Matt DelSignore was elected to the WJPZ of Hall of Fame in 2022, and will be inducted at this year's Banquet celebation.
Growing up outside Watertown, New York, Matt's parents had season tickets to Syracuse Football. But while most other Walkmans (Walkmen?) in the Dome were tuned in to the game on WSYR, Matt's headphones found Z89, then programmed by our own Neon Dion Summers. The station sounded so good, Matt never thought it would have been run by students. Joining the station upon his arrival on campus was a no-brainer.
Then, like several of his classmates from the Class of 2002, this freshman was tapped by then GM Harry Wareing as a future leader of the radio station. In the 1998-1999 school year, the station staff was small. Harry and broadcast consultant Dena Giacobbe new they had to empower the next executive staff. Harry suggested Matt run for General Manager and Program Director, and Matt talks about his sense of "serving his community," a tradition his family has deep roots in.
The dual role is not an easy one. While Matt relished the opportunity to program a station like WJPZ, it was also his responsibility to keep the lights on. And while the station was making enough money to pay its monthly bills, it was facing an enormous debt the current students inherited. But it was the passion and personalities Matt found at the station that helped keep it going. Those relationships continue to this day.
Matt also takes us through his post-college career in news (and why he chose reporting over records) - from Watertown to Syracuse, Albany, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C.
Finally, Mr. DelSignore tells us a hilarious personal story about himself, Redman, Method Man, and the movie How High.
Bonus: Matt's Summer 1999 Playlist. Hard to believe these all hit that summer! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6HbF5OilemvmkfxePsJXbA?si=518052ef610f4361
Join Us in Syracuse on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I'm Jon JAG Gay. Throughout the history of the radio station, we have seen hundreds, maybe even thousands of alumni, and there are a select few, maybe a few dozen, that really, without their guidance and leadership, the station may not be alive today. Now, our guest today is way too modest to say that himself, but his 2022 election into the WJPZ Hall of Fame will say that for him. He'll be inducted at this year's banquet in 2023. And a quick disclosure before we get started, he is a classmate and one of my closest friends, we've stood up in each other's weddings even. Welcome Matt DelSignore.
Matt: This is so weird for me because we are such good friends and we have told, I mean, countless thousands of hours of WJPZ stories over the years.
So now to be kind of sitting down and, in a formal way. I mean, I don't know how we're gonna keep this to a time that's manageable, but we'll do our best.
JAG: You and I have had phone calls that have lasted four or five times the length of this podcast.
Matt: Yes.
JAG: But the beauty is all the stories. Then inside jokes that aren't appropriate for the podcast, we can leave out. So that'll cut some time out of it.
Matt: Okay. There will be no lawsuits.
JAG: We can only hope. Let's start at the beginning. Matt, you're somewhat local in that you grew up outside Watertown, New York, in Sacketts Harbor, about an hour or so north of Syracuse. You've always been a music guy since even before your time at SU. How did you first get into music and become so passionate about it?
Matt: You know, Z89 was kind of a part of that because I discovered the station as a teenager. My parents had season tickets to the SU football games. And what I noticed was ,I was probably 12, 13, 14 at the time. There were a lot of folks who were at the tailgate or on the shuttle bus, and of course at the Dome itself, wearing headphones during the game. And I thought, well, what's that all about? And you, my Dad explained that they were listening to the game. They were listening to call the Game on WSYR, live. And I thought was pretty cool. But I wanted to listen to some music while I'm here. I'm just wired that way.
So, you know, Syracuse, to me, coming from Watertown, New York, market 260-whatever, Syracuse was kind of the big city in a way. I enjoyed the wide variety of choices that I had, listening to my little Walkman while watching the football games. So I'm flipping through the dial and I end up on the low end of the dial.
All of a sudden I find this radio station that's playing the music that I know and I love, and it's not always the stuff that I can get in my hometown market too. It's the R&B and hip hop and dance stuff that I was really starting to enjoy at that point, and still do. Those were the days when, Dion was programing the station, so this was my lane.
I fell in love with the station at that point, having no idea what the commercial or non-commercial end of the dial was, and making no distinction, having no thought that this could be a student run radio station, and I didn't discover that until I visited SU my senior year of high school and the station was kind of out and about.
I believe at an event. And I realized, wait, there are students running this thing! Could I be part of this? That was kind of the turning point for me. And I was already all in on Syracuse to begin with. So to have the opportunity to maybe even work this station playing this music, that I love? Come on. It couldn't have gotten any better.
