Editor's Note: This week we are re-releasing the episodes with our 2025 Hall of Fame Inductees. Here, our host became the guest, as Jag's 2002 classmate and fellow Hall of Famer Matt DelSignore sat him down to hear his story.
Today, we turn the tables on our host and put Jon "JAG" Gay, from the Class of 2002, in the hot seat. Doing the honors is his classmate, Matt DelSignore.
Matt starts by asking Jag about the WJPZ at 50 Podcast, how the idea started, and what he's learned by hosting it. From there, we turn to Jag's time at Syracuse and WJPZ. His story is very similar to many previous podcast guests. He got to Syracuse wanting to be a sportscaster, but didn't really find his tribe until he started at Z89.
At WJPZ, Jag had several exec staff positions, including Chief Announcer and VP of Operations the year we were in the Ostrom House. Matt also asks Jag about the 9/11 broadcast that we discussed on a previous episode.
We retrace Jag's steps through a terrible internship at Kiss 108, his first part time job in Providence, Rhode Island, then his full-time on-air career in Burlington Vermont, Detroit, New Orleans, and back to the Motor City. It shouldn't surprise you to hear he had a lot of help from JPZ'ers along the way.
Following his last radio layoff a week after he got married, Jag was a newlywed with no job and potentially facing a career change. He credits his wife Ellen for encouraging him to start his podcast business, which he's grown since its inception in 2018.
We close on a really personal topic. JAG's Syracuse roommate and best friend, Bill Leaf, was killed by a drunk driver in 2006, at age 25. Bill was also a summer Z89 staffer. Jag talks about his passion for both honoring Bill's memory and speaking out against the dangers of drunk driving.
This episode was produced and edited by JAG in Detroit podcasts - learn more at https://jagindetroit.com/
Connect with the WJPZ Alumni Association: https://wjpzalumniassociation.org/
Matt: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am NOT Jon Jag Gay. I'm Matt Del Signore, class of 2002, and I'm taking over this episode of the podcast to give some well-deserved flowers to the creator of this tremendous undertaking. JAG has devoted countless hours to curating the rich history of the greatest media classroom by talking to the people who were there for it, all the highs the lows.
AM, FM, the founders and the future of the station, and its proud alumni association. So now we need to hear about your journey, your beginnings at Z 89, your radio tours in Burlington, Vermont, Detroit, New Orleans, Detroit again, and starting your own business in podcasting. So welcome Jag to your own...show.
JAG: Thank you, Matt.
That is quite the introduction. I gotta tell you, I'm actually pretty nervous today. It's much easier for me to be on the other side of the glass, so to speak. But I'm excited to get started and you teed off everything we're gonna talk about today. Where do you wanna
Matt: start? Before we get into all that, I wanna start this episode actually talking about the WJPZ at 50 podcast itself. What was the spark for this and what were you hoping to accomplish?
JAG: Interestingly enough, it was my cousin. My cousin Jason, Hofstra University class of 1998. Hofstra University is doing a podcast series called the Hofstra Radio Yearbook, where they're interviewing various alumni from WRHU at Hofstra University.
He sent me the link and he said, hey, you might wanna think about doing something like this for your radio station at Syracuse. And I said, actually with the 50th anniversary, this couldn't be better timing. And I took a listen to the show, and the show was well done. And I thought, wow, there's so much potential here to tell stories of great alumni that have gone on to huge heights in our industry, from Scott MacFarlane to Howie Deneroff.
And then like you said, founders like Greg Hernandez and Bill Bleyle, down to Kyle Leff, who graduated in 2022 when helped the station through Covid. There's so much to tell. I also wanted to make sure that I told it from a lot of different viewpoints. I think all the alumni listening are geared toward their own class and think about their own classmates and like those episodes, and it'd be very easy for me to talk to you and Brett Bosse and Peterman and Leah and Beth and Jana and our class about our time.
But I wanted to make sure I covered all decades that I'm happy to say that we've got alumni from six different decades in the podcast. And it's really been a learning experience for me too, to learn some of these stories. Then also get to know, and some alumni that I see every year in Syracuse, but then some that I don't know that well.
Matt: What are some of the standout stories you've heard so far? Some history you didn't know, or some perspective you hadn't considered, or some memories that were shared by others that made an impression on you?
JAG: I hate to say it, it was almost like a Tooth Fairy Santa Claus moment with Bill Bleyle, when he talked about his recollection of the call letters being different than the story we hear from Rick every year.
His recollection of the FCC's arrival in the seventies different than Rick's. I'm not gonna spoil it. Go back and listen to the episode with he and Carol Mason. Consider that a teaser. A lot of the stuff that was just before our era with Dena Giacobbe and Harry Wareing, I'm sorry, Dina Laupheimer, and Harry Wareing, the receivership era in the late nineties and how close we came to losing this precious thing we call JPZ.
Obviously the move in the excitement to FM in the eighties, we know about the flamethrower days in the early nineties, but even since 2000 the last 20 years or. Folks like Corey Crockett and Liz Doyon talking about moving the station into their new studios about 10 years ago. That was 2012.
Hearing some of the love stories from JPZ. Alex Brewer and Molly Nelson, and their story of getting together. We've got an episode with James "Baymes" Grundy who helped me edit the podcast. And Melody Emm they're engaged, how they got together. Rob and Sue Weingarten from the 1980s who got together.
