Chances are, if you have ever been involved with WJPZ, you know Matt Friedman from the Class of 1994. This Hall of Famer and proud Michigander is one of our most active alumni. (In fact, he even helped make some connections for this podcast.) Today he takes us from his journey to Syracuse, through television news, and to the helm of his agency, Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications.
Matt actually knew about WJPZ before he ever left Metro Detroit - thanks to alumni like Larry Barron, Scott Meach, and more. While at his local community radio station in high school, WJPZ and Syracuse University, in some ways, became one and the same.
A lover of news, sports, and music, Friedman actually found his home in WJPZ's news department, helping run their breaking news coverage of what we now know as Operation Desert Storm (yes, he has a clip). But before getting into station management, he was taught an invaluable lesson by Dave Gorab that he takes with him to this day.
Following his WJPZ career, Matt worked in TV, producing newscasts in Atlanta and Orlando, before returning home to Detroit. Eventually he moved out of television and into PR, then starting Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications. We talk about his career arc through many changes, and how Friedman's experiences and relationships from WJPZ have buoyed him every step of the way.
When asked for a funny story, Broadcaster Friedman shares a culture clash that's sure to crack you up. It involves the Barrio Boyz, heard here: https://youtu.be/_qR1PL13T-U
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 am Jon Jag Gay. Today's guest is somebody who may be connected with more alumni than just about anybody we've had on the podcast of all ages. He's also, full disclosure, been a mentor to me and nobody more excited to welcome me to Detroit twice than today's guest, and by this point I think you know who he is.
That will be Matt Friedman, from the class of 94. Welcome, Matt.
Matt: Jag. Thank you. The pleasure's been all mine in getting to know you over these. And I hope I never have to welcome you back again. May you be here in Detroit to stay, please.
JAG: That is the plan. As it sits right now on, October 11th, 2022. You have, as I said, a lot of connections to the alumni of all ages, and we're gonna certainly get into that.
But take me back to getting to Syracuse and falling in love with the station. You knew about the station before you even got there, right?
Matt: I did. To me, Syracuse University and WJPZ have always been intertwined. And that's because of where I grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. More specifically, at least in the Bloomfield Hills School district, where the school district operated a radio station for the community.
And I started working at that station when I was 11. I was in sixth grade. And over the years, got to know and got to know the stories of guys who became very significant in WJPZ history. Scott Meech, Scott Taylor. And most notably probably Larry Barron. And I remember hearing tapes of Z89 that Larry Barron sent home when I was a sophomore in high school, and that did it for me.
I mean, I heard what he sounded like on Z89, and that's where I wanted to go. And that's what I wanted to do. And I remember going as a senior in high school on my college visits and went to Syracuse and I toured the radio station. Scott Meach, who was the general manager at the time, showed me around. And WJPZ was in Radio and Records magazine that week.
It was featured in R&R, which was the bible of the industry. It's hard to picture what a magazine could be like then. That just did it for me. I had to get into Newhouse. I had to go to Syracuse because I had to work at WJPZ. Once that fell into place, I was on my way. But to me, the University and the radio station have always kind of been almost the same.
JAG: And of course, rest in peace to Larry Barron, who we've mentioned as a big influence on you many times.
Matt: Yes.
JAG: So you get to Syracuse, this is fall of 1990, if my math is right.
Matt: That's right.
JAG: How did you start at the station? What did you start doing?
Matt: Well, I showed up with tapes from high school.
I had a news tape, I had a sports tape, I had a DJ tape. I had to figure out what I wanted to do, and I really decided to focus on news and sports. In sports, I was the second freshman to get cleared on the air. The first was a guy named Dave Pasch , who's now the voice of all kinds of stuff on ESPN and also the Arizona Cardinals on the radio.
And the news, I don't know. I was probably among the first people cleared. I know Jeannie Schad, a great friend of ours, was cleared very early. I was assigned to the crazy morning crew to do sports, where Jason Smith was the host, now of Fox Sports Radio. And I was assigned to do news and Afternoon Drive where Brian Lapis was the host, a fellow podcast guest as I understand.
