Editor's Note: This week we are re-releasing the episodes of our 2025 Hall of Fame Class. Here, you'll catch our interview with the inspiring Geoff "Deaf Geoff" Herbert, Class of 2005.
Geoff "Deaf Geoff" Herbert is a machine -serving as WJPZ's GM while working as a morning show host at a commercial station in Syracuse. Oh by the way, he was working a night shift at Blockbuster Video (RIP) and somehow attending classes.
Geoff was bitten by the radio bug early, serving as General Manager of his high school radio station in Acton, Massachusetts. This experience made attending Syracuse and joining Z89 a no-brainer. During his time at the helm of the station, WJPZ vastly expanded both its sports and music offerings.
Yes, today's guest was born deaf, hearing only about 10% as well as the rest of us (50% with hearing aids). He talks about giving himself his nickname/on-air moniker, his lip-reading skills (which come in handy during Syracuse basketball games), and even how he became the instructor in a music production class.
It was another SU class - taught by Dr. Rick Wright - that landed him an internship at Hot 107.9, that he eventually turned into a full time producer gig before even graduating. And his instincts were good - preparing to leave commercial radio just before his show was taken off the air for syndication.
In the time since, he's become a prolific writer for Syracuse.com and the Post Standard, maintained his music chops as a Wedding DJ, and fallen in love with Syracuse as home.
Referenced in this podcast:
Eamon: "F*ck It (I Don't Want You Back): https://youtu.be/QYwyaCd8MyI
Response Track: Frankie: "FURB:" https://youtu.be/B1K0pUSSFUo
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
Connect with the WJPZ Alumni Association: https://wjpzalumniassociation.org/
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. There is so much to say about today's guest. He is a former general manager of the radio station, a local celebrity in Syracuse from his time on commercial radio there, A brilliant writer now for syracuse.com. An SEO expert, a wedding dj. Oh, by the way, he happens to be deaf.
"Deaf Geoff" Herbert from the class of 2005. Welcome to the podcast.
Geoff: Thank you so much for having me, JAG. Excited to be here.
JAG: There is so much to get into pre, during, and post JPZ. Tell me a little bit about how you got involved with the station and what came first. Love for radio or JPZ.
Geoff: Love for radio. When I was in high school in Acton, Massachusetts, I had the fortunate experience of having a high school radio station, and I joined when I was a sophomore.
Really loved that impact of playing songs and giving people shout outs. And then they would, you know, respond to, they'd tell you, oh my God, you played my favorite song. Or everybody loved hearing my name on the radio, even though it was, you know, a small little 10-watt station that basically reached to the cafeteria.
It was still a lot of fun. I became the general manager of that high school radio station for two years, and I just loved it. And so I knew that when I was going to college, I wanted to do radio and Syracuse University was one of my top choices, and I loved the fact that it had multiple radio stations, but I knew Z89 was one of the places I really wanted to be.
JAG: So its reputation kind of preceded it before you even got to campus.
Geoff: Yeah, so when I visited the school, I knew that there was WERW, WJPZ, and of course 88.3 WAER, and I knew that they all had differences and advantages, but I knew that WJPZ was where I wanted to be because it had the kind of radio experience that I was interested in.
It was a top 40 format playing a lot of the songs that I and my peers liked. And it had that similar kind of impact where you could play the song that get those reactions from. And basically had that kind of like fun experience day in, day out. And it also had a lot of students that were managing everything at the radio station.
They were picking the songs, they were choosing promotion for other events they were gonna cover, whether it be sports or mixshows or events. And I really liked that freedom to have it Z89.
JAG: So the nickname DeafGeoff, you were telling me before we started recording, this is a self-given nickname that you came up with originally when you were younger. Tell me how that happened. And then did you get any pushback when you told people that you wanted to get into radio?
Geoff: Well, for starters I'll explain. I was born with a profound hearing loss, a binary hearing loss. I hear about 10% as well as the average person. With hearing aids just about 50% maybe as well.