It's funny, there was an, I think on Jay Leno's last Tonight Show. He ended it by bringing this whole group out on stage, and these are all the relationships that started here on the Tonight Show and the families that have started because of this show. And that's my legacy. I feel like in some small part, that's JPZ's legacy of all these people that have gotten together, not just the friendships, but marriages and kids and so on.
Matt: It's so much bigger than what happens in the studio and what goes out from the transmitter to be. Let's now turn to the book of Jag, chapter one, .
JAG: How long you got?
Matt: It depend. All depends on you. You're editing this episode.
JAG: No pressure.
Matt: What brought you to Syracuse and how did you eventually find your way to the radio station?
JAG: My Aunt Carol had a college consulting business where she would work with high schoolers and help them figure out what schools to apply to help them with the applications and all that. So obviously went to her and I knew I wanted to get into communications.
Like almost half the guests on our podcast. I wanted to get into sports. I thought in high school I was gonna be the next play-by-play voice of the New England Patriots. I wanted to be a sports guy. If you wanna get into sports and broadcasting, obviously Syracuse is the one, It was down, in the end for me, between Syracuse and Boston University after the financial aid packages came in and I really hadn't been away from home very much and I was pretty nervous to go five hours from home in Boston.
So I thought to myself worst case scenario here, would I rather be at Syracuse and come home or be sitting there at Boston University thinking, I wonder what if? I wonder, what if I'd gone to Syracuse? Every picture from opening weekend, my eyes are red. I was a mess. I was crying, I was a mess. I was scared. I was homesick. It was the anxiety now that as an adult I realize that I have, and I was terrified. And I later found out as they pulled away and dropped me off at Sadler Hall, my Dad said to my Mom, we'll be back to get him in six weeks. And my mom said, "No, give him some time. I think he's gonna be okay."
And luckily, mom was right. So I really was homesick. I hadn't really found, I hate to use the phrase, "found my tribe," but I feel like everybody in the show has used it so far. I really didn't know what I was doing, aside from going to class and some friends I'd made in the dorm. Two people play in here.
So my really good friend Jill Person from high school, her older brother Bryan Person was JPZ class of 1998. He had just left. I think he was 98. And so through my friend Jill, his younger sister, I'd heard about the radio station. And then I also had a lab for a physics class that I was in. And there was this cute girl sitting by herself.
And one of the few times in my life I had the guts to go up to the cute girl and talk to her. I did. And that girl was Andy DeCastro. We struck up a friendship. She said, I should come check out the radio station and I did. And it was everything that everybody on this podcast has said. It was warm, it was welcoming, led by Harry as the GM and then the folks that had gotten there a couple months before me.
I got there probably October, November-ish, and by then you and Jana and Beth and Dave Easton and Greg Dixon and all these guys from our class were there, and Jamie Scavotto was there and I don't wanna leave anybody out, but so many folks, Marty and Peterman. Later, Bosse, all these folks that really felt like they were at home.
Meanwhile, I was like many of guests, again, on the podcast, I was also working at WAER. I was lucky enough to get cleared my first, or to get in my first semester rather. And the process at AER is you go in once a week at 4:00 AM and you write a sportscast that doesn't go on the air. You dictate it into a tape recorder and you get ripped apart.
And then, If you're good enough, the second semester, your freshman year, you get to do the same thing in the afternoon and get ripped apart and all these steps to hopefully become play-by-play guy for Syracuse football, basketball, and lacrosse. And these two paths that were going at the same time. Before I was cleared to be on the air at AER, I'd become senior and chief announcer at JPZ.
Harry had wanted to empower me to have a more active role at the radio station. I'm like I'm not on the air yet. And I'm helping out run the staff of however many DJs we had at the time, this is a no-brainer. Plus AER, God bless it, they've got so many famous alums come out of there, but it was so cutthroat and so competitive.
I didn't memorize the statistics of West Coast basketball players whose games were on at midnight. I couldn't keep up. I couldn't compete with it and for as much as I love sports, sports wasn't fun. This was fun. Now, I wasn't a huge music guy growing up like you were Matt, but this was fun. The music part of it was fun, but it was the people.
And I know that's been said so many times the podcast, again, you and Beth and Jana and Brett and so many that I'm still close friends with to this day. It was fun. I wasn't homesick anymore at that point. I loved being there and I had to drag me outta there kicking and screaming four years later.
Matt: I remember that. You mentioned being able to rise through the ranks of the staff pretty quickly. You want to give us a run through of the positions you held on staff.
JAG: I really had a passion for the on-air piece of it. So then I became senior announcer under Steve Selleny, DJ Steel, and then chief announcer.
This is as you were becoming program director and gm, if my memory serves and I got to help run the air staff and do air checks, which is something that I loved doing. I loved working with new talent, and this is true in my radio career too, but I love working with folks and saying,hHey, you did a great job of that.
Work on this for next time. And then you know, this was good too. And then the next air check, they did what you suggested. They sounded better and they took pride in that. That was a drug for me. I loved doing that. So I was a chief announcer sophomore year. Junior year we're in the Ostrom house.
We had some changes at the leadership levels at the top of the station and there were some vacancies at the top and folks needed to step up. So I remember Paul Chambers stepped up as our GM, Jana became our program director. Katie Bell became our VP of business and really the glue in a lot of ways.
