said, ACC school, wanted to get into sports. And I walked up and it was just a big group of gentlemen who were a little intimidating and talking about a lot of statistics, and they told me that I had to write in order to get on air.
And once I heard the word write, I was like, I'm outta here. And so I B-lined it around and went and learned about the music side of the station, which is where Matt wanted to be. And I said, all right, I'll try this. I was a really shy kid, so for me, signing up for radio and having to talk to people on air was slightly terrifying.
No one believes that. When I say I'm shy now because I'm so outspoken.
JAG: You're probably looking at the look on my face right now. When you said you're shy, I'm like, Sam, what? Really?
Sam: Yeah, I was that kid that, when I would get dropped off at kindergarten, would cry for an hour because my mom was gone.
Like I definitely liked having a partner in things, which is why Matt convincing me to come to Z was really what I needed freshman year. Was someone that was outspoken and knew what they wanted to do. And so it was nice to find that person right away to get me going. And so we joined the music department and did training and signed up for the last shift that was left, which was 4:00AM to 6:00 AM on Friday mornings.
And Matt and I would trek from Bo 8 at 3:30 in the morning over to to Watson to do our 4:00AM to 6:00 AM shift and we were rough in the beginning.
Matt: Oh, rough is pretty generous. We were listening to our clips last night and yeah, we used to script out word for word, everything we were going to say for, a whole two minute break. Every word scripted and listening back. You can hear that. You can hear it was all scripted.
JAG: Are you willing to share any of that audio with the audience?
Matt: Yeah, I think we could do that.
Sam: Oh, I have no shame. I was saying to Matt, listening to that and then listening to our final Z Morning Zoo together, it was just wild to hear how far we'd come, how much better we sounded, how much more conversational we were and how comfortable we were behind microphones.
Where in the beginning. Yeah. We were scripted and rigid and sounded like we were trying to be radio people with the radio voices, and so we came a long way.
JAG: Who were some of the folks that were there at the radio station, that were leading the radio station when the two of you got there that you learned from, that were a couple years ahead of you?
Matt: So we trained actually under Allie Gold. Joey Cosco was the PD and I think we really have to credit Jeff Kurkjian because it was, I believe our spring semester of our freshman year that Jeff was like, hey, I got some spots on Z Morning Zoo and you guys are a pair. Come just try it out. And we tried it out.
And really from the first day our lead host was JP. We were also with Kat Brady. And JP was just the perfect coach to really make us natural on air.
Sam: Yeah. And when I first joined, like I said, through this whole journey, I was just along for the ride. And so I never planned to get this involved. I never planned to go on a Z Morning Zoo. I wanted to be a video editor. That was always my dream. That was always what I wanted to do. I loved storytelling. And so the radio station just kept sucking me in and sucking me in. And like Matt said we shadowed a zoo and Matt joined exec very early, right? You ran first semester.
Matt: Oh yeah, I was the acclaimed position of research director.
JAG: You say that a little facetious, Matt, but there are so many PDs and GMs that were research director cuz they just wanted to get involved and is it the most glamorous job? No. But you get involved with that, kind of gets your foot in the door with exec and work your way up. So you are following in a lot of great footsteps in that role.
Matt: It is an honor. I think you're totally right. It's one of those positions where, yeah, it's not glamorous, so the only people who are really gonna apply are the people who wanna be involved. And it's also what you make of it. I definitely was like, you know what?
We need to bring our ratings back. We need to actually see the impact we're having in Central New York. And it was really fun to do that.
JAG: So what are some of the things you did as research director?
Matt: Really just brought back those ratings. That's what I remember. The major thing was at that point Steven Krainin was GM.
So we would work together figuring out, what's our best looking ratings, turn that over to the VP of business and try to actually, sell some spots.
JAG: So Sam, how did you get involved with exec staff?
Sam: So this is a great story.
Matt: Oh no, I have chills already.
Sam: Not a lot of people know this story, but it's iconic. So I'll share. Again, no interest in being part of exec staff. I had landed a job at the Orange Television Network as their on-staff editor and I got some cash money to do that. I was focused on that and actually it was Steven Krainin who said to me, I really think you'd be good on exec.
We have a couple positions open. I think you should apply to be legal director. And I guess maybe I told him my dad was an attorney. I don't know.
JAG: Ah, it's in your blood. Okay.
Sam: Yeah. So I was like, okay, sure, I'll apply. And he's yeah, I don't see any, problems getting your application through.
