Many of us have spent time on the air at various radio stations, but if there's one jock the current students know, it's probably Ryan Sampson, '99, the host of the Morning Mashup on SiriusXM's Hits 1.
Like many of us, Ryan grew up a news and sports junkie, and considered himself fortunate to get in to Syracuse. He joined WAER and WJPZ, but had more fun at Z89, where he succeeded Scott MacFarlane as news director.
After his parents moved to Baltimore, Ryan did some promotions and other work there, before getting hired at Hot 1079 his senior year. There he experienced a real radio moment. When Cox gave the station to ClearChannel, they were without a program director for a period of time - the airstaff collectively figured out what they wanted to do.
When PD Tommy Frank arrived, he was of the "mess with the other stations" mentality. They went hard after 93Q (Ryan shares a couple examples). But WJPZ wasn't immune from the radio wars. While Ryan points out he'd moved on to Baltimore for some of the particularly egregious moments, we do spend a few minutes on the WWHT-WJPZ rivalry.
Then, in Baltimore, Ryan turned down part time work in New York to get music director stripes. But the job wasn't necessarily what he was expecting. He needed PD experience, and through a small world story, landed a programming gig in Lincoln, Nebraska - where he experienced some Big Ten culture shock. #GoBigRed
Years earlier, Ryan had put a word in for Rich Davis to get a gig at Hot. Well, it was time for Rich to return the favor, and recruited Ryan to come to New York and fledgling Sirius Radio, which had yet to hit its first million subscribers.
Ryan started as an entry level programming coordinator, and began climbing the ranks, before he was tapped to move to the (then voice-tracked) morning show on Hits 1. He walks us through the wild story of how the team of he, Stanley T, and Nicole came together in 2006. They've been doing the show ever since.
We pick Ryan's brain about the current state of radio, and he uses a stark analogy to describe the current state of music radio. He wonders if the industry is due for a massive overhaul, like in the 1950's.
Today's guest really does love his WJPZ roots. He talks about meeting so many of his current friends there, and the lessons learned he still applies today. Recently he's joined the board of the WJPZ Alumni Association, where he hopes to continuing paying those lessons forward.
Ryan and Mark Zito's podcast "This Is Happening"
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-is-happening-with-mark-zito-and-ryan-sampson/id1578714347
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1J4cjMpLuSj0qgl5JUPqe3?si=1ab878b4c45448e3
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. About ten minutes ago, I was listening to today's guest on the radio, tell me that Seattle, Washington, is the number one city in the country for people leaving dog poop on the sidewalk. And he learned how to be a professional broadcaster at JPZ. Learning how to relate to the audience, because I could relate because we went outside our house, there's a fire hydrant in front of our house, and there was dog poop on top of the fire hydrant. I don't know if it was a horse, a Great Dane, what it was, but I immediately related to the last break I heard from today's guest, Ryan Samson from Sirius Hits One. Welcome to the podcast.
Ryan: I wish I knew where Detroit landed on the list. I should have paid greater attention.
JAG: Yeah, exactly. So welcome to the show. There are so many of us that have been on the air. We go back to Syracuse; we talk about what markets we've been in. But you're the guy that you come back to Syracuse and the students know you because they still listen to you on The Morning Mashup on Hits 1, so you're kind of a big deal.
Ryan: It's fun. Thank you. It's still just three of us in a tiny little room. It feels about the same, but I appreciate that. Thank you.
JAG: What year were you, Ryan?
Ryan: I was the year of Donovan McNabb.
JAG: You were 99. Okay. So your senior year would have been my freshman year. Got it. Okay, so let's go back to the time of Syracuse having a football team. Tell me how you found Syracuse and how you found the radio station you're from, where originally?
Ryan: I grew up in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: It's about an hour south of Erie and 2 hours north of Pittsburgh, and it's 40 minutes to get to the nearest road with four lanes.
JAG: Got it.
Ryan: I didn't hear a top 40 station. I'd probably gone through other towns and heard one, but I didn't have a top 40 station to listen to in my daily life until I moved to Syracuse, and it was 93Q. So I found Syracuse. I guess I had always wanted to be in broadcasting. I used to sneak a headphone that I had a big old stereo. It was probably my grandparents or something, but I had a set of headphones that I would plug in and sneak the wire underneath my pillow so I could listen to Pirate games.