And I stepped into the VP of Ops role not having had any, technical experience on how to fix gear or anything. Somebody needed to take that job. So I took that job and really leaned on folks like John Ferracane and Rob Crandall, to help the technical side of things. And it was tough because in serving, as chief announcer and then VP of ops, you know when an overnight jock doesn't show up and your phone rings at two or 4:00 AM my roommates are like, why the hell are you gonna the radio station at 4:00 AM?
Can't go off the air. Somebody needs to go on the air, somebody needs to take that role. And then the same thing as operations manager junior year. And it took a toll on me, and I know a lot of guests on our podcast, it has taken a toll on as well. And at the end of junior year, I think I might have served as interim program director for two weeks, letting Josh handle the music and saying, okay, Josh, tell him what you're doing. And I'll sign off on it.
And then senior year I just focused on being on the air and, helping out wherever I was needed. Once we were back in the new studios.. As I think junior year took a lot out of me as operations manager, but it was an incredible experience. Learned a lot, including running the station, helping run the station over Christmas break that 2000, 2001 year where we split it up three ways. Where Paul Chambers took the first third of the break. I took the middle half cuz, hell, at the Jewish kid work on Christmas. And then Brett took the final third of it. We leaned on these high schoolers. We had to automate the overnight. So I found a five-disc CD changer burned five 60 minute CD's legal ID at the beginning of each one.
And. That was our overnight until the CD player broke and I called my mom crying and then we found somebody to come fix it and there. So there was lot of stresses that year, but I feel like it's almost like the hazing that so many of us have been through finding our way through difficult things at the radio station.
Matt: That was also a unique year too, because there was a fair bit of turnover at the top as far as the leadership of the station. But also you were in the house. We were in the house that. year. What would you say for anybody who wasn't familiar with that brief period of history at the station? What was the essence of the house?
JAG: I could give you the quick answer that Ferracane gave and say, the essence is that it was a shit hole, but the essence of the house was survival.
If we had to put a single word on it, it would be survival. We knew that we'd had this thing that had gone on for 20 plus years at that point. And as other folks have said in the podcast, we didn't wanna let it die. We didn't wanna be the ones that let this thing go under. After so many years and so many decades of so many people have put the blood, sweat, and tears into it.
What do we have to do to stay on the air? What do we have to do to survive this year knowing that we're gonna have new studios set up the following year?
Matt: You were part of the team broadcasting on 9/11 and you did a great episode about this day with Brett Bosse, Leah Hoffman and Dave Peterson. Walk us through some of the things that you did that day for folks who may not have heard that whole episode by itself.
JAG: I had a really minor role that day compared to the other three folks that you just mentioned that we had on that podcast. I remember my late roommate, Bill Leaf's mom calling the apartment, waking us up at roughly 8:30, I think, when in the thick of when all those things were happening. Are you watching tv?
You see what's happening? No. What's going on? Turn the TV on. It's whoa. So I don't know if this is instinct or not. The first thing I did was I reached from my clock radio when I turned on Z. And I heard ABC News and I'm like, what? I couldn't wrap my brain around exactly what was going on. And later come to find out that Peterman as the morning show host with Leah and also as the GM, Peterman, they decided they were gonna run ABC News, thanks to the folks over at 95 X for letting us rebroadcast their signal.
So I remember I went and I took this astronomy quiz that I bombed, not cuz of 9/11, cuz I didn't study. And like I remember I brought a boombox to the station cause I'm like, we need to record what is happening today for posterity. And it kills me. To this day, I've digitized all my shoebox full of cassettes. I can't find the audio from September 11th that exists somewhere someday. Somehow, we'll find it, but I know it exists somewhere. But my role, I was on the afternoon shift that day and we ran 95X, ABC news all afternoon. We'd break at the top of the hour, we'd give the legal ID and then just try to give resources for what's available for students, whether it was transforming that phone bank where they would call alumni and ask for money. Transforming that into a phone bank of, students trying to reach their families in New York or DC or Pennsylvania, whatever the case may be. Just trying to give resources, trying to get as much information as we could, which in the early days of the internet when we didn't have a lot and we were running back and forth to the Kimmel computer cluster to print stuff out.
We were doing the best we could. And that's actually one of my favorite episodes of the podcast because we relived that day. And at seven o'clock I handed it off to the next jock who played just a very scaled down playlist like Rocket Ross talked about after Pan Am 103, just trying to keep the right appropriate music on the air at that time.
That was a day I'll never forget, that was the only day in my 20 years on the air that I went by Jon Gay on the air. I wasn't gonna go by Jag or Jon Gray or any other alias I've used I'm like, this is serious. I'll actually use my actual birth name on the air.
Matt: I'm glad you mentioned that because I wanted to ask you about where the nickname Jag came from. Did it start at Z89. Or did that come with you from back home?
JAG: Oh no, it actually started at JPZ, so I remember, this is, keep in mind, this is fall 1998. The name Jon Gay was not gonna be really work on the air at that time. There would've been some pushback. I got pushback in high school when I ran for class treasurer under the campaign slogan, get the issues straight, vote gay. I got a lot of blowback from that and my brother four years later went a little bolder with "It's okay to go gay" and he got pushed back from that. So I knew Jon Gay wasn't gonna really work on the radio in 1998, so I was just asking around the guys on my floor in Sadler like, hey, Johnny G. John Gray, my initials are j a g. My middle name's Alexander. What about Jag? There's a TV show called Jag, and that seemed to be the consensus pick of Hey, that's cool. It's unique, you should go with that. And the funniest thing is now, all these years later, anybody I know from Syracuse calls me, JAG. Anybody that I worked with in radio, in Vermont, Detroit, or New Orleans calls me Jag.