It should be pretty quick. Just send me a cover letter. Send me a resume and we'll make it happen. And he didn't tell me how the process works. The WJPZ election where they meet as an exec staff and read your cover letter aloud to the group and discuss whether or not you seem qualified for the job and then vote.
And so I wrote a BS cover letter that said, I am the law. I eat, breathe, and sleep the law. Yeah, the law is my bitch. I totally made up this fake cover letter because he told me, oh, you'll be a shoo-in no problem. And I'll let Matt take the story from there, because he was in the room when said cover letter was spoken since he was already on the executive staff.
Matt: It was not taken as a joke. It was taken as Sam thinks this is a joke. And of course legal director's an important position. So there was some opposition to Sam's involvement on exec staff. I believe that you didn't make it in right away and you had to rewrite it.
Sam: I got put on probation, I got admitted, but I got immediately put on probation to make sure that I could do this job.
JAG: There's irony in a legal director being placed on probation.
Sam: I know. And so after that, fast forward when I became gm, I explained to everyone when they interviewed how the process worked and where things went after you submitted said cover letter. That's read to everyone. So I made sure to not let anyone make that mistake.
JAG: One of many lessons learned in the world's greatest media classroom. Matt, were you having to defend your buddy's honor here in this exec meeting saying no, she's serious? Like she'd be really good at this?
Matt: Oh, absolutely. When Sam talks about, she needed a buddy to be able to join Z or join exec staff. I'm also a really shy person and what I needed a buddy too. I definitely, gimme five seconds and I'm really talkative and I'll make friends with anyone. But to take that first step, I needed Sam like every step of the way, and it was really important to me that she made exec.
I was able to provide some context, like I think this is where, the lines got crossed a little applying to exec, but I was really glad once she got there.
JAG: So you're both on exec staff and Matt, you rose through the ranks to become program director, right?
Matt: Yeah. So actually this might be our I don't know, villain origin story. So it comes time. Steven has his one-year reign. Does a fantastic job. And it's time for a new GM. And what better than the pair that is rising through the ranks to both apply for GM? We both do it. Sam beats me out. No hard feelings. And it was, I remember told to me by the stations board of directors we're looking forward to seeing you as PD. So I took that as a hint. It's time to run for pd.
JAG: If you had become GM, what would Sam have done to stay on the exec staff? Would you have gone for PD or is that not something you would've been interested in?
Sam: That is a really good question because I know I would not have been a good PD. Because Matt, like he said in the beginning, was a music guy. Like he studied this stuff. He knew this stuff like the back of his hand. I'm a logistics person. I'm good at organization, I'm good at team building, and so if Matt had beaten me out, I don't know, maybe I would've done it just to work with Matt, honestly, and to be involved because there were people pushing me to get more involved, but I don't know how that story would've played out.
JAG: Could you have seen yourself as maybe like a VP of business or, I know we're playing what ifs here, but I'm just kinda.,
Sam: I know. What's interesting is I think I probably would've been best at VP of Ops, but when we were students, at least during that part of it, VP of ops wasn't really that popular. Wasn't really a thing. The first two years we had been at the station, there wasn't a VP of Ops.
Matt: We just operated willy-nilly.
Sam: Yeah. But yeah, I don't know what would've happened. I know I was so terrified when I went into that interview because, you're 19 years old, you walk into a room of all these adults and whatnot, and you're just basically trying to tell them that as a 19-year-old, you're qualified to run this 150, 200 person radio station.
And Josh Wolff always tells this story. Josh was really the motivating factor in getting me to run and to also succeed as GM because I bugged him nonstop asking him questions. But he said that the best part of my interview was when they asked me his stereotypical question.
This is a job that you don't get paid for. Why do you wanna do it?
And I said what I felt, which is what I wanted to give back. Like I had grown so much in that first year and a half of being at the station just. Growing outta my shell and making great friends and feeling comfortable. And I wanted to give that to new students who gave that to me when I first got there.
And so that's, what pushed my application over. And I think I did that, and without Matt by my side, I didn't have to worry about anything programming wise. He had the whole shit on lot. Oh, sorry, I cursed.
JAG: You can, it's a podcast. It's fine. As you both know, Josh and I are very close. Josh stood up in my wedding and Josh has told me that story too, Sam. That of all the years he's worked at the radio station that was probably the best answer he ever heard of that question for GM. So I think I speak for all of us when I say we're really glad you took the GM interview a lot more seriously than you took your legal director cover letter.