And then with context such as visual cues and lip reading, it's close to 90%. And a lot of people sometimes forget or don't realize that I'm hard of hearing. So it's something that's been a part of me and who I am my entire life. I've been wearing hearing aids since I was two years old. And when I was 12, I had to pick my first AOL screen name,
And you know, that was the early days of the internet being accessible to a lot of people. So I came up with a handle, DeafGeoff, as a short and simple and easy way to introduce myself to people. I'm Geoff. I'm mostly deaf. I'm okay with it and everyone else should be too. And I like the fact that it rhymes too.
So it worked as a DJ name. So I stuck with it when I was in high school as my radio persona and when I started DJ'ing for parties and school dances and things like that. So I kept going with it and, then when I was thinking about college and a career radio was always something that I really wanted to do and I never had anybody push back on it saying, You know, you can't do this or you shouldn't do that.
The only time I ever had someone really push back was actually after I had already gotten to SU, when I was in my, I think sophomore year or junior year, I took a music recording class. And the teacher was like, you know, if you can't hear a certain notes or tell very well if a band is out of key or off pitch in the recording process, how are you gonna be able to do this? And I explained that, even though I can't hear everything exactly as well as the next person I did have a lot of experience with music and editing music. And I have a lot of skills for listening. Listening very closely. On top of that, there's technology.
When we're recording stuff, we're not just recording it into an analog for tape recorder anymore. We're using computer screens that show you the waveforms of everything that you're saying, singing and playing. So you can see where different vocals come in, different drum beats. Soone thing that I was actually able to teach the class that the professor and the teaching assistant wasn't able to, was how to edit songs.
So when you're recording a band that is actually out of sync, out of time, cuz they're not a perfect. And they're playing with live instruments. I actually showed them how you could edit the waveform to have everything match up in tune and in time.
JAG: So like in a multi-track, when you're dragging stuff to match like the drum and the guitar?
Geoff: Yeah. Dragging or stretching, whatever you need to do to make sure that the guitars and the drum and the baseline are all coming in at the same time. Cuz a lot of these bands, you know, without Pro Tools, they don't know how to play in sync like that.
JAG: Especially like you said, especially a band that might be getting started out and isn't totally polished yet.
I wanna get to the JPZ stuff, but I don't wanna forget to mention. Geoff is a great follow on Twitter, particularly during Syracuse basketball games because he often lip reads Coach Boeheim. And sometimes during an NFL game I'll see something and I'll tweet him and I'll just say, "Did he say what I think he said?" That I won't repeat in this podcast and Geoff will usually confirm it for me. "Yep, yep. That's what it was." So, you are a great follow on Twitter. What is your Twitter handle for those who don't know?
Geoff: DeafGeoff. I always tell people it is Deaf with an A, Geoff with a G and the def with an a, I always have to clarify, especially not only because I'm hard of hearing, but I've to claim I'm not def, like Def Jam. I'm not cool. I'm not cool. I'm just hard of hearing.
JAG: I think you're pretty cool. So, you're at the station. You've been a GM in high school. You get to the station. You knew right away you wanted to be at JPZ. Tell me about your experience getting involved with the station and then eventually rising up the ranks to become a general manager.
Geoff: Well, I started out like so many of us as a DJ, doing a show at three o'clock in the morning on like a Tuesday or Wednesday night, taking in as much caffeine as I could to stay awake and then get to class the next day. And it was a lot of fun. I loved doing it. I might have fallen asleep once or twice during the shift because I was also working part-time job in addition to all the classes.
But I just loved doing it and it was so much fun to play the songs. And then, you get the practice, you learn the way to do things, and then you get better and better at it. And then eventually you get moved to a more favorable shift in the afternoon or during the daytime and you get that same experience of playing songs that people wanna hear and they crank up their tunes in their car. They sing along, they dance, they get shout outs. They call in to win contests, whether it's t-shirts or concert tickets or movie tickets or something like that. And it was so much fun. And then at the end of my freshman year, interestingly enough, I was actually approached by the GM at the time, Greg, and he came up to me and asked me if I would be interested in interviewing for the general manager when he leaves.
JAG: Wow.