JAG: When we got there, Matt, in the fall of 1998, there was probably a smaller staff because the station had just flipped back to Z89 from the Pulse. Harry Wareing and Dena Giacobbe were in charge. And what was really interesting, and we're gonna talk to them about this in a future episode.
They kind of latched onto this huge incoming class. Our class, the class of 2002, as freshmen and saw that, hey, if we wanna keep this station going, we're gonna tap into the resource of this large group and see who's good at what. Now, I didn't join the station until, I think it was October, November. You were of course there from the jump.
Talk to me about what that was like with Harry and Dena, sort of reaching out to you and your classmates and saying, okay, we're gonna put you guys in some power positions and some leadership positions to learn this thing pretty quickly.
Matt: They gave us a lot of responsibility very quickly and as newcomers to station that was, not intimidating, but it was exciting to be given so much responsibility so early on, and it really made you feel special. It made you feel important, and it made you invested in the station most of all. And Harry and Dena, they knew what had to be done and they were all over the place for recruitments., I went back last night in preparation for this conversation.
JAG: Always a professional, too. Look at you prepping.
Matt: I found my handwritten notes from my GM interview, before the JPZ Board of Directors. And one of the things that I noted was, you know, going back through my long history history at the station at that point, which was a matter of months, I mentioned how I heard about the station and the recruitment, the official recruitment through a flyer that was posted somewhere on campus.
It was as simple as that. Harry and the others were also going to Newhouse, and speaking to the students there, and you're right. Basically, they figured out very quickly, who among us had which skill sets and which passions for the business. And some of us were more into, I think, our jobs than others, but everyone kind of grew into them.
And we became invested in the station, invested in each other. We all wanted to do right by Z89. And you know, not let anybody down. Harry, in particular, put so much into the station. I mean, he was there at all hours of the day, so he was our example. And it seemed like nothing else on Earth mattered as much as the radio station, and I know that certainly became true for me too, right?
We were there all hours doing all kinds of work, and yet they gave us all jobs to do, made us feel important, made us feel. And in mature, we gave that back to the station and to our peers.
JAG: A great example of leadership. You're actually transitioning into the next thing I wanted to ask you about Matt, which.
You became general manager and program director just before your 19th birthday. So tell me how the conversation went where they thought you might be a great candidate to take over the reigns of this then 25ish year old institution, and to put it in your hands, how did they approach you about this?
Matt: Well, in the interest of full disclosure, there were no other candidates. They knew that I was relatively local, living an hour away. I had no plans to stay in Syracuse that summer, as I was only 18, about to turn 19, heading into my sophomore year. Now, back then, elections were done in the spring and the idea was that the outgoing staff would have a few weeks before they graduated to kind of show you the ropes and really make sure that you were in good shape so that during the summer and then when everybody got back in the fall, you'd be ready to hit the ground running and then have a nice long stretch where you know you were in control of not doing your own thing.
Harry and I had a conversation, I'm pretty sure it was a Sunday afternoon. I think he was doing his shift. Probably somebody didn't show, so he was doing a Sunday afternoon show and he invited me into the station to have a conversation and he didn't say what it was about specifically. I had a feeling that it was gonna be about some kind of leadership role, but I didn't know how far he wanted to go.
Keep in mind at the time, Harry was the GM and the PD. And those were two pretty large hats that weren't normally worn by the same person, but the station was short staffed back then. So he took on both those roles, and he asked me if I was interested in doing something similar, and it was, it was a lot.
I didn't feel like a lot in the moment, during most of the moments anyway. Because that's all I ever knew. I was like, well, Harry is a GM and the PD. So why can't I? I would not have recommended that going forward I don't think anybody has done that since, at least not for a long stretch of time.
And it's better that way too,I believe. But anyway, so he came to me and said, I think you can do this. And I kind of came from it. I thought about it as, okay, I'm being called to do something for for my community, like Z89 was family for me, and these were my people. And I thought about the example that my family had set because, I had a grandfather who was a county lawmaker.
My dad was on the school board. I had a grandmother who was an election worker. You know, she volunteered every year at the polling places. My mom plays the organ at church and still does, for the past 50 plus years. For not a single dime, and she's there every single Sunday. So I had good examples of what it looks like to be there for your people.
And this felt like a chance for me to be there for my people who had already given me so much. I mean, I loved every second of being at the radio station. I'd already started to learn about the industry. So this felt like the right time and the right place to step up in that way.
