Today's guest is Steve Simpson, morning news anchor and editor at the legendary WCCO in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He's WJPZ Class of 1985, and he tells us some great stories from Syracuse, as well as a lengthy radio career in the Midwest in his time.
Steve grew up in Bucks County, PA, near Philly. Like so many of us, he was infatuated with radio, rigging equipment in his basement, and quickly learning that Syracuse was the place for an aspiring broadcaster. And when he got to campus, he saw the contrast between WAER and WJPZ. Folks like his future coworker Mike Tirico and other sportscasters belonged at WAER. But for Steve, that Top 40 format and spirit drew him to that old rickety house where the University Sheraton sits now. He did mornings out of that house, worked with Hall of Famer Mary Mancini, and even had to call the fire department one morning when they called smoke. And the Syracuse FD were perplexed when they walked inside and found a radio station.
Steve was Program Director when the station moved to FM, and he credits his classmates with all the hard work to get the station over to 89.1. By then, he had moved over to WHEN in Syracuse. But his friends needed a highly produced legal ID. So Steve tells the story of cracking open a few beers after midnight, heading into a commercial production studio with a coworker, and making some radio magic for his classmates.
Following a few stops in the Salt City, Simpson got a call from a radio station in Indianapolis, where he worked for WFBL for 25 years - before and after being acquired by Emmis. When his time ended there, he was ready to get out of the business, until a call came from his former program director, now at WCCO-Minneapolis. He's been there since 2014.
We spend some time talking about the radio industry. Steve believes live, local radio is still important. And he considers himself lucky to be working at a station that still does that so well in 2023.
And of course we bring it back to "the secret handshake" that is WJPZ. It doesn't matter your age or location. When you meet a fellow JPZ'er, the connection is always something special.
Join Us in Syracuse for Banquet 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. A name that has come up in the podcast that I'm excited to get to know a little bit better today is on with us from the class of 85. He is the morning news anchor and editor at WCCO in Minneapolis, Minnesota, famous great radio station. Mr. Steve Simpson, welcome to the podcast.
Steve: Thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure, and I'm so thrilled that you reached out.
JAG: Let's, Go back to the beginning. How did you get to Syracuse and JPZ? Where'd you grow up and how'd you end up at Z89?
Steve: Grew up outside of Philadelphia in a Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And I'm pretty fortunate because my whole life, all I wanted to do was radio. Like I had the radio station set up in my basement, with the turntable and the microphone, like we all did. And so that's what I wanted to do and obviously, Syracuse, the reputation precedes it. So I I did everything I could to just try to squeak under and get in there, which I did.
I had just enough good grades to get in. And I just, I loved my time there and I loved everything. I learned as much out of class as in class, to be honest with you.
JAG: How did you find the station when you got to campus?
Steve: That's another funny story too. And again, I really appreciated you reaching out to me cuz I've really thought of it.
I've been thinking about this. Made me think about these years that I was there. And again, it's been a while now, 1981, I got there in the fall of 1981, so that was a long time. At the time there was WAER and there was WJPZ. WAER was the big powerhouse campus owned FM, and then there was this little tiny AM slash cable radio station.
That people just had fun at and had a good time learning with each other and through each other. And that just from the minute I got there appealed to me more. I had already started, I dipped my toe a little part in radio at a really tiny radio station in the town that I grew up in. Did a little part-time work before I got to college.
So I probably had a more inflated version of myself than I should have, but I thought.
JAG: We all did at 18. That's okay.
Steve: I knew a lot or I thought I did, and so I thought, I'm ready to just go work at this little radio station rather than do the non-commercial school radio station, your typical, school, radio station.
Wanted to do something that. Quite frankly, in my mind, and I to this day, I believe was a little bit more, was a little closer to being a professionally run radio station. Even in those early days where, we were on the third floor of this old building that had rickety wooden steps and the place was an absolute fire trap.
And I got there seven o'clock in the morning doing my little radio show twice a week or whatever it was. But I just felt like I was learning on the job and I could be a disc jockey and I could do the things that I wanted to do. Nobody was breathing down my neck saying, you gotta do this, or you gotta do that.
There was a basic framework, but past that we could do what we thought was good radio and we all kept track of each other and kept check on each other. And we all had a pretty good sense of what good radio was. Now again, if I was doing like more of a sports thing, because again, that's where you go to be a sportscaster, right?
WAER. It certainly was that way back in the day. Mike Tirico, I worked with Mike Tirico. Yeah. When I was doing mornings on at the time, WKFM, he was my sports guy in the morning when he was doing television on Channel Five there in Syracuse. As an example, he was an AER guy. He absolutely should have been at AER.
He probably should have not been at WJPZ. But that was the beauty of it, is there was that, in a school the size of Syracuse, you had that option. And my option was absolutely the right one for me, and that was to go to JPZ.
JAG: So Steve, what does a morning show look like in the early eighties at WJPZ? You mentioned going in at 7:00 AM.
Steve: It was. It was, man, I think Mary Mancini, whose name has come up.
JAG: She's on an episode of the podcast as well. Yep.
Steve: Awesome. She and I were close and I think she and I did a little morning show together for a while, if I'm not mistaken. Again, it was a long time ago, so I'm trying to put this all back in my memory. But clearly, I know she and I were there at the same time and we worked a lot together on various things, but there were many mornings when it was just me and I just went in and there was nothing on before me, so I pretty much turned on the station.