My in-laws here, my wife, my family any folks that I've met mostly in in my podcast business, they call me Jon. So Ellen, my wife jokes that she's bilingual, that when she's with different groups of people, she'll refer to me as either Jag or Jon. It must be weird for you to think of me as Jon, but like I go by both now.
Matt: I can't recall ever calling you Jon. Period. From day one. You were Jag on the air and you were JAG to me, and I will call you that until the end. Before we jump to your radio career after Z 89, any stories you want to mention from your time at the station? Something funny or something that, that stuck with you that you wanna share?
JAG: You and I were talking about this offline. I'll be curious for your recollection of this as well. And again I'm frustrated I couldn't find the audio, but my very last night on the air freshman year, I was so excited. I wanna go on the radio one more time. My best friend, Kenny, that I grew up with had come to Syracuse with my parents to help move me out. And I had the 11 to 2 shift and somehow had laryngitis. And I was like, I'm not gonna miss my last show. I'm going home for the summer. I'm not gonna be back and be able to do this for three, four months.
So I went on the air talking over songs like Jennifer Lopez “If You Had My Love” and the Vengaboys, “We Like to Party.” I'm trying to recreate it as best as I can. And I remember cuz you were the program director at that point you called. And my roommate Chris Pappas, who also was on the air was there as well to do the overnight after me. And you wanna pick up the story from there?
Matt: I was listening to your show while doing my homework and I had to call the request line or maybe it was the hotline. I don't know. And I was like, you gotta go off the air. I'm sorry. This is not gonna work. Although, I can't remember. Did I call once or twice?
Because I feel like I may have called the first time and you were like no, it's okay. I'll be all right and I believed you. I said, okay, maybe you know, just clear your throat a little bit ne next time and try to get through this. So I believe there were two phone calls you got through another break or two and then I was like, yo, this has gotta stop.
JAG: He's making the hand across his throat motion right now. I had forgotten that there were two calls, but now that you mention it, so I remember the answering the phone the second time. You're like, JAG, it's Matt. And I'm basically, Yeah, I know. Hey, is Pappas is there with you? Yeah. You want me to have him take over?
Yeah. I'm gonna need you to do that.
Matt: Please.
JAG: Okay.
Matt: Before we talk about your first full-time radio gig, we should briefly mention, I guess your stops at KISS 108 as an intern and your part-time job at WPRO, both huge stations. What did you do there?
JAG: Summer of 2001. That was the summer before senior year. I interned at Kiss 108 in Boston working afternoons for the legendary Dale Dorman. And then Sunday afternoons for another big name in radio, Skip Kelly. I remember having to pay $600 to do it because I needed to have it for course credit and it counted as a summer credit for Syracuse. I had to have an internship to graduate at Newhouse.
I went in there and Dale Dorman, who's probably 60 something at the time, said, answer the request line. You got it. I'll be the best damn request line answerer you ever had. What else can I do? Answer the request line. Okay, what else? Answer the request line. Oh. Oh, okay. And then I wanna do more. What else can I do?
And he pulls out his car keys. He's like, can you go wash my Jeep? And I like froze because I wasn't sure. He was a really sarcastic guy. I wasn't sure if he was being serious or he was just pulling my chain. And because I didn't say yes, I guess I was never in like the inner circle. And then all I did was answer the request line.
I think Skip one time, let me yell something at the end of a ten second commercial read he had to do. And I learned by observing a little. But it was really a bad experience. People have wonderful internship experiences. I had a terrible internship experience and I made a promise to myself at that point that if I ever got into radio professionally and I had interns, I would make them feel useful.
I would make them feel welcome because I would not want anybody to go through what I went through of, what the hell am I doing here? So Kiss 108, station and I grew up idolizing in Boston. Terrible internship, but in some ways, I learned a lot.
Matt: It reminds me a little bit of an internship I did at a cluster of stations in Syracuse, I was interning in the sales department and my very first day I show up in a shirt and tie, ready to do some serious business, learn some serious radio, and before the end of my first day, they had me cleaning out an office cubicle and literally taking trash out on a dolly through the building out to the far end of the parking lot and just dumping stuff out in my shirt and tie.
So it seems like that was parked for the course then. You and I are a long ways removed from internships now. Hopefully things are a little different now, but, we're the old grizzled veterans talking about paying your dues. That's the kind of thing that you might go through.
JAG: So you asked me about Providence, Rhode Island as well.
Matt: Yeah.
JAG: So that is a great JPZ story and that I wanted to get into radio so bad. It was about a year after we'd graduated, so it was 2003. I was working at a roadside assistance call center and I remember talking to Jeff Wade at a banquet, and he was the assistant program director of WPRO AM in Providence, and he's, "I need a board op."
And I was like, okay, it's 80 miles each way. I could do that on Saturdays. So every Saturday I drove. 150 miles round trip, basically, to board op everything from Providence College basketball to Red Sox baseball to Mort White's Magic Garden to some syndicated shows. And I was board opping and I was getting paid to work in radio and it was really cool.