JAG: As you look back in your time as GM and PD, Matt, what significant events and or challenges stick out most in your memory?
Matt: Part of it was just filling every shift. And that was a pain that, that you felt as you became, was it senior announcer, eventually ops manager?
JAG: Yep. Senior announcer, chief announcer, and yeah, ops manager. I remember those 4:00 AM phone calls. Guess what? Somebody didn't show. Guess I'm getting dressed.
Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. The other part that was harder during that time was the finances. The station was staying afloat. You know, we were staying in the black, because we were selling enough sponsorships to pay our bills month to month, sometimes barely. But we did it.. The challenge was we were buried under this heap of debt, tens of thousands of dollars that had been incurred in legal fees from things like receivership and fights over the license.
These things predated you and I. But we inherited the burdens that came from those battles, basically. So it was hard for the station to get ahead financially at that time when we were just trying to keep our head above water. We were literally paying rent to the university. We were still fully independent.
So that space that we had in what was then Watson Theater, we paid rent to the University every single month. And Harry always told me that if nothing else, pay the rent.
JAG: Right?
Matt: Anything else, if you're behind a month or two, that will eventually work itself valid. The revenue will cycle in eventually.
Just make sure you pay the rent on time so that you have a roof over your head, literally, and the Universitykind of leaves you alone basically. So that was priority one, but that was a big challenge for us was the finances. And we didn't get a chance to really, I think, thrive in the way that the station could have. It eventually did once the funding situation changed in the early two thousands.
JAG: Right. I think that speaks to just the changes in the industry. Hot 1079 had come on, they were another threat, to pull ad dollars potentially away from the radio station. The industry had changed, started changing in the mid nineties and it was not as easy to make money at that point as it was in the late eighties, early nineties and some of those days.
So we eventually had to go back to the University for funding, which is something that'll come up in future episodes, I'm sure.
What are some fond memories that you have, either from your time as GM and PD, or even thereafter from the radio station?
Matt: Part of it was just the day to day interactions of seeing my friends.
JAG: Yeah.
Matt: Walking into that often dingy space and working hard together to make magic on the radio every day. I mean, before I got to the station, I thought, well, radio, must be some shiny, glamorous thing because it, it sounds so cool on the air. It sounds so exciting. Uh, Z89 in particular for a student station sounded so polished. Then I walked into the joint and I was like, now wait a minute. But it was just all this, grinding it out together every single day. And there were a lot of big personalities in those rooms. Part of the joy for me was just kind of sitting back and watching it all happen.
You know, I was not one of those, I feel like, so I was more an observer and that for me was entertainment and fun all by itself. So the way that we were able to, you know, create promotions out of nothing. And the way we were able to get even music on the air, you know, I had relationships with record labels back then.
We were able to get service from some better than others. We had to get creative when it came to getting certain stuff on the air. The equipment challenges that we faced back then, which again you were very familiar with.
Yep.
You know, just kind of surviving all of that, I think, forged a really strong bond.
That's something that I think carries through for all of us, certainly to this day.
JAG: I mean, strong bond. You lived with a couple of classmates that worked at the radio station.
Matt: I did. A couple of my closest friends, Jana Fiorello, Beth Cohen. We lived in a house on Ostrom. This bright yellow house that we nicknamed the Bat Cave because one summer when I was staying over, I was doing a little bit of stuff for JPZ that summer, along with an internship at what was then Citadel.
Now the Cumulus cluster. I awoke . This was not the smartest thing, but I awoke from a nap one evening to a bat flying over my head in the living room. I should have gotten a rabies shot, quite honestly, but I was so thrown by the whole thing, cuz they, they say that they'll, I'll get you if when you don't know it. But that aside...
JAG: I think after 24 years, you're in the clear on that one.
Matt: I think I'm okay. I think I'm okay. But I lived with Beth and Jana and they were at my wedding. You were in my wedding. Our friend Josh Wolff was in my wedding, in your wedding. Our friend Steven Kurtz DJ'ed my wedding and yours. So these bonds are so deep and are so important to me all these years later.
JAG: You were somebody that I learned a lot from at the station when it came to both your music acumen and your leadership acumen. And we will, you'll remember probably not as fondly as I do, but I would always needle you because you were more of a hip hop guy and I was more of a rock guy and you knew the station's direction needed to be a little bit more rhythmic, which, if I go back and talk to 19 year old Jag, I would say, "Listen to Matt. He knows what he is talking about when it comes to music." So I would always needle you on that. But you also knew that I was trying to get a reaction out of you, and it speaks to your leadership skills that you would never give me that reaction, which, you know, you would never lose your cool.