Ryan: And I always wanted to do the news or be in broadcasting. And I guess I sort of always knew about the reputation of Syracuse and was really interested in getting there.
JAG: All right, so you mentioned 93Q, and many of our listeners cringed when you said 93Q before you said Z89. How did you find out about JPZ when you got there?
Ryan: It was everywhere. I originally wanted to do news. JPZ was the second organization I joined. I joined AER, and then I really thought that I was going to be a serious newscaster. I wanted Scott MacFarlane's job.
JAG: Yeah.
Ryan: And a friend of mine convinced me that I should just go everywhere and do everything that I could. And I went to the fall recruitment, sorry, the spring recruiting meeting in Watson Theater and started from there. I did an overnight shift and just started as a DJ and doing news updates at the top of the hour.
JAG: So did you eventually have to decide between AER or JPZ or did you walk away from one or did you keep doing both?
Ryan: I walked away from AER.
JAG: Me, too.
Ryan: Yeah, I walked away from AER. I think the thing that did it to me is that I got sent out two years in a row to cover the zoning board meeting for Balloon Fest, and that's not a joke. And I'm like, yeah, this may not be what I want to do. And there was a couple of other things going on in my life, too, that started pushing me towards being in Music Radio.
JAG: Had it flipped back to Z 89 when you were there, or was it The Pulse when you got there? I'm trying to do the math on that.
Ryan: I was with Harry and Dena working on the Flip back to Z89.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: Dena lived across the hall from me. We both lived in Skyhall.
JAG: Oh, wow. Okay.
Ryan: Or Skyhall two. I think it was.
JAG: South Campus. Yeah.
Ryan: And Dena and I lived directly across the hall from one another, so we worked on a lot of different things for the transition.
JAG: How long were you at JPZ? Because I feel like my knowledge of you in the beginning, you were already across town at Hot 1079. Tell me how long you were at Z and how that transition went for you.
Ryan: So I started at Z my freshman year, the spring semester, second semester, freshman year, and then I was elected eventually. When Scott McFarland left and graduated, I followed him as news director.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: And after I was news director for that year, I believe, and then I had an internship my freshman year after I was done. My parents lived in Baltimore by this time, and I called I just opened up a phone book because they still existed and just cold called every radio station in Baltimore. And said that I was a student at Syracuse and I wanted to be an intern. And WQSR, an oldies station called me back and said, hey, you really want to intern? Show up at this Chevy dealership.
Ryan: And my interview was unloading the van and setting up the speakers, and she's like, you'll be great for this. And so I started driving back and forth from I would do shifts on Z 89 during the week in both news and jock shifts. I did the morning show with Jamie Scavotto. And then I would drive back to Baltimore on the weekends, and I was a promotions assistant for WQSR. It was an oldie station, Rouse and Company was the morning show. And I'm sure Marty D can tell you lots of stories because we worked there together. And I did that for my sophomore and junior years after my freshman year during that summer, and I kept bringing Z 89 air checks.
Ryan: And before I went back my senior year, my program director at the time was a guy named Bill Pasha, and I bombarded him with my college radio air checks, and he listened to one. He's like, all right, I'll give you this was, like, August, right before my senior year. He's like, I'll give you weekends on Mix 1065, but I need you here in case someone calls out during the week. You can't be in Syracuse.
JAG: Oh, jeez.
Ryan: And I'm like weekends. I'm like, what do you make doing weekends? And it was a very low part time wage. I'm like, I can't not enough to.
JAG: Drop out of school for.
Ryan: Not enough to drop out of school for. I'm like, I can't do that. And he's like, all right. But what I want you to do is I want you to put on your resume that you already work at Mix 1065 and call stations up there, and I'll back you up.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Ryan: So I made the one of the biggest… I mentioned the wrong station first. You're correct. Because I wanted to remember the story, because I just remembered it today before we did this. One of the biggest professional screw ups I ever had in my life is that when I got back for that first week my senior year, I started calling all the radio stations in Syracuse, trying to do, like, hey, I'm part time in Baltimore. I'm here. I'm a student. Like, major market. Get me on the radio up here, right?