Sam: Yeah, I was a lot more nervous for that one than the legal director one.
Matt: I've never told anyone this, but I went into the GM interview and I said, I am the GM. I eat, breathe, sleep, the GM role. But honestly, like looking back at it, I do agree that it all worked out the way it was supposed to work out.
I don't think that I would've been as good of a GM. I'm not as personable one-on-one with people, and I think that, Sam and I just kinda work as a duo really. We know our lanes, we know what the other person is better at. And like she said, we didn't really have to worry about what the other person was doing. We just, made it work on our own side.
JAG: Speaking of that, you mentioned Stephen Krainin, you mentioned Allie Gold. You mentioned a lot of people that came before you. Talk to me about the importance of cultivating that atmosphere, and you mentioned that in your GM interview, Sam, of making people feel welcome and getting them involved with the radio station as they're coming in and joining.
What was that like for you as the two of you were a VP and GM and on running the station?
Sam: Yeah, I think the first place we started was with our kids, Ariel, Shruti Ankita, Alyssa and Hannah Butler.
JAG: Love that you called 'em your kids, by the way.
Sam: Yes, they call us mom and dad, so it would be, to this day, it would be rude if we didn't call them our kids.
Matt: We've disowned them.
Sam: No. No, but they were what a mixture of our peer advisors and peer advisor or their friends. And so we started with them kind of making our little circle of trust, if you will. And once we became GM and PD, we got them involved on exec. And I think the main thing we did was we were just around.
We wanted to be present. I know Matt had a goal of meeting every single person at the station while he was PD. Which I thought was fantastic because that was something that, because he was around on the computer scheduling music, like he could chit chat with people and talk and make new friends.
JAG: Why are you playing this song every single hour? I'm sure you got a lot of that Matt?
Matt: Oh, all the time. I'm like because you're only here for one hour and you gotta hear that song while you're here.
JAG: Spoken like a program director. Look at that.
Sam: I think we were just approachable. I think that was the big thing. And we tried to have social events so that people could hang out with one another. We tried to make the newsroom like a social hour that you could just come in and eat your lunch or do your homework and chit chat with whoever was around. I think that was the main thing we did.
Matt: Absolutely. It was my social circle. I didn't join Greek life. I didn't join a lot of other organizations. This was my social circle. This was my college party station. Yes, pretty much every party I went to in college was a Z Party. And we sure knew how to throw them, but I also look at something Sam did right from the beginning when it was us in charge and we were having to recruit a new class of students. The station was not that big at the time. I think largely because of the studio renovations that had happened in the years beforehand.
JAG: So if you guys were 2018, you came in 2014, the renovation had happened in 2012. The staff was still getting rebuilt at that point.
Matt: Exactly. I think that it was really hard to recruit people when there was not like a great physical station.
So now that there was, we were in our rebuilding phase, but also at the same time, I think we were coming up in Cuse at a time where not as many people really wanted to do radio for a living. We had to approach it more as, yes, we're gonna be a professional station, but we're also gonna be a hobby for people that might not wanna do this because of the skills you're gonna gain. like Sam's talked about. So Sam approached it and went straight out to pretty much every single college at Syracuse. She was like, all right, Whitman business students, we need business people. But you could also be on air. I-school, Falk School, every school she reached out to. And she somehow got on a listserv for all of them.
And when we had our general interest meeting, I just remember the room being packed. And I remember feeling panic in that moment of, not everyone's gonna make it on air. We have too many people, but it was the good problem to have.
JAG: Absolutely. Absolutely. Any other significant events that you feel like you were part of that the station went through while you were either there or running the joint?
Sam: I think the biggest thing that we jumpstarted was the road to the new antenna. That was brought to me by Alex and Tex basically saying, we need this new piece of equipment. Get the money. I made the budget that year, and funny enough, I shattered my laptop screen about a day and a half before the budget was due because I was so excited to leave a class that I slammed my computer shut.
And the zipper of my case was in between the two screens. And I opened up my computer and the whole thing was beautiful colors. And so the next day I skipped class and sat in my GM office for the entire day, finishing the budget, finished that up. And when I went in to explain the budget to another group of students that were in charge of determining whether or not we got our money, they were like, so this is a pretty big expense for this antenna.