Matt: I knew where it was coming from. It was all good natured fun, and I also felt pretty confident in what I was doing, too. I think that if it was somebody who was wavering in their beliefs on where the station was going, that might've bothered them more. I felt pretty good about where the station was at.
At the time, and this is still true in Syracuse. There are three. CHRs in that market. And at our time there was a fourth station, an urban station and it was kind of a spectrum. You had 93Q on the most adult side, Hot 1079 leaning younger, more rhythmic, and really a lot more than most stations in that format at that time even, which put a squeeze on us as we tried to lean more rhythmic and younger.
And then you had, uh, what was that? Power 102? On the R&B/Hip Hop side. So like we were really kind of squeezed in there, but it was important for us to take that lean at the time because that's where the culture was. The most popular music of that time was rap and most pop stations were pretty afraid of that still, of embracing it fully.
JAG: You're talking Nelly, Jay Z, that era, right?
Matt: Yes, yes. So all those Dr. Dre records, you know, the, the songs being seen performed at the Super Bowl now, that are like for us old folks. That are essentially like our version of classic rock now. But those sounds were not as fully embraced by pop radio.
Think of the year 2000 while we were out here playing Big Pimping and the next episode, which, did okay at straight pop radio. You had the format embracing stuff like a Matchbox 20 and a Vertical Horizon, which you know, are fine, but those aren't being played at the Super Bowl 20 years later. You know we were in the right place at the right time.
That was also like peak TRL.
JAG: Yeah.
Matt: So you had Brit, Christina, Backstreet, NSync. And again, we were embracing those younger acts in ways that I think Mainstream CHR was not. They would play certain songs a lot, but we would play all of them a lot and a lot more.
JAG: For any music geeks who are listening to the podcast. And Matt's music acumen is well documented amongst the Alumni Association. He has a Spotify playlist for the summer of 1999 when he first took over, and what an incredible summer that was for pop music. I'll link to that in the show notes because it's, when you look at all those songs that came out that summer. It was pretty incredible.
Matt: It was such a gift to me as an incoming PD because it made my life a lot easier. I was not digging for hits. I mean, that was the summer of Ricky Martin. That was the summer of Backstreet Boys. ""I Want It That Way." Christina, "Genie in a Bottle" had broken big at that time.
It was the biggest song of the summer, technically, I think. Britney was on fire, so it was so easy to program the station then.
JAG: And program the station you did very well. But also in your time as an alum, you have come back and come up over the summer, come back at off times and help train future generations of programmers on the concepts and the programs of music scheduling, which I think is to your credit as well.
Matt: Well, and that's one of those things where I don't wanna overstep my balance for a couple of reasons. Number one, I'm one of these old alumni now who is fully 20 years removed and you know, you wonder how much students want to hear from somebody in my position. But also because I've been out of the music side of radio for 20 years now.
And the guidance that I give the students is just based on, what my experience was managing old school DOS based selector at that time. And then kind of observing what's happening in the industry, which I still kind of keep an eye on. So when I build clocks for the station, which are still in place now, you know, my goal is to not have it be this hard and fast thing where you have to do things one way, but it needs to be a foundation that they can build on, and one where it'll hopefully allow them tosucceed, not just the educational aspects of the station, but also to succeed in the Syracuse marketplace. You know, at the end of the day we were always told, you still have to play the hits. You still have to be relevant to the wider audience in Syracuse. That goes beyond the Hill. So I think what I've tried to do is, let's strike a balance where, you know, the PDs can still leave their own imprint, certainly, but also be thinking about what's happening in the industry that's gonna hopefully get you a job.
And also what's gonna matter to the people who are listening? Who are gonna be there well after you are gone and you wanna make Z89 still a brand that matters to people in Syracuse.
JAG: So you mentioned being out of music for 20 years, Matt, which is hard for me to imagine because you're such a music guy.
But after Syracuse, you transitioned over into news and had a pretty good run, if I do say so myself, in that realm of things. For those who don't know your story, briefly take us through, where news brought you all over this great country of ours.
Matt: I did radio news for 13 years. After graduation I went back to my hometown of Watertown and I worked at the news talk station there for a couple of years.
Also doubled up and did some TV at the local CBS affiliate, WWNY. From there it was back to Syracuse for a couple of years, and that was a different experience to be there, as a grown up, as a 24 year old and being out in the broader community in ways that I wasn't as a student. So I was at WSYR for two years, went to WGY in Albany for two years, was at KDKA in Pittsburgh for almost four.