Ryan: I called Tom Mitchell, who is the program director at 93Q, but only I'm a dummy, and I wasn't paying attention, and it taught me so much to just pay attention to what you're doing. I called him on the request line, and I was so shocked when I called, and it rang, and someone answered 93Q, and I'm like, Hi. Can I please speak with Tom Mitchell? And they're like, this is him. I'm like, well, that's weird that he picked up. And I just started going into it. I'm like, hey I'm Ryan Sampson, and I'm a student at Syracuse. I want to get on weekends over there. And he's like, can you call me when I'm not in the air? And pretty much hung up on me.
Ryan: I called the request line, and I'm like, oh, my G-d. It was one of the most embarrassing things I think I'd ever done. But luckily, Jeremy Rice at Hot 179 called me back and offered me a weekend swing shift there. So that's how I ended up at Hot.
JAG: Were you Hawaiian Ryan at that point still?
Ryan: No, I wasn't. How I got Hawaiian Ryan is that came later at Hot 179.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: I was working at Hot 179, and it was just a very weird thing that happened. I've never seen anything like this before, but we all got called into an emergency meeting, and the CEO of Cox Media, who owned the station at the time, was there, and a representative from Clear Channel was there. And they're like, we swapped. You guys used to be Cox. Tomorrow you're going to be Clear channel. Nice to know you.
Ryan: And Cox kind of went door to door and took four or five people and placed them within that company. And our program director, our general manager, I think our promotions director, I think there were some other people in there the next day suddenly worked in different markets.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: And we had new owners, and so there was nobody in charge. It was the weirdest time I'd ever done anything where I was at a professional station and I got hired at Hot 179 is the exact time as another Z 89 person who's my best friend still to this day. Chris Mann, who worked in radio for a long time, he now owns a chain of spas in Ohio.
JAG: That's what happened to him.
Ryan: That's what happened to him. He used Reno. He was in Nashville, in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, and we got hired at the exact same time. So we like it was the DJs were in charge.
JAG: What month and year is this, Ryan? Do you remember?
Ryan: I don't remember exactly, but let's say this would have been summer of 99.
JAG: Okay. The swap happened with Cox, if I remember right. They plucked people. There was nowhere to put them locally, so they ended up bringing to other markets. And all of a sudden, there's, like, nobody minding the shop.
Ryan: The GM and the promotions director went to Tampa, and the program director went to Long Island.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: There were people in the cluster, but, yeah, there was nobody to mind the shop. It's suddenly the assistant promotions director became the promotions director. Who was Jeff Ms. Guinness, who was the music director at the time at Z89.
JAG: Wow. Okay.
Ryan: And so what happened is that we would just basically we'd all show up at lunchtime, and we'd go out to lunch and figure out what we were going to do with the station and go back and implement it. But part of the fun was is that we would get and I'm throwing it back to another WJPZ at 50 episode. You might get where this is going. We used to just basically sit around and people would send air checks to the station, and we would plop them in and make fun of them because a lot of them were not good.
Ryan: And we would listen to all these air checks. But there was one that I remember that we all listened to, and nobody made fun of the person. Nobody said anything, really. So I put that in my pocket, and three or four months later, we got a new program director. His name was Tommy Frank. And I handed him the tape, and I said, you should hire this guy. He's a student at Syracuse. He was using Dicky V on the air at Z89.
Ryan: He soon came to be Rich The Bull.
JAG: Rich the Bull Marino! In a previous episode, he mentioned Rich the Bull.
Ryan: This program director gave us all horrible names. He wanted us all to have silly names. So Chris Mann, Chris is the only one that really held on. He tried to convince him to be Bananas Foster.
JAG: Oh, my G-d.
Ryan: Rich was Rich The bull. And him and I got in a nice argument because I was going from Ryan Sampson to FlyinRyan, and there was like, enough Flying Brians. So I just know. And I always wore a couple of cheesy Hawaiian shirts, and that's how I ended up with Hawaiian Ryan.
JAG: Right. And Rich Davis was quickly there to follow you over to Hot. So there you go.
Ryan: Yes.
JAG: All right. So, look, I'm not sure where this is going to go, and if you don't want to go here, I'll cut this. But since you made a reference to it, you referenced Z89 kids sending over air checks and kind of laughing, making fun of them.