So that's how I started as a freshman. And then around Thanksgiving time, my freshman year, there was a sudden opening on the news executive staff. Our news staff was so big then that there was a news exec staff. Producing a show called Weekend Magazine, which was longer form. News reporting that aired on Sunday mornings, and I was named the producer of weekend magazine around Thanksgiving of my freshman year.
JAG: Wow.
Matt: So I was in deep and big from the very beginning, and then those days that was only possible at Z89. You couldn't do that at AER.
JAG: Right.
Matt: I mean, I used to joke, you had to win a Murrow Award to get cleared to go on the air at AER in those days. I was already on the air doing news and sports and was producing a weekly news show before the end of my first semester as a freshman.
That was the real opportunity that Z89 offered in those days.
JAG: One of the things that Scott MacFarlane said when talking to him was how he met the same people, whether they graduated in 73 or 23, interviewing these students. We had the same experiences over the years, and I see the parallel there between you and me, I was dabbling in sportscasts at AER, but before I was cleared to be on the air, I was the chief announcer at Z89.
So these parallels keep coming up of so many of us having had the same experience.
Matt: Yeah. And I showed up at recruitment with a resume. And a tape . You didn't have to do that, but for the first time in my life I was around people who got bitten by the same bug I did, when they were young. I met people like Dave Gorab and Brian Lapis, who I mentioned, and people who were on the air as high schoolers and Jeannie Schad. And I mean these are people come to mind cuz they had similar experiences to me.
And I'd never met people like that before. And then to have them become my friends and to start learning from them. Going to dinner at the Kimmel Dining Hall and talking shop. It was a dream come true. It's like I barely even wanted to go home for Thanksgiving. I was having so much fun.
JAG: That's the difference between you and I. You had a Kimmel Dining Hall. By the time I was there, it was KFC and Taco Bell.
Matt: We had that later in my college career. I didn't think that would come up on this podcast, but that was pivotal, as I matriculated through the universe.
JAG: Well, yeah, that's part of the radio diet. So where did your career arc at Z89 go from there? And what significant things happened while you were a student at JP Z?
Matt: Well, I'll talk about my career arc for just a second cuz I don't think I told this story even when I had my Hall of Fame induction. I had a really pivotal moment for me personally, professionally, and involving my relationship with the radio station toward the end of first semester of my sophomore year. I was the assistant news director. Now we had like 40 people on the news staff then. In some ways, we were like a radio station within a radio station. The news director was a guy named Dana Diederle, who's still a friend. Very talented guy, news manager in radio and TV for his whole career. He's now in Kansas City running a newsroom and Dana was actually one of my suite mates. He was gonna be graduating in December. So the news director position was going to open up in the middle of the school year. Very unusual. And I was very interested in becoming the news director, midway through my sophomore year. And somebody had, I remember her name, it's not important right now, but she screwed something up in a newscast, I don't even remember what it was.
And I scolded her for that in the station. In front of people. And executive staff took a vote on who should be the next news director, and I got a no confidence vote.
JAG: Wow.
Matt: They decided not to decide because they didn't wanna make me news director because of that incident. Dave Gorab was the VP of Programming and he sat me down in the hallway of Watson Theater.
I'll never forget it, it was a huge moment for me. I think about it all the time, and he said to me, something really important. He said, never forget this. Praise is for public. Criticism is for private.
JAG: Wow.
Matt: The issue was not that I criticized this staffer, the issue is I did it in public and that is not consistent with the values of the radio station, and that will not serve me well in my career.
He was a hundred percent right and I apologized and I reapplied for the position with this newfound knowledge and humility and I was named the news director right before the end of my first semester of my sophomore year. That was a pivotal bull moment for me, because I might not have made it at the radio station.
I might not have made it at Syracuse. I might not have made it in this career path if that had gone differently. The executive staff did me a huge favor, and Dave Gorab did me a favor. I'll never be able to repay and I'll be grateful forever. That was a just an indelible moment for me.
JAG: That is an incredible story and it speaks to the culture of WJPZ that's been perpetuated for 50 years now and passed on from generation to generation.
I had a boss in radio who would tell me that exact same thing, praise is for public. Criticism is for private. And knowing you both personally and professionally, it seems as if it's something you've really taken to heart throughout your whole career.