Why do you need it? And I just remember, spitting off a bunch of stuff that I remember Alex and Tex telling me of why we needed it. Oh, it's been a long time, and something about the reach and yada yada, blah blah blah. And they're like, okay, sounds good. And I was like, wow. Convincing students is pretty easy. And we got approved for it.
Matt: That's a story of Sam's tenure is somehow getting money and being able to purchase things that we could not in the past.
Sam: Yeah, because it's all about relationships, right? I cultivated a very good relationship with our representative from the University who controlled our budget.
And did so much as to bring her a Christmas gift, do things like that just to show, we're appreciative of the work that you were doing for us. And in turn she let us buy stuff that wasn't in the budget. So she let us buy an iPad and she let us buy all this promotional material. And let us spend money that we weren't supposed to spend on certain things, on the things that we wanted. And so that's how I got that going.
JAG: For what Syracuse is charging for tuition these days, let's take some of that money and spend it on JPZ. Absolutely.
Matt: Oh yeah. Redistribute it. Redistribute it all.
Sam: The iPad was so funny because Crainin had tried to budget for an iPad the year before and they said no. And then I used his budget funny enough. Because once you submitted it, they just pretty much gave you a lump sum of money that you could use for whatever you wanted. So I went in a couple weeks after I started and I said, hey, I think you wanna buy an iPad and it'd be good for social media for the station.
JAG: I was gonna ask what you used the iPad for. Okay.
Sam: Yeah. And she was like, okay, sure. And I was like, really? Krainin complained for a couple months that he couldn't get an iPad and I just walked in here and got iPad.
Matt: So I think we also used that iPad to launch texting.
Sam: It sounds right.
Matt: Five years goes by and you forget everything.
JAG: You guys are so old.
So Sam mentioned building relationships with folks. That's obviously a lesson that we all learned working at JPZ. Whether you graduated in, 78 18, or 2002 in my case. What other lessons do you feel like the two of you learned from your time at JPZ that have served you well in your careers before you get into what you've been doing?
Matt: Since it's gonna relate to my current job, which is probably a good thing. It was all about the music industry. I've always, like I mentioned, been a pop music boy, but really understanding how everything worked on a professional level was really key for me. And figuring out how to tap into these fandoms, the fandoms that I was a part of in 2012, 2013. I was now at Z figuring out, you know what, we're on the iHeartRadio app. We're not just a Central New York radio station. I can get a Harmonizer in New Jersey to listen to the station. So something that I did during the summer was create a countdown show on weeknights, the Top 8 at 9.
It had to be done. Z89. There weren't a lot of people on the station over the summer, so I was logging into the Twitter account on my own and saying, hey, Fifth Harmony fans? Wanna get this song to the top of the chart on the top eight at nine? Vote in our poll. So I was really like modeling everything I was doing after the stations that I was listening to as a kid and bringing that to Z89.
It's something that I've definitely kept going in my career now is tapping into fandoms and then giving them what they want in return It's one thing to ask them to vote, but then if they don't make the countdown and you're making them listen to the whole thing, they're not gonna be very happy. So it's a two-way street, and I feel like that's something I definitely learned, experimenting really as PD.
Sam: So you learned how to rig elections?
Matt: Oh, it's all rigged. It's all rigged. I don't say that as an employee. I say that as a person.
JAG: Yeah, when we did the top eight at nine, it was based on "phone calls." And you were basing it off of "Twitter" right?
Matt: Yeah. Yeah.
JAG: That is interesting in how you can leverage that. I think I had One Direction tickets to give away when I was on Channel 955 here in Detroit in 2011. I had front row seats. I said, okay, I'll give 'em away once you guys get #JAGShow trending in the US.
Matt: And they probably did it.
JAG: Somebody called and said, you're trending worldwide. Oh. Okay, excellent. I guess it's time to give away those tickets. So if you look at my Twitter followers, thank you. Directioners, cuz that was, the year before.
Matt: The most powerful of them all.
JAG: Do you say that as the manager of MTV's Instagram, the Directioners are still most powerful? Who's most powerful now?
Matt: Oh, it's the BTS Army. It doesn't even come close at this point, but at that point, Directioners really set the bar.
JAG: Let's segue there. Matt, tell me about your career since, and you went viral on social for getting into a bit of an argument with somebody back in the day, if you're comfortable telling that story.
Matt: Oh yeah, of course. I always have really loved the internet. Loved memes, loved seeing what goes viral and what doesn't, and I guess I've always had a little bit of a knack for it. In 2016 when there was, I don't know if you remember, there was like a heated Presidential election going on.