Ryan: No, it wasn't. And by the way, there was no Z89 people. The one Z 89 person who sent an air check got hired. And that was Rich.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: Yeah, it was Rich. They were coming from all over the country.
JAG: Okay, fair enough. I stand corrected.
Ryan: Yeah.
JAG: Because in many episodes of the podcast, people have talked about the real rivalry, especially in the 90s, between JPZ and 93Q. But when you were over there, late 90s, early 2000s, things got pretty heated between JPZ and Hot. You guys did some pranks on us. You tormented us. You pulled some shit, maybe not you personally, but the team over there, you were rough on us.
Ryan: I may have been gone to Baltimore for the worst of that.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: I will say that, yeah, there was the program director. Tommy, totally believed in that, and he had a total screw with other station mentality. I remember that his I can't remember exactly how it went down, but Balloon Fest, which I made the joke about the zoning, was a big 93 Q event. And he convinced Elliot from Blessed Union of Souls, who was headlining the concert, our program director did, to wear a Hot 1079 T shirt on stage.
JAG: At the 93 Q Show.
Ryan: At the 93 Q show.
JAG: That's impressive.
Ryan: We would do things like that, and at that same one, like, we were handing out T shirts to everybody driving into the event before they got there. He blew out the promotion budget to do that. Listen, you'll have to tell me some of the things. I would like to think if I did, I'm pissed at myself, but I'd like to think I don't think everything that I may have ever been involved with was sort of more at 93Q. I know it got nastier later.
JAG: I'll be fair here. I don't remember your name ever coming up in these stories, but you're probably the closest person to it that I'm going to interview, which is why I'm asking you. I'm not putting the blame on you here, Ryan, but there was a story where somebody from Hot called the person doing overnights at JPZ, probably some poor freshman, said, hey, we're the engineer.
Ryan: I know 100% about this story.
JAG: You finish it for me, then.
Ryan: Well, no, listen, I know 100% about this story. I worked in Baltimore at the time.
JAG: Okay, your hands are clean.
Ryan: I was definitely gone to Baltimore in time, and we're not going to bring the person up. But, yeah, they called and said they were the FCC and they were to shut the transmitter off and then call or reset the transmitter or whatever, and then started, I think, giving them songs to play.
JAG: They've had one song on repeat.
Ryan: Harvey Danger. Flagpole Sitta.
JAG: That's the one. Yeah. I mean, there were some real radio wars at the time.
Ryan: Well, one thing that we did and I'll take responsibility for this because I actually think it was my idea, okay. One of the DJs on Hot 1079 used the real name of one of the 93Q DJs. That was some of the little things that we did to mess with them and get in their head is there was one DJ who used an on-air name and we hired a part timer and just gave him that DJ's real name.
JAG: Oh, my G-d, I remember that. I do remember that now. Yeah. That came from above, where you guys are like, I can understand you want to go after the top dog and really hammer 93 Q, but JPZ was not immune from some stuff that went on as well.
Ryan: No, but it was the mentality of the day. Yeah, it was. If you've listened to the Mashup, I like to think that what I've done or what we've done with that show is the total opposite of that. Back in the day.
JAG: Yeah.
Ryan: I remember someone that I and we still, I feel like, pay for it today. That someone I worked with a Hot 107.9 Java Joel, I think notoriously once was left on the line during an in NSync Justin Timberlake interview and just played fart noises over it for the other station's interview and the other station got blamed for it. I think maybe it was something like that. But those sort of pranks and that screwing with other people was considered good radio then.
JAG: It was. And if you think about it now and to your point about what you guys do on the Mashup those old school morning show bits that really are sometimes mean spirited sometimes whether it's the Second Date Update or the War of the Roses or all those old school bits they're played out like in listening to your show now on Sirius. You guys are always thanking listeners for checking in and positivity and telling good stories. Because really, that's where it is now. It's a cycle, and it's really changed from where it was 20 years ago.
Ryan: And even if it went back, I don't know that I'd want to go back to the mean stuff. It's always been laugh with people and not at them.
JAG: Right.
Ryan: And I get that some of the things are like, oh, well, they're cheating, so it's okay. But it's still like, I don't feel good doing that.
JAG: All right, let's get back to you, Ryan, and your career. So you said you left from Hot 1079 to go to Baltimore. Take me through your career arc.