But as fate would have it right around the time I decided, I'm gonna have to walk away from this. Josh Wolff enters the picture, our classmate, a year behind us. In 2003, Josh was working at his first post-graduation gig in Binghamton, New York for Clear Channel. His operations manager, Bobby D, knew the operations manager, Steve Cormier, up in Burlington, Vermont at Clear Channel.
And they were looking for a midday person on their Top 40 KISS station in Burlington. So I give my tape to Josh. He passes it on. I get a call from who would become my very first program director, Dave Ryerson. I later found out I was his second choice for the job because the first person they offered it to, when she heard what the pay was, she laughed.
So they called me and I went from making $30,000 a year and living at home to making $19,000 a year and living on my own. And fun fact about Burlington, Vermont. It ain't as cheap as you would think it is to live there. So I did middays there in Burlington for a couple of years. I was moved from middays to mornings until for the first of several times in my career, December, 2006, Christmas time, and also Clearchannel budget cut time. I ended up getting laid off for budget cuts. I'm not sure what I was gonna do next. We had a weekend nightclub gig up in St. Albans, Vermont, which is the only city of any size between Burlington and the Canadian border. The owner of the club said, hey, I want you to be my marketing guy.
Okay sure. So the first call I made after I walked outta the building was to the club owner, called him up. We ended up having a lovely venison dinner when he convinced me to become the marketing guy. And then two months later they lost their liquor license. So the string of bad luck. Simultaneously I knew that the crosstown radio station, 95 Triple X, the longtime heritage station in Burlington.
Legendary, intimidating program director Ben Hamilton, who I'd heard all these horror stories about, I said what have I got to lose? I don't have a non-compete. I'll call him up. So I called him up, went in, met with him. He was at the time, a decent human being in our first meeting and he brought me in to do weekends.
So I was doing weekends. And then when the nightclub got shut down, their sister station was an AM station. They needed somebody to fill in as the co-host there, and do the news on their morning talk show on an AM station, which I'd never done news, but I'm like, hey, it's a job for six weeks, I ended up doing that for six weeks. Had an amazing time. Despite the fact the host was my Dad's age and I was his kid's age. Charlie Papillo, one of the highlights of my career was doing news talk mornings with him cuz we just had such great chemistry. And then as that was winding down, the night guy down the hall on 95 Triple X decided he wanted to move back down to Boston.
And so nights opened up, I was there waiting in the wings. I got it on a provisional basis and then got it full-time and was there doing nights for a little over four years, 2007 to 2011, and those are some years that I won't soon forget.
Matt: So here you are doing nights on North America's last Untamed radio station.
JAG: Correct. That was what the top of the hour said it was. You are listening to the last untamed radio station in North America. It was, for those who don't know the station, the call letters are WXXX. It was a top 40 station in a rock station's body. We were encouraged to push the envelope as much as possible. I've listened to tapes from 2008, 2009, going that joke hasn't aged well!
Matt: And then you took that act to a major market. You're jumping from market 130 something after what, seven years or so?
JAG: Seven total. Four at 95. Triple X. Yeah.
Matt: And then you get a call in a market just outside the top 10.
JAG: And again, this is Josh Wolff. I joke with Josh that he should be getting 10% of my salary cuz he was the closest thing I had to an agent all these years. And this is just another networking story for any students that are listening. And again, Josh was a year behind us. This wasn't like an alum a couple years older that I was trying to impress.
He was a contemporary of ours. So a year prior to me getting the gig, Josh interviewed for a gig at Channel 955, WKQI in Detroit. He interviewed to be their imaging person. He interviewed with the program director, Michael McCoy. Great guy. It didn't end up working out. They went with another candidate.
But after he did the interview, Josh. who is so great at seeing a touch of people. As anybody listening to this podcast knows. Josh said, Hey, this Michael McCoy guy in Detroit, he's a really smart guy. You should send him a tape and see if he'll aircheck your tape. Okay, sure. Hey, Mr. McCoy.
Josh Wolf said I should reach out to you, blah, blah, blah. So I sent him the tape and McCoy sent me some pretty good feedback on the tape. He said, make the demo two minutes, not three, and then critiqued the breaks and went from there. So about a year later, Josh hits me up and says, hey, McCoy's looking for a night guy in Detroit.
And I'm like, okay. And we'd had people leave that radio station, go to some major market gigs. I didn't know if I was ready for that, but I took the shot at it and I reached out. I forwarded the previous email from a year ago in case he didn't remember me. Mr. McCoy, thank you for your feedback. I've tried to take your feedback and apply it. Here's my updated demo. I know you're looking for nights. I'd be really interested. Went there for the interview, took the job. Best thing that ever happened to me, I got to really reconnect with Matt Friedman, who is as great a Detroit ambassador as we have in our group.
Became very close and very good friends with Matt. Did nights there for nine months. It was probably my favorite nine months of my career because it was a show. And in the Motor City they love their radio stations. It's such a great radio market and I was encouraged again to push the envelope, maybe not quite as far as I did in Vermont, cuz I'm working for, a large company now.
But I remember doing, “What's it like to get shot,” as a call in topic. I remember doing “What's worse, catching your parents having sex or them catching you,” as a call in topic? I have those tapes somewhere. And there I met one of my very close friends, Joe Rosati, who was doing Middays at the time. And nine months into the gig they have cuts.