JAG: You don't say? In 2016?
Matt: Yeah, it's just continued ever since, if you ask me. But there was this woman, some people may remember her. If you're lucky, maybe you don't. Her name is Tomi Lahren, and she was on Glen Beck's network, The Blaze, back then. Just going viral on a daily basis for ranting about Beyonce and just like pretty much any celebrity she had a problem with from a political lens.
And so for Halloween that year at none other than the "Hallow-Zeen" party that I was hosting, yes. I dressed up as Tomi Lahren, did my first and worst drag look of them all. And some people in the room knew who I was. I know Sam did not.
Sam: Oh, I remember when he walked up to me and he was like, You like my costume? Do you know who I am? And I have no idea who the eff you are.
Matt: But enough of a cool costume, enough people did get it. It got 60,000 retweets or something, and really was my first little taste of viral fame. And a lot of people say you never know what's gonna go viral. And that's true. But in that moment, I had a feeling. I had a feeling.
JAG: And you had a little bit of a back and forth, didn't you?
Matt: That's true. That's true. Ooh.
JAG: In the feels.
Matt: Yeah, I I had had a little bit of a tiff before that happened. I was just responding to all of her tweets and I was saying, the scariest thing of all is if I dressed up as you for Halloween.
So that, that's what inspired it. But even after that, she just became my internet enemy, and I knew that she was a recent grad from college. I had all these friends doing Citrus TV and I was like, all of their content is on the internet for perpetuity. So I was like, I don't think it'd be very hard to find all of Tomi Lahren's college news videos.
Found those like within 30 minutes and found that she was a normal person back then. So had to publicize that. Somehow those clips wound up being on The View, like it was just a whole thing where she had to issue a statement and be like, sometimes our opinions change, but it had been like two years. She just sold out. She sold out. But thankfully I don't have to see her that much these days.
JAG: And you've parlayed your knack for social media into a career. Tell me about your career path since Syracuse.
Matt: Sure. All of my love for music and fandom, it really wound up coming through in a career.
As I was graduating, I had been in touch with the social media director for TRL. MTV had rebooted TRL. It was not the most exciting show, maybe not the best reboot, but they needed a social team and there was a position open as I was graduating. And it was just perfect timing, knowing the right person, being in the right place at the right time.
So I joined MTV under the guise of the TRL reboot. I was writing on their website, not something I had a lot of experience doing, but just made it work. I wound up taking over the TRL Instagram, really found my footing doing a professional Instagram account. And when the TRL reboot went away, they just invited my team to join the main MTV social media team and at the end of 2019 they handed me the keys to the MTV Instagram and I've been doing it ever since. And really having the best time engaging with fandoms, engaging with the types of people that I was in 2013.
JAG: So two-part question for you, Matt. One, what is it about Instagram in particular, like as opposed to other social platforms? And two, what is one thing you wish you could tell people that they don't understand about Instagram or social in general?
Matt: Such good questions. I will always say as me, as Matt, Twitter will always be my number one. Even if it's going through a rough patch these days, but Instagram is really where I think a brand has to be these days. Twitter is chaotic. And as much as I love like words, more people are into visuals. And Instagram is where you can give that. Obviously TikTok is important as well, but I'm under the opinion, leave TikTok to the people. We need one thing that's just for us. Instagram is where every brand is and it also has really great discoverability features. I, a few weeks ago, posted a picture of four BTS members with Harry Styles. In the first day it gets like 400,000 likes.
That's pretty good for us. 400,000 likes. Okay. But because of Instagram's incessant suggesting posts to people, that post is now at two and a half million likes.
JAG: Wow.
Matt: Because just every day it was getting another a hundred thousand likes. And I can look at the analytics on Instagram and see that post has been liked mostly by people that didn't follow us in the first place. That post has generated 30,000 new followers for our account. So being able to reach people that don't currently follow you is really what the key to Instagram is these days. Obviously, you have to appease the people that follow you for that post to gain traction in the first place.
JAG: Hug your P1's!
Matt: Hug your P1's. You never lose these lessons. But the discoverability I think is really important. In terms of a misconception. I think that Instagram can be whatever works for you. Some people are like, oh my gosh, they've pivoted so hard to video. Yes, they have. But you don't have to pivot with them.
There still are massive meme accounts that are just posting, still images that are doing bonkers numbers. I think that really that's a lesson for any social platform is you just have to be good at the lane that you are choosing and you will find your people.