Ryan: It started way before then. My first job was WTIV in Titusville.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: I was a senior in high school. I would go in at six in the morning and introduce live church remotes.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: And then I would get to read a newscast at noon.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: And that was pretty much the highlight of my life, is that I got to do that. I got to write the news and then read it. So from there, I was accepted to three universities. The University of West Virginia, Slippery Rock University. And I didn't think I was getting into Syracuse. And I remember visiting West Virginia and being totally depressed, coming home like, oh, G-d, I don't want to go there, and finding my acceptance letter from Syracuse.
Ryan: Changed everything. So Syracuse, it was it all the way. Like I said, I eventually started doing overnights on Hot 1079 my senior year. So I'd started as a part timer and then was put in full time overnights. That's another traumatic story that I don't want to talk about. And I'll tell you the traumatic part about it. What was really pissed off.
JAG: You're still mad!
Ryan: I'm still mad about it. Well, because I'd kind of forgotten about it. And I was a part timer, and the program director said, hey, I want you in overnights. And I was just leveled with him. I'm like, Dude, listen, I wasn't going to tell you this, but I'm talking to where I do promotions in Baltimore, and they're kind of, like, thinking about bringing me on at nights. He's like, yeah, I don't care. I still want you there.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: And he moved the guy out to put me in there for a temporary period, and it felt really shitty at the time.
JAG: Yeah.
Ryan: But I did get the job in Baltimore. I hadn't graduated. I left 13 credits short. I walked with my class, but still had some credits in summer, summer school. So I left those credits behind to do nights in Baltimore. Two years at B102.7 in Baltimore. They flipped the format and moved me across the hall to Mix 1065, where I became the music director.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: And a quick little footnote in that time there is about four months before that happened, I got a phone call. I had Monday nights off because I was the main weekend person. I had Monday nights off, and I was sitting at my imaging director's house watching RAW, and I got a call at, like, 930. I'm half in the bag. It's my night off. It's like, hi, Ryan. This is Tom Cuddy. I'm the vice president of programming at WPLJ in New York. Oh, hello.
Ryan: And a guy that I work with who used to work at PLJ sent Scott Shannon my tape, who gave it to Tom Cuddy and who was the VP of programming. And they offered me to do weekends at PLJ. And I stupidly told my program director. And he basically like, if you go for the interview, I'll fire you, but if you don't go for the interview, you'll be music director in three months.
JAG: Oh.
Ryan: Now, what he didn't tell me is it was going to be on a different radio station. I had the choice. I think I was 25, maybe I had the choice to go do weekends at PLJ or to stick around Baltimore for an MD gig. And I thought long term, even though New York would have been really great, long term, I saw myself programming. So I went to Mix 1065, was there for two years and then decided, oh, shit, I'm 25 and playing Phil Collins. Yeah, I'm in trouble.
Ryan: I'm in big trouble. So I started looking for jobs, and I was hitting a dead end. I wasn't getting much. There was a few bites out there, but nothing spectacular, nothing serious. And I got all of a sudden, a station in Lincoln, Nebraska, started coming after me hard.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: Calling me. And I had applied because I was sending everything to everywhere, and I was kind of ignoring them a little bit and blowing them off. And the same guy who had sent my tape to New York, he's like, listen, this is to be the program director. You've never been the program director. Why don't you just go interview? He's like, practice. Because when you do get the program director job, you're not going to want to go in there cold. Go practice interview with them. If they're going to fly you out there, go see a place you'll never see, right. And so I flew out there, and I couldn't believe it. That the general manager at this cluster, and he didn't know I was the one they were interviewing. What was great is when we sat down to the meeting was my old GM from Baltimore.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Ryan: And he didn't even know that I was the one being interviewed. A consultant had brought me in because Arbitron or now Nielsen, whatever their headquarters was in Columbia, Maryland, or probably still is.
JAG: Yeah.
Ryan: I don't know anything about ratings anymore. So when he would go in to work there and read diaries, he would listen to me. He knew who I was, and when he figured out that I wanted to be a PD, they came after me pretty hard. And I flew out there. I knew the GM, and I saw the station. It was a heritage station that just needed a nice little polish. So I moved to Lincoln, Nebraska to be the PD. I was there for 18 months.