Geoff: And I was a little surprised because I was a freshman, but he did know that I had experience at a GM at my high school radio station. And I thought, you know what? This is what I love to do. This is where I want to be. I'll live and sleep here all day if I can. So I interviewed and got the gig, and I was general manager for almost two years at Z 9. And loved it, loved every second of it.
JAG: I know you were profiled in the documentary that Scott MacFarlane did for the 40th anniversary, and one of the things that you had a quote on, Really upping the ante when it came to covering high school sports and the whole sports department at JPZ. Take us through that a little bit.
Geoff: Well, one of the things that we knew is that a lot of our staffers were interested in radio from a sports standpoint, and sometimes that's a difficult medium or aspect of the medium to get involved in with something like WAER. But with WJPZ, there's much more visibility and much more freedom for that kind of experience.
And we also knew that Z89 target audience was 18 to 34. But in reality it is skewed a little bit younger. It was probably mostly age 12 to 28. The middle of that, the meat in the sandwich was the high school audience. So we thought we could kill two birds with one stone and really embrace coverage of high school sports.
So we started doing Friday night lights broadcast at high school football games, and we'd pick a local school and we would run live coverage of the high school sports and it was a great experience for everybody involved. It was great visibility for the station to get people interested in the radio station and listening, as well as give all of our WJPZ’ers that were interested in sports or maybe live broadcasts in general, that kind of experience, that kind of real-world experience that would help them in their future careers.
We also did SU women's lacrosse, SU women's basketball. It was just great to be stressed out so much and give our staff so much experience and opportunity.
JAG: There has been historically throughout the 50-year history of the radio station, sometimes a tension between music and sports. How did you navigate that as GM, particularly when you were really increasing the amount of airtime dedicated to sports?
Geoff: That was a challenge because. Everybody who comes to the radio station sometimes has different ideas about what they want to do. Sometimes people come to the radio station, they wanna be DJs that are mixing with turntables and playing at parties and stuff like that.
Some people wanna be talk hosts that are on the view or television maybe. And then there are people that are interested in sports and they go cover the NFL. They wanna cover Major League Baseball. So everybody's coming to the radio station from different backgrounds, different perspectives, and they want a different experience.
And one thing that we all knew was that Z89 was that it gave you much more of an opportunity for more people to do all of those different things than the other two radio stations around campus did. And sometimes that meant we were stretched for time and not everybody could do everything that they wanted every week.
So that was particularly a challenge with high school sports coverage or maybe covering SU Women's sports when the schedules might be at different times every week rather than a consistent schedule. And a lot of times people want to have their show on at the same time every week, so listeners can tune in and they can plan their shows ahead of time, whether it's a mixshow, 80's or it's a DJ that's spinning a mix of party songs. It was a challenge. It was a delicate balance to work out, but I constantly met with both groups, all the individuals, and did my best to make everyone understand that, we're all in this to get experience. We're all in this to learn about what we love.
And for a lot of us, it's gonna be a stepping stone to the next thing we do in life with our careers. And so I want to give everyone that opportunity. So I did my best to make sure that everyone got that opportunity.
JAG: Well said. Also, you kind of expanded the playlist. A lot of the stuff you were at the helm for wasn't just on the sports side, but to your point, you were also paying close attention to the music.
What happened with the playlist and the format of the station while you were there, Geoff?
Geoff: Well, when I became GM, the playlist was top 40 radio format and it was a lot of the same songs you'd hear every hour, just like Hot 1079 and 93Q in the Syracuse market and any other top 40 radio station in the country.
JAG: Sure.
Geoff: So we would heavily play the A records and you would hear them very often if you were tuning into the radio station. Since we were competing with two much more powerful radio stations backed by national organizations, we saw an opportunity to beat them to the punch, so to speak, by expanding the playlist. So we would add, I think two songs to each rotation, to the A to the Bs and the Cs. So we were playing a much more diverse mix of music and we were playing new music faster than the other local radio stations in Syracuse, and that kind of gave us an edge, especially with that younger audience that we were connecting with that college and high school age, that we were ourselves as well as our audience.