JAG: I like it. It's great to hear the social media perspective from somebody who's involved with such a big brand as you are with MTV.
Sam involved with a couple of pretty big brands herself in SNY and the Mets. You got to marry your passion for sports and your passion for video. Tell me about your journey since Syracuse.
Sam: Yeah, so in Syracuse I did a lot of internships, and this is gonna lead to how I got into sports, but I did an internship at a production company that did travel TV shows and I quickly learned that I did not wanna work in linear television, which is ironic cause I work for a TV network, but not on the linear side.
And then I interned for Elvis Duran in the morning show, and that's where I got my first taste of professional digital experience. And I loved that, but always had a passion for sports. And so when Matt and I did our semester in LA.
Matt: Living and sleeping, Two feet apart from each other in twin beds. Just have to throw that out there.
JAG: If you guys weren't close friends at that point, I mean sharing a tiny apartment in LA will do it.
Matt: And then we lived together after college and it was like, oh my G-d, we got our own bedrooms. Now this is the
Sam: life. I just still think it's impressive that neither one of us has seen each other in a inopportune state. If you get my get my...
JAG: I'm picking up what you're putting down.
Sam: And so we went out to LA and I had actually accepted an internship position, which Matt reminded me of last night, at a production company. And at that time, about a couple days later, I got an interview for Fox Sports. And I sat there and I looked at it and I was like I have to go for it.
I'm gonna regret it for the rest of my life if I don't try to pursue this internship. And at Newhouse they actually offered a Fox Sports University class, which is where I networked with women that worked at Fox Sports. And so they helped me get my foot in the door there, and to make a long story short, I rescinded my offer to join this other company and ended up landing the Fox sports gig.
Matt: And for what it's worth, I'm sorry to jump in.
Sam: Go ahead.
Matt: I had my internship offer rescinded, that's its own story, but Sam and I both had a lot of internship chaos in LA.
Sam: Yeah. But yeah, so I ended up, putting all my eggs in the FOX basket.
And worked in their owned and operated department doing video is for both their website and their YouTube pages. And that's when I really knew that's what I wanted to do. They were great. They let me get experience doing graphics on digital. They let me get YouTube experience. I worked with, ironically, the agency that Matt ended up interning for was the agency that we used for all of our YouTube publications.
So I was messaging people at his company to get our posts up and to get our thumbnails and things like that. So fast forward to graduation and I was looking for a job. Really just wanted to get something because Matt, lucky for him, had his job for graduation, but I did not have a job when I graduated.
JAG: Matt was one of the unicorns. Yeah.
Sam: Yes, I was that statistic that they mentioned at graduation that was like, parents don't freak out. Your kids will find a job. And so I ended up at iHeart, first off. Mostly because I got an interview, they offered it to me in two weeks, and it was a video editing position and I said, sure, I'll take it.
Why not get my foot in the door? Fast forward a year and a half later wasn't really what I thought it was gonna be. I wasn't doing as much video editing as I thought. I pivoted it more towards a social analytics job mostly because I didn't have things to work on, so I thought, oh, maybe I'll be helpful in analytics.
And I was always a math person. And so this job at SNY pops up and I reached out to my old boss at Fox, who is now working at NBC. And SNY is partially owned by NBC. And so he coached me through the entire process, put my name through. Every time I sent him my interview questions, he like sent me paragraphs back of what to say.
JAG: Great.
Sam: And so I end up landing the job the Friday before Banquet. Funny enough, I get the phone call that I got the job and I took it, went to banquet, couldn't tell anyone I got the job.
JAG: What year is this?
Sam: This is 2020.
JAG: Oh. So right before. The other stuff.
Sam: Yeah. So Banquet happens. I keep quiet. I spoke on like a panel about like getting your first job and I had to sit there and not tell people how I got my second job.
Monday, I quit my job. Thursday the world shuts down, right? So I go into a world of sports where there is no sports, right? And so I remember like my new boss, didn't know what the protocol was. He was like, do we meet for coffee? Are we allowed to see each other? Thankfully they didn't rescind that job offer.
So I still got to start and my job became ever more important because, the only thing we could make at that time was digital content. And we had to get creative because there were no sports on TV. And so we were creating, talk shows from home and using Zoom and editing people into boxes.
And now that seems so like obvious, but at the time, yeah. People were creating that. Like that wasn't a thing. That wasn't how video was made. People shot things in person. That's how I started at SNY. It was really a lot of innovating. Like we, we started doing "MLB The Show" streams of what would've been the Mets games for that day.
