Scott Meach's contributions to both WJPZ and the Alumni Association are nearly immeasurable. In two stints as General Manager, he and his team helped shepherd the station out of a mountain of debt, bring in some major market coin, and pull off some big-time promotions in the Syracuse market.
In his time since graduation, he's served as President of a revamped Alumni Association, created the bylaws for the WJPZ Hall of Fame, and so much more.
In today's wide ranging conversation, we cover the financial turnaround of WJPZ in the late 80's, what the station overcame on and off the air, and how it ushered in what we now know as the "Flamethrower" era. We also talk about how the Alumni Association has evolved over the last two decades.
Scott also talks about his professional journey, from working with "Up With People" to radio promotions and contest insurance, ultimately to starting his own business in the secondary ticket market, SecondTicket.
Join Us in Syracuse on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I'm Jon Jag Gay. I'm really excited to talk today's guest. You may know him for a number of reasons. You may know him as a past president of the Alumni Association. You may know him as really the driving force behind our Hall of Fame. You may know him as being to the secondary ticket market, what Matthew Berry is to the fantasy football world.
You might know him as the guy who in March of 2020 said, "Hey, are you sure this banquet's a good idea?" This COVID thing might be kind of serious. And I'm really happy to welcome him in as a 2023 Inductee to the Hall of Fame. Very well deserved, and you would've been in sooner had you not been running the darn thing.
Scott Meach, welcome to the podcast
Scott: Uh, arguably. Thanks, Jag. It's awesome to be here. Thanks for doing this. This is an awesome. Series you've put together.
JAG: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And it's really been a labor of love getting people to talk about their time, their fond memories at the station, which is where I wanna start with you.
You may know Scott for all the things that I've mentioned, but I think something that not a lot of folks know about is really how instrumental he was in keeping the station together. Late eighties, early nineties, when the station was going through some really difficult times, and I don't think you get enough credit for that.
There are a number of folks who have really saved the station over the years, but you are right at the top of the list. So let's start there. How you sort of came into the station, what you came into, and what you were up against while you were there.
Scott: Well, I'll start with a line that I use often, which is I came to Syracuse for WAER, but I keep coming back for WJPZ.
JAG: I like that.
Scott: When I got to campus, I wanted to do sports broadcasting, and within my first days and weeks on campus. I got involved with WJPZ and instantly just fell in love with the electricity there, just the energy. And in my freshman year there was lots of turmoil and I don't know that it was necessarily atypical. You know, throughout the generations there's been lots of that, and the staff at the time has always figured out ways to handle it and get through it.
But in this particular case, The general manager was Mark Bokoff and the station manager was Rusty Berrell, and they severed ties with the student government. There was racial tension with the format and on campus. And I had done radio in high school, so I knew a little bit about being on the air and I got onto executive staffs at the end of my freshman year, as operations manager in charge of legal, we actually had two operations.
We had ops, legal and ops programming, if I recall.
JAG: And remind me, Scott, this is 86-87?
Scott: The fall of 86. Yeah, spring of 87. Okay. So I got on executive staff and then by my sophomore year, early in my sophomore. The turmoil, the churn continued and the general manager stepped down and I stepped in and then lost the reelection bid.
But then again, in my junior year or the end of that sophomore year, I won the general manager bid. So I served for a couple of terms over three banquets. And the station had severed financial ties with the student government. And by the end of that, we really had it cranking. I mean, we, we had paid down the debt and we had started putting ad dollars, well not ad dollars, sponsorship and promotional dollars right on the air. And through miraculous work of lots of people. We can spend a long time naming them all, but some of them are Hall of Famers already, Hal Rood, Henry Ferri, and others. We got the station back to a pretty good place by the end of my time there and then,you know, in the nineties it just became the roaring twenties.
JAG: The flamethrower years!
So let me dig in a little bit on this cause I wanna make sure I have my facts right. I remember having watched the documentary that Scotty MacFarlane put together for the 40th anniversary, so I wanna make sure I have this right. So there was pressure at that time. We're talking late eighties now, to make JPZ more of a traditional college block format station where we had different groups doing their own type of music, their own idea.