JAG: I'm gonna put you on the spot as a music guy and as a wedding DJ. Any songs from that particular era that you were first on jump out at you in memory in the mid 2000's?
Geoff: Oh man, first on that stands out in memory.
JAG: A song that you played before Q and Hot.
Geoff: I mean, I think of the big songs from that time period stuff like 50 cent and Snoop Dogg and Justin Timberlake when he went solo.
But the name that kind of pops up in mind is Eamon. I don't Want You Back.
JAG: Oh!, the F-U song.
Geoff: That was like a short-lived but big song. I think that was 2004 and we might have been one of the first ones to play it because we were playing so much more new music at the time, and that was a very, very different kind of song at the time and then it blew up. Everybody was playing it. There was another singer who had a response track.
JAG: Frankie?
Geoff: Frankie, yeah, Frankie I don't want you back either. Something like that. Or F U R B. And you know, that was something that really stands out in memory, even though it's not something I would play today as a wedding dj.
JAG: Certainly not. You don't wanna play the breakup songs at a wedding reception. Right?
Geoff: Exactly.
JAG: You end up GM at an important time at the station. You successfully led the station just as you successfully led your high school radio station. From there, you end up going to the evil empire. You end up doing mornings on Hot 1079.
How did you get that gig and how was that?
Geoff: Well, that was awkward and fun and challenging all at the same time. Dr. Rick Wright is who I have to thank for that because when I was a sophomore at SU, I took his class and I got an internship from the class at Hot 1079. I was basically the intern for the morning show, Marty and Shannon in the Morning at Hot 1079, and it was weird timing too, because their producer had just been fired because of a inappropriate incident with a high school party, um, that supposedly involved a client's daughter.
JAG: Oh, that's, now, that's a radio story. I won't ask the you, I can tell by your face. You don't wanna go into detail here, but, uh,
Geoff: I don't know all the details because there was before I was there, but I do know that they didn't have a producer anymore. And so at the end of the internship they said, you know, Deaf Geoff, we love having you.
You have a lot of passion for the job. We like what you do, and they invited me to take the job full time. And that was at the end of my sophomore year. So I went home for the summer. I did an internship at a radio station in Boston, and then I came back in the fall and I was full time at the radio station, but I was still GM for another year at Z89.
JAG: How did that work?
Geoff: Uh, I got no sleep at all, basically. So I would go to the radio station at four or five o'clock in the morning. I would do the morning show. I would come to Z89, I'd be GM. I'd have office hours and I'd have meetings. And then I actually went to a part-time job at Blockbuster until midnight.
And then I would home for four hours of sleep, and then I would do it all over again the next day. So I got very little sleep that year. But it was fun. It was challenging too because I couldn't be on the air at Z89 and everybody knew me as Deaf Geoff. So whenever I was at the radio station, a lot of people tried to get me to talk to them on the air and they say, Hey, Deaf Geoff, what's going on?
And I had to explain, you know, you can't say that because I'm Deaf Geoff on another radio station now, so.
JAG: That makes sense. You weren't able to be on the air on JPZ while you were on the air on Hot. Beyond that, was there more friction from the folks over at Hot or from the folks at Z, kind of doing both at the same time?
Geoff: There was no friction at all, to be honest, because I kept it very clear, the boundaries and the differences. You know, I was on air at Hot 1079. I was the producer. And at Z89 I was a GM only. I was not on air, and I made it clear that all of the staff should not refer to me on the air as Deaf Geoff.
They can call me Geoff, they can call me, um, the evil boss if they want to. But just don't use the same on-air name that I'm using across the way. So I didn't have any conflicts with that. And you know, at the same time, everybody at Hot 1079 and Clear Channel at the time, they all knew that Z89 was a great place for people to learn and get the experience that would give them those careers.
Do they compete in the market? Yes and no. At the end of the day, they understood that it was a radio station that was a training ground, an educational experience for most of the people that were there. And I wasn't gonna give away trade secrets. Because honestly, there wasn't really a lot that I could say or do that would affect either radio station one way or another.