Matt: And the good news is, I learned it when I was 19. I was not quite 20 years old! I was a few weeks away from being 20. So the second question you asked me was significant stuff that happened at the station while I was there, and there are a couple things that really stand out. Number one, the flame thrower era. We pulled ratings, we got people fired at commercial radio stations cuz so many damn people listened to our station.
JAG: You mean programmers or jocks or what do you mean by that?
Matt: Rumors on the street where we got people fired cuz our ratings were so good. I don't know if that was true or not. It doesn't matter. Our ratings were amazing. Most people have heard about this now. We gave away cars. We were present at events. We had bumper stickers.
We had a billboard on 690. We broke news stories. When Syracuse University hired a new chancellor, we broke the story. That's how committed to news that we were. We did it in kind of a sneaky way, but we didn't violate any ethics and we broke the story. So being a part of that and being a part of that culture of risk taking of swag, of confidence, has helped me as an entrepreneur more than I probably even realize.
The other amazing thing that happened when I was at the station, this is when I was a freshman, it was at the beginning of my second semester, freshman year. The Iraq War started. What's now known as Desert Storm. And we switched to an all news format for two days. And it gave everybody a chance to write and anchor and report and do news in just an amazing way.
I've got cassette tapes and I've had some of it's been digitized. Most of it hasn't been. It was an amazing thing to be a part of in terms of teamwork and dedication. And we broke format. The format is holy. It's sacred at WJPZ. And this was such a great learning opportunity for the staff, that our general manager, Henry Ferri, and our program director, Hal Rood, and the news director Dave Roberts, gave us this.
And it's something I carried with me into professional All News Radio in the ensuing years. Just fabulous.
JAG: Let me stop you there for a second, Matt. So I wanna paint the picture for our listeners. How are you getting news about the Iraq war as students in Syracuse? In 1991?
Matt: We had the AP. We had people monitoring the TV networks and they were taking notes and they were going on the air and saying, here's what ABC's reporting, here's what CBS is reporting.
We sent, I remember we sent a guy to Ford Drum up near Watertown, to report on what was going on there. Cuz those soldiers might have to be deployed. We had somebody on campus talking to students if they were worried about getting drafted. I mean, it was every creative idea that you could find to try to come up with an angle and then just go do it.
So I ended up anchoring a lot of that. And that just gave me great confidence on how to ad lib, how to command a broadcast, how to perform without a net, which I had never done with an audience, with a real audience before. I mean, yeah, we had a radio station in my high school that served the community and it was awesome. It was also 10 watts.
JAG: A hundred was a real flame thrower for you.
Matt: A hundred on top of Mount Olympus. We covered all of Onondaga County. That was a real audience. So it was just incredible experience. And then, I got into an internship that past summer and I saw breaking news situations and I had kind of had a sense of what the people were going through and I could really help. Amazing.
JAG: So after Syracuse, you got into TV in a producer role, how did you make the decision from doing this on air to off air roles?
Matt: It was really a question of career opportunity and what I thought I was good at and what I thought I liked. And I was really attracted to, after my experience as news director at WJPZ ,to the management side of things, to not just covering one story a day, but having a command and a responsibility for all the stories going on in the day.
And I also learned how to write at Z89. And I knew that maybe you'd think I was nice to look at on tv. You probably wouldn't. I've seen myself in a mirror. Maybe you like my voice. Maybe you won't. I mean, there were people I worked at WWJ in Detroit, all new CBS owned at the time. There were some people who thought I was great on the air and the general manager didn't think I was good on the air, didn't think I belonged on the air.
It was very subjective.
JAG: Ear of the beholder face for radio and a voice for newspaper.
Matt: But I knew objectively that I could write news in a succinct, conversational, and accurate way, and that could serve me on behind the scenes in nudes. And what happened was I was looking at radio jobs and sending out some tapes.
I was looking at TV jobs, sending out resumes and producing tapes. And I'm on my way to the post office in West Bloomfield, Michigan. And a story comes on all news radio. A company called New World Communications was selling all of its TV stations to Fox. And they were going to become Fox O&O's and they were all going to do news in the morning and in prime time.