We simulated the whole season. Before the season started, I worked on a series called Bet You Don't Know where I did research on different athletes and put together short videos about them, and it's evolved three years later. Got promoted and yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
JAG: Gimme a taste of some of the content you're doing now that the world is mostly back to normal.
Sam: Yeah, so I've done a lot. SNY is a company where you definitely get your toes wet in a lot of different things because our video team was only two producers. The head of a department and a graphics person. So I've done everything from, I did a shoot with Edwin Diaz, the closer for the Mets.
I did a shoot with Francisco Lindor. Edwin Diaz was the first shoot I did in person. Two years later after I started the job. And he was delightful and so much fun. And so we did a quick 45-minute interview of all different topics and then went out to the field and shot him. It was his first time in the stands.
Funny enough, he was like, I've never actually stood out here. And I was like, really? And so we got to walk around the stands, go on the dugout with him. Super nice guy. So I've done stuff like that. I've just launched a new live show called Mets Off Day Live which is a show that is exactly how it sounds.
It's for people to watch when the Mets aren't playing. So it gives them something to view when they can't view a baseball game. So that was an idea that I pitched, conceptualized to work with my buddy Danny, who's a great graphics guy. To come up with a logo and then we launched that last week. So that was really exciting.
Matt: I'm a viewer. It was fantastic.
Sam: Thank you.
JAG: Are you doing the interviewing or are you doing the behind the scenes shooting and all that? Or both?
Sam: Behind the scenes. Yeah. I don't ever wanna be in front of a camera. I've been asked a handful of times. I was on one show I had to ask a fan question. And, it took me like five takes and I was super awkward and uncomfortable. And the comments actually on the YouTube video were like, this is so obviously scripted. And I was like, yeah, because I'm bad at it! So I'm much better at doing rundowns and editing and producing and getting the most out of talent, which is what I learned at JPZ, right? When I was gm, we had an exec staff of X amount of people, and my job was to get the most out of them. And so what I ended up doing there was having one-on-one meetings with them every month and asking them, what do you wanna get out of this? What are you interested in? And then letting them pursue that or giving them the resources to pursue that.
And that's what I do at work, is work with talent and say, what kind of content do you wanna make? What are your strengths? And how can we put those in front of people so that we make good content? And it all started at WJPZ.
JAG: Very briefly. I know we're getting short on time here, but let me ask you what your perspective is on the changes in baseball and the changes of the rules in the faster paced game. Has it been a good thing? What's your perspective as somebody who works in it every day?
Sam: As someone that cuts highlights for games, it's great because there's less dead time to just sit around and wait for games to end. I think it's a good move if it's for the right reasons, right? If speeding up the game is for fan experience, sure.
But if it speeds it up too much and people who are going to the games don't get to enjoy the games and I know there's like issues right now where they're extending alcohol past the seventh inning and that can get a little dangerous if people are driving home. So that's where I draw concern.
But in terms of from viewership, I don't notice the pitch clock. I think games are just more fun because there's less dead time. I think more stolen bases are great. I hated the shift. I thought it was like playing a video game where you're putting your character in the wrong position on purpose because you know you're gonna win.
And even just last night I was working the Mets Dodgers game. I don't know when this will go out, but the Dodgers game on April 17th. And just watching the defense in that game. Watching Francisco Lindor move around a diamond and watching like Jeff McNeil make these spectacular plays, like it's awesome and it's because the shift is gone and you get to see like these athletes' true athleticism because they're not "cheating" in my opinion. So I'm a fan of it.
JAG: Fair enough. Sam, I also want to ask you, you are our Banquet chairwoman and you did a fantastic job in helping me get what I needed to do the videos for the Hall of Fame stuff this year. Tell me how your first year was in that role and how everything went from your perspective.
Sam: Yeah, so that's funny too because that transition was supposed to happen after the 2020 banquet. And of course we know what happened after that, right? So Eileen was a trooper and stayed on for an extra two years when she didn't have to. Shepherded us through the virtual banquet through 2021.
And then, yeah, 2023 was my first year doing it alone. Not alone. With the committee. But it was a lot of fun. Like I said, I'm a logistics person. I am the daughter of an event planner. So both of my parents obviously have gotten me both a legal director job and event planner job.