And it's not like I was involved in any of the planning meetings for programming at Hot 1079 you know, just doing the morning show at the time. So I didn't know when they were gonna get a new song, where they were gonna have a big concert. I didn't get the inside scoop. A lot of times I found out when it was happening.
JAG: Gotcha. How long were you at Hot? And then talk about the transition after that.
Geoff: I was at Hot 1079 from 2004 to 2010. So I was there for six years and I did a little bit of everything. I was the morning show sidekick. I was the producer. I would wear ridiculous costumes. I would deliver Valentines in a diaper in February in the cold, snowy winters of Syracuse.
I would dress up as a leprechaun for St. Patrick's Day and sit in a giant bowl of Lucky Charms, and people had to reach around to find prizes. I recorded holiday albums. Um, I fancied myself as a parody writer and rapper, so I recorded three albums called Deaf the Halls, where I would sing and rap very badly.
Holiday songs, Christmas songs, or a parody of songs that were on the radio. One of my favorites. Toy Lockdown, which was a parody of Kanye West's Love Lockdown at the time.
JAG: All right. Okay.
Geoff: And, you know, that was all fun and good. And then I knew after six years of that, I knew two things. One, I knew that there wasn't a lot of room for me to grow where I was at that radio station at Clear Channel at the time, but I also knew that, I was getting closer to 30 and I knew that I didn't want to be 40 and doing the same thing. I didn't wanna be in silly costumes cuz it's fun when you're 22, 25 years old. But as you get older, for some people it gets embarrassing and I didn't want it to get to the point where it would be embarrassing.
It never was embarrassing for me at the time, but I didn't want it to get to the point where it would be embarrassing. So in the summer of 2010, I started interviewing for jobs at Syracuse dot com in the Post Standard newspaper. As fate would have it, that was the same month that they made the decision to replace Marty and Shannon with the syndicated Elvis Duran from Z100.
JAG: Wow.
Geoff: So it was good timing for me. They told me, we're taking you guys off the air. And I kind of said, that's fine, I don't care. And I think it made them mad that I wasn't upset, but that's because they didn't know at the time that I already had one foot out the door yet, so to speak. So I went to syracuse.com and the Post Standard, and that was a very different experience because you know, that's writing for a newspaper for an online website, and I saw it as very much the same thing because when you're doing radio, when you're doing DJing, or when you're writing for an online publication or a newspaper or a magazine, anything, you are writing or communicating to an audience at all times and you're trying to come up with a thing that they're interested in hearing about, reading about, talking about sharing with their friends and family.
So it felt like the same experience and I saw a lot more room for myself to grow Syracuse dot com and the Post Standard. So I really liked making that shift, but I still hung onto that passion for music. So I kept DJing after that too. I've been DJing now for more than 20 years. And I mostly do weddings as a DJ now.
JAG: For me, I had done some wedding DJing and you and I have shared pictures and stuff about that.
And I still host bar trivia one night a week. For me, it kind of scratches an itch to be on a microphone in front of people. You feel it's the same way for you as an old radio guy?
Geoff: Yeah, absolutely. Because, when I'm writing for Syracuse dot com and the Post Standard, you're writing for an audience that you can't see how they're reacting.
You can read their comments or see emails that they might send to you a letter even, but. DJ’ing definitely scratches that itch of the experience of playing songs, that transform an audience's, mood. They hear the songs, they know the dances, they all get up, they join in and it's so much fun to have that immediate impact on people to play the songs that people know and love.
And you know, with the radio too. You know that you're playing a song that transforms someone's mood. They could be having a bad day, but then they hear their favorite song and it just changes everything about their day. And I love that immediate power that radio and DJing and music has on everyone.
JAG: As you bring it back to WJPZ Geoff, are there lessons that you learned in your time there on the air as GM that have served you well throughout your career and the time?
Geoff: I would say there's two takeaways. One is the actual experience of working in the radio station, all the technical aspects and details and the different things that go into making a radio station or any other business successful.