And then the station from where you sat, said "No. What we are is we were a professional radio station training people to work in professional commercial radio. That's how we're gonna run it." And that's why you guys ended up severing ties with the funding from SU because they wanted you to be a college station and you said that's not what we are.
Do I have that right?
Scott: Yes, you do. The bylaws were written to be a contemporary hit radio station, but the implementation at the time was this Future Hits Radio. Which sounded a little bit more, I suppose some might have heard that as being a little bit more collegiate, a little bit more progressive of a sound.
So it converted to power hits, Z89, a more true straight, top 40. Carl Weinstein, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame a few years ago, and others had a lot to do with the conversion to a true tight top 40 station. At the time they also eliminated some block programming, and it was all on the premise that the best way to educate students about radio was to provide a real strict type format.
So that happened before I arrived and in that freshman year. But that's what led to some of that tension. And one side of the argument was, if you're drawing money from Student Government Association, we should have some input into the sound of the station. And the station's argument was you contribute money to lots of different student groups and don't seek to control their programming.
So why should we be any different? The student government had a seat on our board of directors, as did the graduate student organization, so they severed the financial ties and there were growing pains from that in the last couple of years. We made a real concerted effort to increase involvement with the student body.
We also added an at large student seat to the board. We involved the student body in developing the station logo. We tried to be really inclusive in those ways and welcoming as many different types of people as we could to the station, and having as much diversity there as we could, and I think we achieved some success.
JAG: In other episodes of this podcast we're certainly talking about the formatting and the programming side of things, but where I'm talking to you today, you had the experience on the GM side of things. on, as Dr. Rick would say, the "coin" side of things. Talk to me about how you were able to keep the station going and how you were able to find revenue that wasn't coming from the University.
Scott: People preceded me that had developmental experience, and so we were running spots prior to me taking over as GM.. And so there was sort of a template for what needed to be done. And there were some talented people doing that. Jonathan Brieger comes to mind and some others. I and the people who followed them learned, when we found ourselves in some deep debt, we just put all hands on deck and we had every department head thinking whether they could solicit sponsors or not. They were all thinking at least that way, but we got lucky too. We, at that time. We recruited some people to the station that had some skill sets in raising money in Henry Ferri and Ken Scott. Mike Sullivan and Jim Remeney, and there were a bunch of people that contributed eventually, Hal Rood. Prior to being a program director, he was the business director. And where Henry really excelled was finding promotional money and converting that into both promotional content and sponsorship.
So that was a big part of the success as well.
JAG: What were some of the sources of that? Well, first the promotional money. Then also sponsors for the station.
Scott: Well, he would approach businesses with promotional ideas that also had sponsorship commitments. Car dealers and you name it, the Crazy Car Cash in California contest. Project Quincy was one promotion. The five Cs, I think Hal called it the Project Quincy contest.
JAG: I love it.
Scott: So that was really, it was unlocking the promotional value that the station offered despite not having the awesome mobile capacity. We had a lot of personnel capacity, so we could do remotes and we did the State Fair and we did stuff all around town.
We figured out ways to tie in bars and pizza places. So that was really it. It was unlocking the promotional capacity of the station that really. Saved it.
JAG: You think about college kids and finding inventive ways to save money, whether it's the proverbial ramen noodles or whatever it is. This is that on steroids with yourself and just an incredibly talented group of folks who found money, you know, in the couch cushions, so to speak, with all these sponsors to really turn the things around.
Scott: The couch cushions of the greater Syracuse area. That's exactly right. Jag.
JAG: Was it easier at that time, Scott, because this is prior to the Telecom Act in 96 and there was less media competition. You guys are going head to head with 93 Q, but there was no Hot 1079. The market didn't have as much competition radio wise. Was that helpful to you, you think?
Scott: I can't really speak to what impact the Telecom Act had in nor to the current competitive landscape. But we were not only up against 93Q, but Y94 and 95X. But yes, 93Q was the Evil Empire. But I think it was really just a matter of, as Lee Abrams said, just effing doing it.
Just go out and do it. Don't worry about the competitive environment, the surrounding things you can't control. Just do what you can control.