Joe gets let go. They need me as a body to do some production during the day. So I hate that corporate made this decision, but they voice tracked nights and moved me over to middays and some production help. And then sure enough, nine months later, the old Zig came from me, another ClearChannel layoff.
And so looking for a gig, looking for a gig. JPZ comes into the picture again. Matt Friedman introduces me to a radio consultant he knows, Gary Berkowitz. Gary Berkowitz knows a program director in New Orleans, Don Gosselin, who's looking for a program director for his hot AC station, end up getting that gig. Spent three years in New Orleans as program director of my favorite name of a radio station I ever worked for Voodoo 104.
Matt: This is your first programming gig. What are you doing in this position? What are you learning in this position?
JAG: A lot and probably a lot more in hindsight than I realized at the time. I did not have experience with Selector, programming music, which I kick myself to this day that I did not learn at JPZ. I don't care what you're doing, if you're anywhere near music, or on the air at JPZ, learn how to do selector and today GSelector. That was something that would come back to bite me a few times in my career, not having that skillset.
I didn't know Selector. And so they said, that's okay. We're gonna be a hot AC station, and corporate's gonna program the music. You're just gonna download the playlist every day. All right. I can live with that. That's fine. I don't have that skillset at this point in my career. I wanna learn it, but I don't have it right now.
And then I also realized that I was the only really full-time employee of the radio station. We had a voice tracker out of Virginia Beach doing mornings. We had a voice tracker out of Indianapolis doing midday and we had a local part-timer from our urban station voice tracking nights. And I was program director afternoons imaging, trying to help put promotions together with our Rockstar Promotions director.
And I learned a lot about prioritizing. I learned about, what's important. Kind of re-imaged the radio station took it over. We did some cool promotions. I learned a lot about New Orleans and I learned that it is its own country really in terms of how things operate and run down. It is unlike any other place in this great nation of ours.
And I had to really, I think, check my ego at the door. First of all, they would call me a Yankee, which offends me as a Red Sox fan. You are a Northerner. You do not know how we do things here. Okay. Please explain it to me. If I wrote imaging that was supposed to be local, I had four people in the office, I would run it through before I went and had it voiced because, whether it's how to pronounce Tchoupitoulas or the phrase, "I wanna be in that number."
I corrected something once because that's not grammatically correct, but that's the, "When the Saints Go Marching in," I wanna be in that number., I had to realize that and all the culture of New Orleans. I did not eat or drink as well in my life as I ever did during those three years there.
And unfortunately I was age 30 to 33 when your metabolism slows down. So I ballooned out a little bit when I was there. Those who knew me in college knew I was a twig, but finally put a few pounds on in New Orleans.
Matt: Who Among us?
JAG: Yeah. And so it was a great gig. And then we had, again, story of this podcast, of our more budget cuts and more changes.
We had a different crew and a different management. I had some difficult conversations and moments with folks down there. I had to learn that when you're in a management role, you're held to a higher standard. I grew up a lot in that gig. And it's one of those I wish I had known then what I know now in terms of dealing with people in difficult situations.
But the two things that really caused that gig to end were, on one hand I was losing at the small amount of autonomy I had. And I learned that in that company you either are somebody who embraces company initiatives and get promoted, or you're somebody who bucks the system and doesn't. Long story short, I'm losing all these day parts.
I'm losing the flavor of the radio station. And then when it came to the rock, I got the rock station. I said, hey, I wanna voice track 10 to 3. I've never done rock. Let me voice track Saturdays 10 to 3 once a week and do some rock and get my chops there.
No. We need the national syndicated jock on.
You want a national jock as opposed to somebody who's local here in the market?
Yeah. Yeah. We need to clear that national jock in other market. Okay. I see where this is trending and where this is. going. And at the same time, my friend Ellen, that I was friendly with and only friends with in Detroit before I left to go to New Orleans, as the saying goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
And nobody knows this better than you, Matt, in many hours long conversations we had on the telephone about this when I was in New Orleans, but.
Matt: You must be referring to Saint Ellen.
JAG: Yes. Matt came up with St. Ellen because she put up with me not knowing what I wanted to do and going back and forth. But long, painful story short, we went from friends to little more than friends to official long distance relationship to, hey, I'm gonna quit my job in New Orleans and move in with you in Detroit without a job and we're gonna give this thing a shot cuz we're not getting any younger. I left the job in New Orleans of January of 16. Nine months later, Ellen and I were engaged. Nine months later you were standing up in our wedding.
Matt: It's true. It's true. Who would've, who could have foreseen you?
JAG: You.
Matt: I did, Ellen did. We knew!
JAG: As with the case with music on Z 89 in 1999, I should have listened to you.
Matt: Exactly. A huge moment in your life. I was so thrilled to be there to stand next to you in that moment And then another huge moment in your life comes along not long after. What was that?
JAG: My last radio layoff. So a few months after I moved back to Detroit, I got a gig at the competition of my old station, 98.7 Amp Radio, which was owned by CBS at the time. Did Middays there for a little over a year. They sat me down the week of my wedding and said, hey, ratings aren't where they need to be. We might need to make a change here some.
And then I come back from my mini moon, probably that Wednesday after my wedding, Friday afternoon. Hey Jag, can you voice track the last half hour of your show? Okay. I've seen this movie before. Hey, you're a great guy. We like having you around the office, but the numbers aren't there, which always stuck in my craw a little bit because it was right when Entercom was buying CBS.