And I pulled over to the side of the road and thought the world is changing right here as I'm driving to the post office to mail out these resumes and tapes, because Fox had just gotten the NFL. Fox was going to become a player in local news. And that meant an expansion in the industry. What happens in sports when there's an expansion?
There's a dilution in the talent pool. I was ready to be a part of the dilution in the talent pool! I was only 22 years old and I had only produced a newscast at Newhouse before. And fast forward through the relationship and how I got connected with the interview and all this, but I ended up getting hired at WSB in Atlanta, number one station, Top 10 market because they had lost people to the Fox affiliate in the market that was becoming an O&O, and was it was expanding their news department.
JAG: Wow.
Matt: It created great opportunities for producers in particular. And so that allowed me to move up very quickly in the TV business, and I never forgot about radio, but the career opportunity, the ability to make a living was so much better in tv, particularly behind the scenes, right where they really needed people.
JAG: And then from Atlanta, you went to Orlando.
Matt: Atlanta to Orlando. One of my coworkers in Atlanta got a job as executive producer to what was at the time the worst TV station in the country, and it was part of a turnaround effort there. So I got to see what it's like to try to go from being in the number four station in a three station market to try to make a dent.
Other than not having a digital clock in the control room in 1995, it was a great experience that brought, what they did is they brought in people from number one stations all over the country who they thought knew how to win and could turn the station around. None of us knew anybody else in town except each other, and it was a great time.
It was as much fun as you could have working in that business in a decent size market at 23 years old. And then had an opportunity to come home to Detroit and I promised my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, that this will be for two years. I need to get it outta my system. That was 1996. We're still here.
We're gonna be here for as long as we can be. This is home.
JAG: How did you get out of the industry, the TV industry, or at least properly? I mean, you're still in it and have connections in it, but...
Matt: This is really what I wanted, which was to stay connected to the business, but not in it day to day. So I was on the management track.
I moved three times in three years. I would've been moving about every, in those days, about every 18 months to three years. The business was volatile at that point. It was a lot like being a football coach. Head coach gets fired, defensive coordinator gets fired. Where are you gonna follow the guy to next?
It was kind of like that. So I didn't wanna do that anymore. The content was starting to get to me, it was very crime driven, which just was not of great interest to me. There were a lot of things about it I didn't like. So the question was how to stay in communications and do what I trained to do.
But not do that anymore. It just wasn't doing it for me anymore. And then also how to stay in the Detroit area. . And then the big prize was how to work for myself someday. Cause Wall Street owned TV and radio stations. That wasn't gonna happen. I need to find something else. So it all kind of came together, and people ask me all the time, how do you make the switch from broadcasting to PR?
And my answer is, do it in 1998, What 1994 was for TV news. That's what 1998 was for PR.
JAG: Okay.
Matt: The economy was great. Everybody was trying to tell their story. The media business was still at full capacity. Newspaper still employed hundreds of people. There were plenty of places to get PR stories out and so my personal, selfish interest aligned with the economy, and I was able to make the move.
JAG: What would you tell somebody who wants to do it in 2022 or 2023?
Matt: Well still do it if that's what you want to do. My Dad always told me this and I never was never really sure what he meant until it hit me. If you're gonna wake up every day and go to work, you gotta feel good about what you're doing.
And you know, I had a job where I would pull into the parking garage and the first thing I would do is look at the clock and calculate how many hours it would be until I could get back in the car and leave there. That's an awful place to be.
JAG: This was in TV or this was before you started your own business?
Matt: No, that was in TV. Well, good question. Both, but it first happened when I was in TV. What I would talk about to people who wanna make a switch within communications is don't run from something, run to something. You probably heard me say that in real life. And once I found something I really wanted to run to, I was ready to run.
This whole PR outside agency thing sounded really interesting and fun. And it is. And it is.
JAG: So tell me a little bit about, I know there are several of our alumni who are also entrepreneurs, have started their own company. Tell me a little bit about how you've built and grown Tanner Friedman here in Michigan.
Matt: So much of it deals with the values and the fundamentals that I learned at Z89. It comes up all the time. In terms of how to be creative and how to think entrepreneurially, how to be the underdog, but not act like it , that's a big JPZ value, whether we realize it or not. How to connect with people and stay connected to people and to use your network for mutual benefit.