And so I've set up events since I was 15 years old set up Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. Sweet sixteens. Truly my favorite part of the Banquet was going three hours before and like setting everything up because that's where I felt most at home. Because I've done it probably 600 to 700 times.
So it was a lot of fun. It's just a lot of emails. It's a lot of emails and just keeping your ducks in a row and knowing that if you do enough prep work, the weekend itself will just cruise control. And that's what I did. And thankfully, I had Ariel to help me and Kyle Leff was a huge help and Matt kept me sane.
But it's a lot of fun and it's great to see it all pay off that everyone was so happy with it and everyone had a great time and, If the worst part is that we're locked out of a room for 15 minutes, I'll take it as a win.
JAG: Absolutely. And so great job and thank you for all your hard work with that. I know you two, in great show prep, mentioned earlier that you talked last night before coming on today.
Any funny stories from your time that you feel comfortable sharing? Matt's already looking down at his desk. Anything you're comfortable sharing?. You guys have been really good friends for a long time. Anything from your time at the station, your time at Syracuse that you feel comfortable sharing is a funny stor?.
Matt: I think we have to go to the wedding, right?
Sam: Yeah, definitely the wedding.
Matt: We pulled a lot of antics on the air a lot of times. We got into a multi zoo episode debate about whether DiGiorno really is delivery. You can ask us about that later. But the most iconic thing, if you could say that about yourself.
Is we got married on air. Like we really did get married on air. It was for Valentine's Day, 2018. I think we got this idea like a week in advance.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Sam: We got the idea because Ethan Charlip became an ordained minister. Oh my G-d. I forget why. Maybe he was like an officiant for a wedding or something or other.
And that's what sparked the idea in one of us of like, why don't we get married on Valentine's Day? Our Zoo's on a Wednesday and Valentine's Day is on a Wednesday, so why don't we do it?
Matt: And everyone was already calling us Mom and Dad, like it was time to seal the deal. And in true digital radio station fashion.
We live streamed the whole thing on, I believe Facebook. And somehow made it work where we were live streaming on Facebook and then cutting all the clips and getting them on air and record time.
JAG: Oh wow.
Matt: It was really fun. We had vows. Our vows were the same Fifth Harmony lyrics about,
Sam: Baby, you're worth it.
Matt: Yes. Give it to me. I'm worth it. There was no coordination in advance, but we said the same thing. So it was really fun. We did annul the marriage very quickly.
Sam: Yeah.
JAG: Okay. So you're not technically divorcees cuz you had it annulled. You didn't have to get a divorce.
Matt: Exactly. That was the only way Sam's family was gonna be okay with it.
Sam: My mom's still so mad about the wedding. She's I can't believe you did that. But honestly, the wedding itself was great. But the logistics that we put together. Like Matt said, we announced that we were getting married in the studio. Then we went out live streamed it.
As we live streamed it. We had a microphone that was hooked up to an audio recorder that recorded all of our vows as we did it on livestream, brought that audio back into Audition, cut it into four different segments, and then put those segments out on the air. And so we planned this entire thing.
JAG: Where was the wedding?
Sam: In the newsroom. . And we wore Z89 shirts. I cut an extra large shirt like into a dress. . And we had ring pop rings. It was a whole production and it was so much fun.
JAG: I need that audio too.
Matt: And we've really learned what to do in our careers now when you don't get a budget and you have to do something off short notice.
JAG: That is a great place to leave it, with yet another lesson learned from the world's greatest media classroom. Matt Gehring, Sam Kandell, class of 2018. It's amazing to see how many great friendships have formed at the radio station, whether you're talking about Dan Austin and Jeff Wade, you're talking about TJ Basalla and Kevin Rich.
You guys are right up there in the same vein as people that have become very close friends, just by happenstance. Being on the same floor on Bo 8 when you were a freshman, and it's great to see that you guys are so close now and still practically finish each other's sentences and I'm so glad I was able to have you both on together. Thank you both for everything you've done and continue to do for the radio station. I remember when I walked in when you were both running the radio station just being so impressed as an alum, by both of you when walk walked into the station. So thank you for spending some time with us today.
Sam: Sure.
Matt: Thank you. And thank you for everything this podcast has done. Sam obviously did a fantastic job on Banquet, but it wasn't complete without the podcast.
JAG: Thank you very much.
Sam: Yes, thank you, JAG. Without you, our numbers would not be nearly as high as they were. So take that plaque and take a pat on the back.
JAG: I appreciate that. Thank you.