They were making cuts and they replaced me with a part-time voice tracker. Just tell me you're eliminating the position. Don't tell me it's my fault because of ratings.
Ellen, God bless her. She's now married to a guy who doesn't have a job or really a career at that point. She said, I know you love radio, but there's always somebody waiting in line behind you to do the same job for 10 grand less and more bullshit. And I went, whoa, you're exactly right. And it took me a year or so to figure out what I was gonna do.
Matt: But once you figured it out, it was at that point you made the pivot to podcasting, which was still an emerging medium at the time. I think it's fair to say. Let's talk a little bit about the leap of faith that was. Not just because podcasting was relatively new, but also because you were gonna start a business of your own. And I think a lot of people aspire to have that level of freedom and control over their career, but making it happen takes some bravery. Can you describe what it's like? Putting yourself out there, standing on your own and being responsible for every aspect of your work? You are the brand. You, it's your name on the company. It's Jag in Detroit Podcasts.
JAG: True. Yeah. I really, in all honesty and I'm not just blowing smoke here, all credit to Ellen, because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
I was applying to like marketing jobs. Oh, I've been on the air, I've done social media. I can do one of these jobs. Oh no. We want a 22 year old, outta school that knows, that speaks better social media than you do. I don't know what I'm gonna do. We were in Hawaii for Ellen's 40th, and she said, you're half-assing this podcasting thing. You're half-assing this marketing stuff. I need you to pick one of the two things and "whole ass it." And I said, okay, that's fair. And Seth Resler, who got me into podcasting, he said, you can charge people to create podcasts for them. And again, to your point, Matt, this is 2018. It's not in its infancy. It's been around a decade and a half at that point, but it's nowhere near as popular as it is now.
What do you mean I can charge people for this? No. Trust me, you can charge people to do this. So Ellen said, I will help you with the books. I have a MBA, I have a financial background, I can help you with the books. I said, okay. So you do the work, I'll help you with the books.
Cuz that's why I never thought I could own my own business. I don't know first thing about running a business. So she set up spreadsheets for me and helps me track money in, money out, all that kind of stuff. She's my sounding board. So she's my CFO, I'm the CEO, and I built a few clients, built a few clients through another radio connection. Nick Craig, who I worked with a Channel 955 and it snowballed from there.
And I realized that my skills both editing audio for technical and for content, and the ability to conduct an interview could be a valuable skillset, and that's my unique selling proposition as opposed to a lot of people just edit podcasts. I'll interview you about your business. I'll help you create a branded podcast about your business, and the technology's good enough now, as you've probably heard on this podcast, that with a $60 USB microphone, it can sound just like you were in a recording studio.
Matt: Yeah, can you give us a peek behind the curtain a little bit to explain how the magic of podcasting happens? Cuz for this series you've recorded, I think every interview from your home studio and your interview subjects talk to you from wherever they are. And it sounds great. How does it work?
JAG: If you wanna geek out for a second, I'm always happy to do that. And some of our guests have had professional microphone set setups, which have sounded great and I don't have to do much with that audio, which is always makes my life easier. But honestly, and I think when we recorded yours, Matt, you're, you were like most using the built-in laptop microphone.
Granted, if you're gonna work with me as a client, we're gonna get you a 60 or $70 USB microphone that's gonna sound professional. By the way, don't ever buy a Blue Yeti. If there's a hill for me to die on. Don't ever buy a Blue Yeti microphone. Best marketed worst podcast microphone out there. Don't ever buy a Blue Yeti.
Now that I got that out of the way, the technology has come a long way in terms of just from when I started five years ago. There's AI software that I can run the audio through, off a built-in laptop mic, that will make you sound like you were done at a professional studio. There is EQ and tricks and I've got software that does things like, let me take my pop filter away. De-plosive.
And mouth declick and things like that. That can really make the audio pristine. And if you spend the time on it, there are so many things you can do to make a podcast sound, if recorded at a home or an office, sound like it's done in a professional studio, and you don't have to spend the money to rent out the studio space.
Matt: You have an incredible talent for honoring and preserving legacy.
JAG: Thank you.
Matt: You have a great. memory. You're able to remember little details about my own life sometimes, that I have like memory holes and I'm only able to, like, excavate at your prompting. And your talent took on a greater meaning and purpose in 2006 when our friend and summertime JPZ'er Bill Leaf was killed by a drunk driver in a head on crash.
Bill was your roommate, your best friend at SU and you made it your mission to make sure that he was never forgotten. You've written at length about its life and even spoke publicly at schools and many other places about the dangers of driving under the influence and the real cost that comes with that. Can you walk us through your honoring of Bill's life and just speaking up for this cause?
JAG: I wasn't sure if you were gonna go here, but I'm happy to engage you on this, if I don't get too choked up. It, it was a moment in my life that I won't forget. I know you won't forget. In January of oh six when Bill was killed, and Bill and I were as thick as thieves, we were in incredibly close. Think about your closest friend at Syracuse and imagine at 25 they're gone in an instant.
And it was the worst day of my life. And I remember at some point thinking, if the situation were reversed and you knew Bill very well as well. I feel if the situation were reversed, Bill would honor me. I felt like Bill would not want anybody to forget about Jag. And so that's one piece of it.
And the other piece of it was, if me telling the story stops one person from getting behind the wheel and driving. Then it's worth me telling the story. What's interesting is, yes, I post the story on social media every year, usually on his birthday in October and in January, on the anniversary of his passing.