JAG: How was Lincoln?
Ryan: It was a really strange town for me. I'm from a small town, but everything there revolved around college football in a way I didn't know existed.
JAG: Oh, yeah.
Ryan: I knew it was big. I'd never seen people buy a brand new car and not like, one person, but like many people buy a brand new car and then take it to the detail shop to have a giant red N painted on it, the flag in the window, the bumper sticker wasn't enough. You needed the decal.
JAG: Welcome to Big Ten.
Ryan: So it was a really fun town, and I learned a lot. It was a small owner. There was one engineer for 35 stations in nine states.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Ryan: That was tough to get used to.
JAG: That's challenging. Something breaks, you got to probably figure out how to fix it yourself. Yeah.
Ryan: Or wait three days for Bob to come back from South Dakota.
JAG: So you mentioned Rich Davis earlier, and in his episode of the podcast, he does credit you for bringing him into Hot 1079, but says he more than repaid the favor because he got you out of Lincoln. True or false?
Ryan: That's 100% true.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: I was up for two jobs at the time. I was trying to move up out of there, and I was talking about being the program director at Kiss 98.5 in Buffalo.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: Or being going as a program coordinator to SiriusXM. Rich was starting to go over and do Covino and Rich full time, and he was leaving his coordinator position, which was a starting level position, basically. It was a weird thing where Kid Kelly called me kind of out of the blue. I wasn't expecting it, and we started talking about it, and things started getting serious. I was already talking to Buffalo, and I flown to both places to do interviews.
Ryan: Buffalo is really close to home to where I grew up. It was a program director position. It's a heritage station. It's a great station.
JAG: Sure.
Ryan: It was a really attractive job. And Sirius was less money than I was making in Nebraska. In New York City. And the starting position, like, entry level position, but I just remember going there, and I sat down in the lobby and Mel Karmazin, Jim Brewer, and William Shatner or something like, walk by in the course of, like, five minutes. I'm like, I have to work here.
JAG: What year is this?
Ryan: That was 2005.
JAG: Okay. So Sirius XM was starting to take off at this point, but it wasn't as big as it is now at that time, right?
Ryan: There was not yet a million subscribers.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: Howard had announced he was moving, but had not yet moved.
JAG: Okay, so you take the pay cut to go to the most expensive city in the country, or one of them.
Ryan: Right? Yeah.
JAG: Your journey at Sirius,, gosh, now, it's been what, your tenure there is old enough to vote now.
Ryan: Yeah. I've been there in 19 years, which is crazy. I started as a coordinator working right beside Kid, Kelly, and Mikey Piff, who's the format manager now, the PD now. I stayed in the same chair and did the same job, but on the corporate pay scale kept moving up.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: And about a year into it, Rich was doing the morning show already. The morning show on Hits. One was voice tracked.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: It was Rich and Stanley T, who I still do the show with, and another guy named Jason. And Jason befriended Liza Minnelli.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: On one of her many trips into Sirius XM, and he went on tour with her.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: They became best friends. There are photos of them out there everywhere. They're still friends to this day, I believe. And he decided while he was on Liza Minelli's European tour that he wanted to stay on tour longer and pretty much quit via email. And Kid said, hey, Ryan, no one else to do it. It's you. Go, wow. Plus, I want somebody in there programming wise, to just watch everything. I'm like, all right.
Ryan: So I wasn't happy about it. But on the morning show and at the exact same time that was happening, the female cohost of the morning show was offered, like, literally almost the same day I think this happened, was offered a position within the company, and she moved in the company and sort of stopped on our show. So we went to the receptionist and said, hey, how would you like to come in an hour and a half to work early and do a national radio show for free?
Ryan: And she's like, yeah, that sounds great. And 18 years later, we do the show.
JAG: That's how Nicole started on the show with you? Wow.
Ryan: Yeah. Nicole was on the reception desk. For the first probably year and a half or two years of the show not getting paid for it. And we would come in early in voice track, and I remember the struggle to finally convince the company that the three of us, I was still programming, and that was my extra job. Right. But just to convince them that we were a real show and that they should let Nicole actually do it.
JAG: When did that start, the three of you doing the show together?
Ryan: It was March of 2006.
JAG: Wow. Okay. So not too long into your tenure there. And, Jeez, you're 17 years into the show, the three of you now.