And working with the people that are involved is crucial. And Z89 has always been, the number one learning classroom in the country for that. And I love it, and I love seeing what the students do there today and in the future. The second thing I probably learned is that when you're working with people, you're working with people that have different ideas, and sometimes there's different ideas about what they want to do with their careers.
Like maybe for them, this job is a stepping stone to the next thing they want to do, or they're working in a different aspect of the company that they don't really want to be in, but they wanted it to get their foot in the door and then eventually move over to something. But also people have different ideas cuz they have different experiences and different ideas for what their company or the brand or whatever product you have should be moving forward.
And sometimes that means great things can happen because you think of things that you wouldn't have thought of before as you're collaborating with other people. And then sometimes it means, you know, the occasional butting of heads because you disagree fundamentally on certain things about what the next direction should be.
And I'm sure that's something that's come up in Z89's history too with format changes. Going from AM to FM and I'm very excited to listen to all the other podcasts about the other stories from Z89's history.
JAG: Are there relationships that you formed at the station, Geoff, that you still carry with you to this day? I know the alumni association's very tight and there's, all of us from different years are all friendly, but are there folks that you worked with day in and day at the station that you still are in pretty good touch with years later?
Geoff: Absolutely. I still keep very much in touch with Kevin Rich, who became the GM after I was. I talk to Eric Silverman all the time because he's someone that stayed locally after college as well.
Had similar interests to me in terms of music and the business as well, but everybody at Z89, everybody at WJPZ is family. Regardless of, even if I haven't met them yet, even if it's, you know, the freshman that's coming in next year, as soon as they walk into the doors of WJPZ, they are part of that family.
And I just love everyone that's part of that family. And it always just thrills me to see everyone at the Banquet, whether it's at learning conference in the fall or talking to someone on a podcast like this Jag, you know, is just something that everybody that you see and talk to and connect with, even if it's just a simple like happy birthday on Facebook, these are people that you know that you can talk to and reach out to anytime if you need anything.
Whether it's advice about something. Scott McFarlane and I are constantly sending messages on Twitter. I see all the coverage that he's been doing in Washington DC for CBS, and occasionally he will be sending me stories that she's worked on and let me know, because there'll be a lot of times with Santa New York or in upstate New York connection because some of the people that were involved in that situation came from our local audience. And so that's something that we're always happy to help each other out with because we're all trying to help each other succeed and do the best that we can be because we're part of a family. You always want everybody that's in your family to succeed. Always.
JAG: You are a wealth of information, and I see all your posts from syracuse.com and I love that story. It really encapsulates the alumni association. You've got Scott in DC working these hundreds of cases from January 6th, and if he's got a Syracuse connection to one of 'em or an upstate New York connection, of course he's gonna reach out to Geoff because Geoff is reporting it in upstate New York.
So that makes total sense. You have an advantage over a lot of the alumni, Geoff, and that you don't have to buy a plane ticket or drive for hours and hours on end to come back to the Banquet every year. You've made Syracuse, your home after going to school there and then working there on the air for several years, and you have your family there and it's really become home for you.
Geoff: Absolutely. I grew up in Massachusetts, so I'm the only one for my family that lives in New York State, and when I came to SU, you know, you talk about Z89 being a family, but. Syracuse is also where I knew home was, and I just loved everything about the area. I loved the University, I loved the restaurants in the area, Pastabilities and Dinosaur Barbecue and a billion others, and I just loved the small town feel of the suburbs of Syracuse as well as the big city type opportunities with concerts and sports like SU football and SU basketball.
I just love that balance and that all those different experiences that you can get at the same time that you know, there are bigger cities that are nearby as well that you can get to easily. So something like Banquet is something that's easy for a lot of alumni to get to if they're in cities like Buffalo or Boston or New York or Philadelphia. It's a great little place to be and to see everyone come back for it as well. And I love being here and I love being close to the city. And I'll probably be here for the rest of my life.
JAG: Geoff, your contributions to JPZ as a student, as an alum, and as a reporter and personality in the Salt City are appreciated by all of us.
And thank you so much for your time today.
Geoff: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Jag. Shout out to everyone.at Z89.