And then at WNEW in DC for about three and a half years.
JAG: What made you make the transition from music to news?
Matt: The plan was always to do journalism. I thought I was always gonna be a reporter. I had the conversation with a professor that I respected a lot at Newhouse, Frank Currier, who is a former CBS Correspondent.
And he knew that I was doing the radio thing at Z89. He knew that I wa s a music guy at heart. But he told me that I think it's great that you have this passion, and it's wonderful that you have this foundation in journalism, and I think that's going to take you farther than the music side.
Quite frankly, he advised me to stick with journalism if I wanted to do radio, because ultimately it was gonna take me farther for a longer period of time. That was a good bit of advice from him, and I was still able to dip my toe a little bit when I was at these various stations. You know, I, I would talk to the program directors of say, Hot 1079 when I was, when at WSYR. We would talk about category and rotations and how they use things there. I talked with program directors in Albany about how they did things. And in Pittsburgh as well too. So I got to dabble a little bit in each place, so I kind of scratched that itch.
JAG: This might be the shortest conversation I've ever had with you in knowing you for 25 years. Before I let you go, I wanna ask you to recall a funny story or two that's of course appropriate for this podcast that sticks out in your memory, from your time at JPZ.
Matt: Senior year I attended a press junket for the cinematic classic, "How High."
It starred Red Man and Method Man, you may know them from the Wu Tang Clan.
JAG: And you say that like such a news reporter, by the way.
Matt: Well, and that figures into the story. So, "How High" was this story about these two buddies who smoked this magical marijuana? What made it so special was it had been fertilized by the ashes of their dead friend who had been cremated. Now they smoked this marijuana and what it does is it summons the ghost of their buddy who then gives them the answers to all of the questions on their standardized tests that they're taking to get into college. So they ace the exam and they get into Harvard. Spoiler alert. They get into Harvard and things go a little wacky.
So, I'm attending the junket for How High? That was one only time I had ever done a junket for JPZ, and we didn't do a lot of those. I'm not sure how we got the access in that way.
JAG: Where was it? Was it in Syracuse or LA or?
Matt: It was in New York. I flew to New York City. They put me up in a hotel and there were a whole bunch of radio stations there.
Our own Neon Dion was there, I think he was still at WERQ in Baltimore at the time. So I get in the room. I finally get my five minutes with Red and Meth. And I'm taking the whole thing way too seriously. I am a senior broadcast journalism major. Like we are doing journalism here and it's not going great.
Like the vibe is not right. They are upset, but they're just not into what I'm puttin down and eventually, I can't remember who it was, who said this to whom. I can't remember if Red said this to Meth or if Meth said this to Red, but one turns to the other and just mutters. Oh, he white as hell.
And I didn't know what to say. . That was the point where I knew it was time to go. The whole thing I had taken way too seriously. So, you know, that was my exchange with Redman and Method Man.
JAG: I can imagine Professor Currier is standing behind you saying, "I told you to do news."
Matt: Yes. When, when the interview eventually aired on Z89, that part was removed.
JAG: Oh, see, I would've left it.
Matt: I probably should have left it in, but again, in the spirit of taking the whole thing too seriously, I thought, you know what? This probably should not air.
JAG: Do you remember what some of the questions were you asked them?
Matt: Oh gosh. It was way too existential. I was like, people are saying that you could be the new tAbbot and Costello. What do you think about carrying on such a legacy of comedy in cinema?
JAG: Oh boy.
Matt: You know, it was too heavy. It was just too heavy. This is a movie about magical marijuana. It ain't that serious, folks, and I didn't get that.
JAG: It's been a recurring theme throughout this podcast that there are lessons we learned at JPZ that it was very good that we learned that 18, 19, and 20 and not 25, 30, 35 and later in our careers and.
I would definitely say that example fits the bill. Matt.
Matt: Tone is very important.
JAG: Matt, it's been great having you on the podcast. Congratulations on your upcoming induction, and very well deserved, into the WJPZ Hall of Fame. I'm thrilled that we're gonna all be there for you and also we're gonna bring back some of our old crew to come see your big moment and. We're very excited for that to happen this spring. And thank you for coming on and doing the podcast.
Matt: Class of 02 and adjacent classes, if you're listening, come on out. We would love to see you in Syracuse in March, and this was so much fun, Jag. Thank you so much.