JAG: So this is the time around when you gave away a car at the New York State Fair, right?
Scott: They did. That was the summer after I graduated. You know, one great example was the summer of 89, we did Amok In the Mall. MTVs Amok in America was hot at the time. Amok in America. So it was a nationwide scavenger hunt. And Henry as promotion director arranged Amok in the mall, the Marshall Square Mall. And lined up, I don't know how many sponsors, dozens. And then he left town to go home for a week or two.
But we pulled it off. We had a ton of summer staff there. The grand prize was under Jim Gallagher's hat. So our morning show, one of the most talented morning show guys, in my opinion, that the station's ever seen Jim Gallagher. He was at the promotion and the grand prize was somewhere in the mall, so I don't know how many people we let into the mall.
It might have been 890, but there were 89 prizes throughout the mall in envelopes. So you had to go in all the stores and find the envelopes. But we put the winning prize under Jim Gallagher's hat.
JAG: Brilliant. I feel like there are some radio people today that could learn some lessons from the stuff that you guys were doing back in 87, 88, 89 90.
You are incredible at organizational stuff. I remember the two years that I served on the Hall of Fame committee where we had, one year I was on the nomination committee and one year I was on the voting committee the way that you had set everything up so that it was really, I don't wanna say plug and play, but it was set up so well from the groundwork with all the rules and how you had done this.
Was it your time at the station that kind of helped you get so well organized with the stuff you've done with the Alumni Association and the Hall of Fame stuff you learned at the station, or have you always been that way?
Scott: I think my time as an undergrad at Z89 was my coming of age in terms of having the confidence to do whatever I would decide to subsequently.
And I got a little bit of that from a radio sense in high school. But in terms of applying that more largely, I think navigating college, navigating Z89 specifically, is where I gained the confidence to be able to tackle a challenge. So where I got the organizational capacity, I'm not sure. Somewhere along the way I became pretty adept at managing spreadsheets and databases and thinking in that way.
So thank you for the compliment. You know, serving as the president after Kelly Foster and did such a great job with prior to, and I had a vision for what I thought the association could be, which was more than it had been at that point. The association served a vital purpose in those early years. I thought it had matured to a point where it could become bigger.
And I had this vision and Jordan Guagliumi and Harry Wareing joined the board with me and the three of us were aligned on what we thought that could be. And so we thought outside the box, we started bringing in this keynote speakers outside of the association. And we changed up our fundraising model. Had an idea for what we could accomplish.
And that's also a characteristic that working at the station encourages students to develop. So you just, you just start doing it.
JAG: I was gonna say that financial health of the Alumni Association, I think really turned around under your leadership and under the leadership since. And I feel like having that experience at the station where you had to raise money to keep the thing alive, probably played into that.
Scott: I think so. You know, I saw so much passion from alumni. When I decided to step into the president's role, I knew that the passion was there, but we had $5,000 in the bank after 15 years. And it just seemed like we could do more and we had to work hard to change the fundraising model. I mean Jordan and I spent hours personally writing appeal letters and signing and mailing. And Harry and I worked hours on reconstructing the communications model and we swung big with keynote requests and succeeded. I mean, I couldn't believe when Lee Abrams and Erica Farber started saying, Yes, sure, I'll come. And they paid for themselves to come.
I was like, "Really?"
JAG: And Erica came back a second time.
Scott: And Erica came back a second time. Yeah. Kudos to the association for bringing her back.
JAG: What about the foundation and the starting of the Hall of Fame? It's such a amazing thing and I'm so glad that you are joining the Hall of Fame, but how did the idea kind of start?
Scott: I think the credit for that goes to Scotty Mac and Jeff Wade and Dan Austin. They were serving on our board at the time I was President, but I think that was really their vision. There may be others that were integral to that. That's my immediate recollection. I think the idea was that we wanted to find a way to acknowledge the work that had been done by people to provide opportunities for young students and simultaneously reach back and connect with alumni who'd been integral, but were not active in the association and might be able to become more active again. There was a period where there were a lot of alumni from the seventies and even the eighties that were not involved possibly just because if we didn't have them on an email list, how would they know? There was no social media. So it just was a matter of reaching back out, but having some sort of a hook to reach back out to them with. And so the Hall of Fame helped with that a lot. It brought some people back to the Banquet. More importantly and more broadly, it helped sort of reconnect the station with its founders.