All those things have been really important. The Tanner Friedman journey has been interesting because for a lot of reasons, but we started at the dawn of the great recession. And then we were able to really grow after that, and now we're much more in a period of careful growth. As my partner who's a former radio guy, that helps. He and I are going into different phases in our careers, and how to continue doing what we like doing, but doing it differently, realizing the marketplace has changed a lot and our priorities are changing.
But so much of it has ground in the JPZ experience. And I've told fellow alumni this over the years, you don't realize how much of an entrepreneur you already are automatically, you know, stamped and approved by having that experience at the station. Because if you go into working in a corporate environment, you don't flex those muscles as often.
But you've exercised them enough that it'll come back to you when you need it. And I think other entrepreneurs in our group know what I'm talking about.
JAG: I would agree. I know it's probably like asking you to choose between your children, but can you cite a few examples of relationships that you've made through JPZ that were either in school with you or other alumni that have just become lifelong friends?
I know there's probably dozens you could rattle off the top of your head, but a few that come to mind in particular.
Matt: Well, it's hard for me to talk about this without getting a little bit emotional. These people are such a significant part of my life. I mean, other than the few days here and there where I've been on vacation, and I've kind of shut down the phone.
A day doesn't go by that I'm not in touch with somebody from this group. When something great happens, when something not so great happens. When there's an inside joke I'm dying to share. There are text threads that are going pretty much every waking hour. It's the most incredible thing. I have close friends otherwise in my life who aren't a part of this, who don't get it, will never get it, and it's fine.
When people bash social media, including me, I always think, well, there's an asterisk there, there's a corallary there. WJPZ connections on social media are okay, even when everything else is garbage. Because it's vital to my existence. It's oxygen. And, you know, there are people I can mention by name, but I'll tell you that they're from all over the spectrum in terms of age and experience, and they're people who just compliment and warm and often complete my life. And that goes to people from school. I mentioned Gorab and Lapis. You know, Adam and Kelly Foster Shapiro were in that category. I don't wanna forget anybody. You know, Rocket Ross is a guy that I wasn't close with in school, that I am now. And then there are young guys like my two little brothers.
I refer to them as the people who just hear about them. TJ Basalla and Kevin Rich. I mean, these guys are the little brothers I never had, and maybe I'm the big brother that they never had. But I see them all the time in Michigan. And otherwise.
JAG: I was gonna specifically bring up the two of them because I think this is worth mentioning to alumni who don't know. You were a groomsman in TJ's wedding and depending on when this airs, a groomsman in Kevin's wedding in this coming December, correct?
Matt: Yeah, that's true. And I didn't go to college with either! Those guys were in, so I don't know what they were doing. Big wheels or something when I was in college.
JAG: You're more than 10 years older than not to make you feel bad, but I mean that, that's the power of this alumni association is you guys are 10 years plus apart, but you're standing up in their wedding.
Matt: Yeah, it's really amazing. Uh, you mentioned Scotty MacFarlane. I'm in touch with Scotty, you know, constantly. He was a guy who I, kind of plucked out as a freshman, kind of adopted him, you know. Now he's an enormous part of my life along with so many of these other people.
And it's hard for me not to show up in a city and wanna see somebody and connect with. It's just the greatest thing to be a part of this. My life would not be the same if I couldn't give crap to Jeffy K on a regular basis. And I love having you here close by, and Diane Brody, who I did not know in school, but got to know here in Detroit, the fact that she's close by and gets all of this stuff, it's fun and meeting everybody's spouses and kids and integrating into this as much as we can.
And then once basketball season starts, that's when it really escalates. I was very active in my fraternity, in Theta Chi, when I was in college. And there's some guys I'm still very close with and I've gone to some alumni stuff and I've had a great time. But it's just not the same because we don't have the kind of complete professional personal connection that this group has just going all the time.
It's just great. Shout out to Dena Giacobbe too, because she has kept me company in the PR business. There's a lot of events and I was driving home from a lot of events for a lot of years home at night and I knew she'd be around. She works all the time, and she kept me company at a lot in nights home. I just don't have as many of those as I used to, so, I could go on and on.