Ryan: Yeah.
JAG: That's incredible.
Ryan: Yeah, it's been a crazy ride. I mean, the first hurdle was getting Nicole to do it, and then it was a few more months, and then they finally let us go live. We were voice tracked for so long, there was no live music programming, with a few exceptions on Sirius XM.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: So when they finally let us go live, it was a really big deal, and I think there wasn't a lot of people that expected us to succeed. And that's sort of been our thing, is that we just keep slowly growing, and we're always there, and we just take advantage of everything you put in front of us.
JAG: That's wild to think about the journey and how you ended up there at this point. And now take me through your day, your work day, as far as what your hours are like and what your day looks like.
Ryan: Typically, it's pretty focused on the morning show. I'm in my chair, 6:30 at the latest. We go live at seven. The show is all planned out. We, throughout the course of the day, basically send things we want to talk about to our producer, and he shows up in the morning, and he's coordinated everything we've sent throughout the previous day to him into a show, into an outline for a show.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: And so the show is live seven to ten, and then we jump into replays for the West Coast. It airs until noon, but the 07:00 a.m. Hour on the east coast and west coast is the same.
JAG: Okay. Got it. Okay.
Ryan: We'll stick around and do interviews with whoever we have, with whatever guests we have that day, record videos for social or for the video team or whatever and things like that, and usually out of there late morning.
JAG: Got it. Okay.
Ryan: It's been a strange culture around SiriusXM because everyone it's still a widely work from home company.
JAG: Are the three of you working from home or you're in the studio together?
Ryan: We're in the studio.
JAG: Okay, good.
Ryan: We've been together in the studio for about 15 months.
JAG: Since COVID got it. Yeah. Ryan, let me ask you, because I ask anybody who's still working in radio this question. What is your perspective on the radio industry and where it is now from where you sit on Sirius doing a national morning show, whether it's local radio or radio, what thoughts you have in general and where the industry is now, what it needs to do to survive.
Ryan: I have no idea if I'm right. I love to shake the snow globe and see what happens. I don't think that minor changes and course corrections are going to fix things.
JAG: Okay.
Ryan: The real problem, and I don't know that I have a solution to it, but sort of the way that I view it is commercials are cigarettes and radio has cancer.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: It's great. And you can smoke as many cigarettes as you want when you're in your 20s, but when you're as old as you are now, everyone you play is hurting you.
JAG: Wow.
Ryan: No one's figured that out yet. They've got to figure out a way to make money that's not eight- minute stop sets, because people are losing complete interest in the medium altogether.
JAG: Particularly in PPM markets when everybody takes their commercials at the same time. Why are you going to stick around when you can just flip over to Sirius or Spotify or Pandora or whatever you have in the car?
Ryan: And why would you ever go back if every time you go back, that's what you're going to sit through? I don't know the answer to that. It could be in more creative advertising, sort of live spots and things like that. I also wonder, too, if we're not going to see a branch of new formats coming, a whole slate of new formats. The thing that I wonder is that radio went through a giant transformation in its infancy.
Ryan: Programming on radio was dominated by live bands and scripted dramas.
JAG: Right.
Ryan: And then it switched to recorded music in the mid 50’s. And I'm wondering if we're about to hit that kind of change again, like a seismic change.
JAG: Where the whole thing is a clean slate. Yeah. No, that's really interesting to hear you say that. Let me throw it back to JPZ before we start to wrap up here. Ryan, tell me about what you learned at the radio station that has served you well in your 2+ decade career at this point.
Ryan: Have fun. I always go back to Dr. Wright because he really got in me. It's all about attitude when you're there. It's related to one of my favorite lines from a movie ever, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, when the guy's given the dating advice and it's no matter where you are, that's the place to be. Hey, isn't this great?
JAG: Yeah.
Ryan: And that attitude, like, that mentality, is sort of what I got out of listening to Rick, and I've taken that with me through my career. That no matter what it is, no matter how bad it is, and no matter what it looks like, the people on the other side of the speakers have no idea, and you just have to give them that. You're having fun, And that's the biggest lesson. And that's what I learned there. But I also learned how to make something out of nothing, because people will tell you. I don't know, when you stepped in in your freshman year, what the studio situation was.