JAG: Talk to me about your professional journey. For those who don't know you as well as many of us do, you know, from the station where you went from the station and how the twists and turns of the time since you left?
Scott: Yeah. I spent seven years in high school and college working at a radio station, high school and collegiate.
And when I graduated Syracuse, I realized I did not want to work at a radio station. I had sort of punted the sports broadcasting idea. I kind of figured I could always go back to that if I really wanted to. But I didn't really enjoy journalism. I liked sports casting games, so I figured I could do that if I really wanted to.
But I knew that the competition would be tough to do that. I really liked just the excitement and the energy of Z89 and WBFH in high school, and I just was not as excited about it in a professional setting. So I pivoted to looking at promotional marketing, PR, sports marketing, and so my first job out of school was a miserable radio consulting gig.
A very small one. Didn't really get anything from that, but then I worked for Up With People. Doing advanced promotional work and traveling around the world. Setting up visits by the cast, you know, spending three to four weeks in a city and working with media and sponsors and arranging all the logistics of a cast visit and selling all the tickets.
Did that for a year and a half, and then I pivoted to sports marketing and worked for the World Cup Soccer Tournament in Detroit in 1993 and 94.
JAG: So you came home?
Scott: Came home. And then after that I did a short stint in a PR. Realized that wasn't for me. And then started working with Henry Ferri and Ken Scott, and we built out our own business idea and I moved to Buffalo.
It was a sports market doing an event company. We started that and did that for a couple of years as the Buffalo Social Club, but then we also developed a business selling prize insurance to radio stations. It was really Henry's vision for a business because he was buying insurance contracts. A company in Atlanta that did golf hole in one insurance and sports risk insurance.
And so he thought that if as a radio sales rep in Buffalo, New York, he was a potential customer of theirs, then every sales rep around the country would be a potential client. And so we started a radio division, a media division of American Hole In One in Atlanta. So we did prize insurance and Henry and Ken are still doing it with their own business in New Jersey as Million Dollar Media.
But we did it in Atlanta together for nine years.
JAG: This always fascinated me. So for those who don't know, So this is the idea of, you know, you got a radio station doing a big prize thing. If you putt the hole in one and you win a gajillion dollars, you need insurance in case somebody makes the putt, or in case somebody kicks the field goal at whatever bowl game it is.
So this is the backside of that. I don't think, people don't typically think about that if you're rooting for the person to hit it, but the people who've gotta pay the money, you're probably not rooting for the person to hit.
Scott: Well, yeah. The people that pay the monies is the insurance company, technically.
People are probably familiar with sports risk insurance. Hit a hole in one at a golf tournament, win a new car, or kick a field goal at a game, or make a half-court basketball shot for 10 grand or a million. Those are very well-known sports applications of those. But in media, we taught the programming side and the sales side, how to do programming versions of the games and sales promotions, sales versions of the game.
At any radio remote, we can ensure any price from five grand to a million bucks. Often it would be 10, 20, maybe a new car, maybe a hundred grand, at an off-air promotion that just draws traffic to a retail location. Or we could do something on the air. People may be familiar or they may have heard the birthday game for a million dollars.
I don't know if that's still done anymore.
JAG: Oh, that's, every radio still copies, contests from, they're still doing war of the roses and second date update, so I'm sure it's still happening.
Scott: Okay. So if you play the birthday game and you happen to have the right birthday, Then, you win a million bucks and that's all insured.
It's all based on odds and probability. We knew the odds of all that, and so yes, it was legalized gambling, legalized gaming. It was a super fun business. Henry and Ken are still succeeding. at it. They're doing great. I saw a guy win a million bucks once. That was pretty wild.
JAG: Doing what?
Scott: He had to roll six dice. It was at an event in Puerto Vallarta that Cumulus had put together through one of its nationwide classic rock promotions. So all of its classic rock stations picked a winner and a guest sent them to Puerto Vallarta and I think there were 97 of them. And so 97 people times two, cuz they each had a guest that got to roll the dice.