It's a very, very special part of my life. I'm so lucky. We are so lucky to have this. I said this at the banquet a few years when I was inducting Dena in the Hall of Fame. My camp, I'm pretty active as an alum in my summer camp too, and we get together like every 10 or 15 years for an event and everybody thinks it's the greatest thing in the world.
And it is. And then I tell them, my college radio station, we do this every year. Like what? Yeah, this kind of exact same thing. We do it every year. And they're like, how do you do it? It just happens, but a lot of hard work from a few people every year. But otherwise it just happens.
Just gravity pulls.
JAG: It is so hard to explain to somebody, oh, my college reunion. Well, was it your five? Youre 10? No, we just do it every single year, and if you haven't been a part of this group, you don't really get it. If you haven't seen what this event is in person. And then how it carries on, like you said, throughout all these conversations all throughout the year.
Matt: Yeah, there's nothing else like it at Syracuse or anywhere.
JAG: Let me, finish off with my favorite question to ask, and this is kind of a natural segue from mentioning all these great names you have over the last few minutes. Give me, if you can, one or two stories from your time at the station that you feel comfortable sharing that you look back and laugh on.
Matt: You know I took things very seriously when I was news director especially. So I probably didn't have as many laughs at the station as some people did. But one thing that I laugh every time I think about it was when the Barrio Boys came into the station. Um, there was a group, they were known as the Hispanic Color Me Bad.
They were called the Barrio Boys, and they had a song called Crazy Cooling. I think only Damien Redman and Jeff Wade would remember. Matt DelSignore, of course would know this, . But anyway, they came into the radio station, which artists would do, like Naughty by Nature, came into the radio station. If I had any idea of the enduring appeal of Naughty by Nature, I would've skipped whatever class I went to instead, and I would've gone to the Naughty by Nature.
But the Barrio Boys were in there, and the deal was that they would take pictures and I had a camera. This is what kind of a newsman I was. I would not leave to go out on campus without a cassette recorder and a camera in my backpack in case I ran in the news somewhere. So I had a camera and there's a picture of me with the Barrio Boys, and I'm not kidding, I'm wearing a Northern Exposure sweatshirt.
It was about the biggest culture clash that you can imagine. Matt Friedman from West Bloomfield, Michigan in a Northern Exposure sweatshirt in the radio station with the Barrio Boys. I can't help but laugh when I think of that. And the other thing that was just constantly fun and funny was when Dave Roberts was around.
We would do lunch with Dave and it would basically be you go over to Kimmel and talk shop and you'd talk shop for like five minutes and then he would basically make fun of anything and everything for the rest of the time, and it was just fun getting to know people at that level. You know, it was a big letdown getting into professional broadcasting, because the level of comradery and fun and inappropriate conversation plummeted.
It's almost zero. When I get into a professional environment and at the station it's always. You know, Neon Dion, Marvin Nugent, guys like that were around. who grew up in very different places from where I did, but we could always agree on what was funny and share a laugh in that little hallway and it was just great.
And the sports guys, the other laugh I always shared with the sports guys is they got really into women's basketball. They did play by play at women's basketball.
JAG: Sure.
Matt: I knew nothing about women's basketball and I won their women's basketball NCAA pool. I won like a hundred bucks and they just gave me crap for two years after that.
JAG: So was this before or after UConn became a dynasty?
Matt: Uh, during. So yeah, I probably picked them along the way somewhere. Anyway, when I think about that little hallway, I think of a lot of laughs and a lot of ribbing. And, it was always fun even though I took everything seriously.
JAG: Well, I think I speak for all of the alumni when I thank you for your contributions to the radio station as a student and to the alumni and to the students as an alum yourself. I know there have been countless people I've connected you with that you've offered some career advice to. You're always one of the first people to reach out whenever I had any kind of a career question or anything, your phone is always open for anybody from JPZ.
Matt: Always.
JAG: Thank you for being part of the association and such an integral part of it. And thank you for being part of this podcast.
Matt: Oh, you're welcome. It's a pleasure to do this. We're just scratching the surface. There's so much. I can't wait to hear the rest of them. Thank you for doing this and for capturing all of these voices and it's a privilege to be among them.
JAG: All right. Thanks, Matt.