I have friends that met me after Syracuse that I worked with in various markets. "I feel like I knew Bill because I read your story when you post it every year." And you couldn't pay up me a higher compliment. And I'm so happy to honor my friend in that way. It was important for me to do that. I remember when I was doing nights on Channel here in Detroit, so a lot of the teenage, high school crowd knew who I was on some level. And I remember that's when I started going to some high schools around prom time and I told the story and I think it was the first or second time I did it. I had a young lady come up to me and ask me, can I ask you a personal question? Do you forgive the man that killed your friend?
And this is, I don't know, this is probably 2011, this is probably five or six years afterwards. And Matthew Benedict, at that time, the one who killed Bill was still in jail. And I thought about it for a second and I said, No. I don't, he was a repeat offender. He was driving on a suspended license. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you I've never driven drunk.
There were a couple times in my life and I regret it, but there are a couple times in my, when I was 22, when I was invincible and I thought, ah, I'll make it home. No problem. I'm not proud of that. I'm, especially in hindsight, I'm ashamed of that. I'm not gonna pretend I've never done it. But the fact that he was a repeat offender didn't seem to have a care in the world at that time.
And I said, no, I don't forgive him. And now we're in a world with Uber and Lyft in so many places, and that's proliferated everywhere. There's no reason for you to get behind the wheel if you're unsure, if you're buzzed. You know I did it. Bill did it. Almost everybody I know has done it at some point in their early twenties. But please don't ever do that because I would never want someone to experience that day and that week and that month like I did, because that was certainly a pivotal moment in my life.
Matt: You've honored Bill's memory with such detail and dignity, and now you're doing the same for the WJPZ. As we wrap up here, any final thoughts about the podcast? What this has meant to you and what do you hope it means for the station and for its alumni?
JAG: This has been, professionally, the most rewarding thing I've ever been a part of.
I can unequivocally say that. It started out as an idea of, hey, let me do like 50 of these to commemorate 50 years. And I was nervous because we have so many successful, tremendously successful people in our group. I thought there'd be a lot of feedback of, hey, do this differently. I didn't like the way you did this.
Maybe you should try this tactic instead. But it's been the opposite where so many people have said, oh, you need to get this person. Lemme connect you with this person. Go get this person. Let me get connect to this person. So I was planning on doing 50, but much like ESPN's 30 for 30.
That's however many hundred documentaries. Now, this thing is going way beyond 50. As of this recording, we're recording this, full disclosure, on February 9th. I'm close to 70 interviews.
Matt: Wow.
JAG: The only thing that I have to say and by the time this airs, this announcement will have previously aired in the podcast. But I have to pull back the cadence because releasing three of these every week has been a lot of a time commitment.
And so after Banquet and after releasing every day of the week of banquet, I'm gonna pull back to once a week so I can kinda get caught up and focus on growing my business. And I wanna read you something actually, because I thought you might ask me about this. One of the highest compliments that I got, was from our classmate and mutual friend Jana Fiorello. This group text of the five of us: you, me, Jana, Beth and Brett from 02 has reignited in the last several months. And Jana and I were having a side conversation and she wrote,
"I think what you're doing with these podcasts is so truly special and I love how they've been making our group chats more active. I'm so excited to see you in March and I'm really looking forward to my own little podcast chat with you."
I've been hearing these conversations of folks throughout the decades. Matt Friedman tells me that the Class of 94 and 95, hey, did you hear today's episode? And it's prompting these conversations amongst all these different eras. I heard from folks from the eighties as well, and the 2000's and 2010s.
It's really been a way to reconnect leading into Banquet, and part of the reason I wanted this was of course, to promote people to come to Banquet, which is a big deal. But I have learned so much about the station. I've met so many people. I've learned so many stories. I've been able to make so many connections.
James "Baymes" Grundy, who got his masters in 2020, has helped me with some of the editing. He's helped take some of the load off of me, which has been fantastic. Two people I wanna mention very quickly, not in the credits of the podcast, Matt Friedman has connected with so many of the first half of the 50 years, and Josh Wolf has connected me with so many of the latter half of the 50 years.
Where we sit in oh two, we're like in the middle, Matt, of the 50 years. But getting names and getting connected to all these people I've been able to get. I'm really happy to say that we've got a lot of diverse perspectives in terms of both demographics, but also age. One minute we've got Greg Hernandez and Bill Bleyle from 76 and the next week we've got Kyle Leff from 22.
And the thing that Scott MacFarlane said to me in the very first episode that I recorded, he said, everybody's the same person. It doesn't matter. He said that in the documentary. I think too. That it doesn't matter what year you graduated, 72 or 22, we're all that same person.
We all have that same je ne se sais quoi about us. You're just my friend from school. Doesn't matter what year you graduated, we wouldn't have to go to school together. 10 years, 20 years apart. You're just my friend from school. This organization is so amazing. People who aren't part of it may not understand how amazing a group this is and how unique it is, and I feel like we've really been able to dive into that in the podcast. It's just been so rewarding.
Matt: Jag, thank you for your time. Thank you for your friendship. A quarter century this year. I don't wanna point out but
JAG: Oh, we had to go there. Okay.
Matt: And thank you. Thank you for the gift of this podcast series.
JAG: Thank you for the kind words, Matt. I always appreciate spending time with you.