There were six dice that spelled MEXICO. And the odds of all those coming up on one roll, cuz I remember it right. I think I do. 279,936 to one and somebody hit it and somebody hit it on like the 80th roll for something.
JAG: Oh my gosh.
Scott: Gosh. Yeah, that was wild. That was the only time I saw somebody win a million. I saw somebody win 50 grand also once.
JAG: Those radio promos are always wild. I remember when I first got to Detroit, we gave away a car and we did we were Channel 955, so we did 95 keys. The first key started the car. The first person and we're like, Oh, we weren't expecting that. Thanks are coming out, other 94 people! Great. Yeah.
Scott: But that was sounds like a guaranteed giveaway. So all 95 got a key?
JAG: Yeah. So that wasn't an insurance thing cuz somebody was going home with the car courtesy of the dealer. Yeah. Okay.
Scott: Yeah.
JAG: All right. So after American Hole in One?
Scott: Yeah. Well, while I was working there, I volunteered for the Peach Bowl committee here in Atlanta, where I still live.
And I volunteered on their ticket sales campaign. You know, collegiate bowl games are looking to sell tickets all year long for cash flow. But obviously most people wouldn't even think to buy a College Bowl game ticket before December.
JAG: Or knowing who's in the game. Yeah.
Scott: Right. They have no idea. But local corporations might. You know, May, June, July, and so I was volunteering for the committee selling locally. Eventually, people would start asking me if I also had other kinds of tickets, World Series tickets or Super Bowl tickets, and so I just formed a company on the side and when Henry and Ken and I decided to move on from American Hole in One. When I did that, we stayed here and have been doing second ticket ever since and that it's been 16 years.
JAG: 16 years you've been doing second ticket. Yeah. Full disclosure, you've helped me get tickets to certain events.
Scott: And you were one of my first customers way back in like the first year or two. We did a few events with your nightclubs in Burlington.
JAG: That's right. Yeah. We were talking about this off air before we started recording. It seems like events are finally back in the wake of COVID at this point.
Scott: They are. The industry's back. COVID fears have largely receded. Indoor stuff is not as back as outdoor stuff, but for the most part, the industry is back.
So that's good for our country. It's really important for people to be able to get out and connect and obviously the last three years have been mentally exhausting for all of us. And in many cases worse than exhausting.
JAG: Yes.
Scott: Damaging. And so it's good for us that people can get back out.
JAG: Last question for you, and I usually ask about friends you've made at the station that you've kept as lifelong friends, but you've already mentioned a whole litany of them, and I'm sure there are more. Give me, if you can think of one, a funny behind the scenes story from your time at the station that you feel comfortable sharing.
Cause I know some of them aren't appropriate for a podcast.
Scott: There's so many. There are so many. I mean, because I spent a lot of time in college with Jim Gallagher. Pretty much any time that you spend with him, he'll make you laugh. I mean, there was one of the promotions that we did was, you know, come out to Denny's and watch Jim eat 89, see if he can eat 89 pancakes,
So I remember him like fasting for you know, some period of time. And he gets there. And of course he might have stopped at 8.9, but I think he kept going and ate like 10 or 11 . And you know, he would look around and he'd be like,“What are all these people doing here? Like, why are they here to watch me eat pancakes?”
Like we talked about this on the air nonstop for three weeks or whatever. We promoted it heavily, and it drew a lot of people. He's like, "Do they really wanna see me eating pancakes?" But of course, you know, that wasn't the reason they were there. But Jim's just got an intuitive instinct and skill set. He made us laugh, but there were so many Jag I, I can get back to you on that.
JAG: Fair enough. We'll leave it there. Scott Meach, your contributions to the station, the survival of the station, the Alumni Association in many ways, the survival of the Alumni Association, the Hall of Fame. I know you're a modest guy. You're not gonna toot your own horn, so I'm gonna toot it for you. We thank you for all of your contributions over the last three plus decades and congratulations on your induction into the Hall of Fame, and thanks for being here.
Scott: Thank you, Jag. I appreciate it. Thanks for what you're doing.