JAG: Not good.
Ryan: Not good. So I learned how to take literally just a pile of dung and turn it into something that was okay. It was really make something out of nothing. I learned how to work as a team. Being at JPZ. Where everybody was on the same page, really, I think, was one of the most valuable things that I've ever experienced in my life, is we all had the same goal, and it was to get good at this thing.
JAG: Right.
Ryan: That was huge for me.
JAG: That makes a lot of sense. Any funny stories you remember from your time at the station that come back to you to this day?
Ryan: There was two things. I just remember the poor clock. There was a clock in the studio that just so many carts got thrown.
JAG: At that thing in frustration when a cart wasn't queued up, or if it.
Ryan: Wasn't queued up, or if you messed up a break, or if just for whatever reason, you would take a cart out and just fling it. I the feel bad for the clock. You know what it was. I remember constantly getting yelled at for using the ladies room.
JAG: Because at that time, the ladies room was next to the station and the men's room was all the way at the other end of Watson.
Ryan: Right.All the way at the other end of Watson. And there was no automatic switches. The computer, like, you had the length of a song or the length of a cart, so you had to pick the longest song on CD at, like, four and a half minutes. There was no other way to do it. And you would have to run and wash your hands and run back. And it was easier to just use the women's room if you didn't think anyone was there because it was right there.
JAG: Well, I'll give you credit for using the ladies room as opposed to using the men's room and not washing your hands. I'm glad you washed your hands before you came back.
Ryan: I don't want other people touching that board after that.
JAG: Exactly.
Ryan: And also, one of my favorite memories is just when our general manager once decided to paint all the doors overnight. We don't know why, but all the doors were a different color when we got there the next morning at JPZ.
JAG: Ryan. I know that like many of our alumni, you have friends to this day that trace back to JPZ roots. Right.
Ryan: A lot. The person who trained me on my first overnight shift, Mark Vitelli, never really got into radio, but he's a guidance counselor in DC now.
JAG: Oh, wow.
Ryan: I still see him and still talk to him. My best friend Chris Mann came from Z 9. I worked with Rich Davis for ten years, really close, and he's one of my best friends. Ralphie and I have become great friends. My other show, my podcast, This Is Happening, I host with Mark Zito, who's a Z89 alum. I have a lot of my friend group is in some way from different generations over different time. Jeff Summajee, if anyone remembers him, these are all people that I met at Z89 that I still have great friendships with today.
JAG: What's the name of your podcast so we can link it in the show notes?
Ryan: This Is Happening with Mark Zito and Ryan Sampson.
JAG: Love it. Last thing I want to ask you about, you've gotten a lot more involved with the Alumni Association in recent years. You interviewed our keynoter Noah Scheer at this year's banquet or last year's banquet by the time this airs, and then you've gotten involved with the board too, right?
Ryan: Yeah.
JAG: Tell me what that experience has been and why you wanted to do that.
Ryan: It's been great. I'll be completely honest that my departure to Hot 1079 wasn't always, and I understand why, when we talked about that animosity earlier, I guess I was playing for the other team. And I don't want to say that I felt unwelcome, but maybe I was sort of like, okay, I let the water cool down a little bit. I always wanted to be part, though. Listen, I'm a kid from a really small town where there was no media, and the fact that I have the job that I do is some sort of weird miracle, and it never would have happened without the time I spent at JPZ. And I want to continue to be involved as much as I can. So the fact that I've been given the opportunity to be part of the board is just really exciting to me.
JAG: Well, I know I speak for all of us when I say we're happy to have you back in the family no matter where you go. You're not the only person who left Z89 to go to a commercial station in Syracuse. Yeah. So we are very happy to have you among our alumni, among our illustrious alumni and part of the Alumni association. So thanks for being part of all that, and thanks for your time today.
Ryan: Oh, and can I say, too, I've really enjoyed these. You've done an amazing job with all these podcasts.
JAG: Thank you.
Ryan: Keep going with them. I hope you do keep going, because they're a lot of fun to listen to and different perspectives on the station over different years and just how much of a group it is, I don't know of anything else like it in any other alumni group. So I think we should keep it going just like you're doing it.
JAG: Appreciate you saying that. Thanks for your time today. Ryan.
Ryan: Thank you.