And had the stack of records there. And again, the cool thing about it wasn't just a stack of records, it was like, play what you want. But we had a format clock. Yep. These were your hots and these were your, recurrence and everything. We did all the things that you did at a real radio station, except we had turntables that were about from the early 1970's at that point.
And it was just equipment that was not particularly good. But again, that wasn't the point. The point was, man, I can crack this mic and I can be the guy on the radio that I've wanted to be, or I aspired to be. And it was great. And it was, again, seven o'clock in the morning and many times it was just me on the third floor by myself in this building. There was nobody else there in that building.
JAG: I'm gonna put you on the spot. Do you remember any specific songs you played?
Steve: It was a recurrent, but it was the Commodores, Lady. Lady. You bring me up when I'm down. That was a recurrent though, that had been a couple of years old. But I remember playing that cuz I love talking up that song. I loved the ramp on that song.
JAG: So you were there when the station moved to fm or is that after you were gone?
Steve: I was right on the cusp. Bob Flint, who I know you've spoken with, I know he and Mark Humble and he came in one day and he said we're gonna put the station on FM. And I said, how we gonna do that?
And he said we're gonna figure it out. And I said, okay. I was the program director at the time. I think Bob was the operations manager, whatever we call general manager perhaps. But I was the program director and I was like, all right, tell me what to do. He did all the heavy lifting. I didn't do much of that.
But I just, programmed the radio station. So I was there, but then I peeled away. I got a job part-time, which led to full-time work at WHEN in Syracuse., at 620 AM. It was still, a viable radio station. Was competing against WSYR. We were the two full-service radio stations that, back in those days, still played music.
So I started as a part-timer there and then started doing seven to midnight. So I pulled away. But what I remember about that was when they were getting ready to go on the air, I got a call and I don't remember who called me, I apologize for that. But somebody called me while I was on the air at WHEN and said, Hey we need to put together a top of the hour ID for JPZ.
Can you help us with that? And I said, yeah, I guess. What do you want? And they said, I don't know. Just put something Z89, we're gonna call it Z 89. And so I remember my friend Bill Fole, who is our news guy, and I, one night after work, it was after midnight cause I got off at midnight. We both got off at midnight.
We went into a production room and we just, for four hours we started screwing around. Just putting stuff together and probably a few beers were involved. I'm not gonna lie about that. And we put together the top of the hour, which I believe they used. It was The future has arrived, WJPZ, Syracuse, Z 89.
JAG: Did they have somebody voice it or did one of you guys on the radio in a competing station voice it?
Steve: No, I think it was me.
JAG: Oh, wow. Okay.
Steve: I think it was me that voiced it as I remember. But at any rate, we put together this thing and then sent it back and so that was as much as I had to do with it going on the air, that was I, at that point had moved out.
But yeah, it was it was so satisfying when it went on the air. That was the thing. It was just, it was remarkable because I know you've all heard the stories. I won't bore you with them, from where this station came to where it went in a relatively short amount of time was extraordinary.
When I got there in 1981, it was an AM station. That nobody listened to on the air, but again, we had gotten on cable. Both closed circuit on the campus, but also cable in the suburbs. And then at that point, I think even the city carried us. And people were listening to us and we were like, we sounded really good.
That was the cool thing. And I knew that if we could just get on FM. We could make a run for the "real" radio stations in town. And that's precisely what we did. And it was just so satisfying. Again, that was long past my time, but to see that happen was great because it was what we all thought could happen given what happened. And it did. And it was just awesome.
JAG: Rick Wright told that in the podcast about getting calls from general managers at other radio stations saying, what are you guys doing over there? You're pulling ratings away from us. You're taking money out of our pockets. And you were part of that formative group in the early eighties that laid the foundation for where they went in the late eighties and beyond.
Steve: And that was always the case with JPZ. That was how it was founded. It was. With this notion of we want to be a real radio station, and again, it was Top 40, so there was no opportunity to do that or go learn that anywhere. If you went to many or most campus radio stations at that time, you had to sound a certain way and it was presented a certain way.
We wanted to get on and talk up songs and mix stuff and do the stuff that jocks did. Fortunately there were many more of them then than there. Listen, I remember there were nights, weekend nights where as far as JPZ people were concerned. There were four radio stations. This was back when radio was live and local.
24 hours a day. And there were four of us on the air overnight on a Friday night or a Saturday night on any given time, working at four different radio stations. And we would call each other and say, hey, how's it going? And occasionally we'd say, hey, you wanna play American Pie? All right, let's try to play that at the same time.
And we'd try to play it at the same time to amuse ourselves.
JAG: Oh my God, that's great. Like the long Don Maclean, like -even minute version.
Steve: Right. Exactly. So I remember a friend of mine at the time, it was WNDR, I think. Yeah. We would do that and we'd call each other and say, hey, let's play such and such a song.
But there were four of us working in professional radio. Literally at the same time in the same hours because that's where you could go and learn and do your thing. And then you'd either get a call or you'd put your tape out to those radio stations looking for a job. And that's how you got 'em. It was a great deal. It was great fun.
JAG: Take me through your professional journey after JPZ and Syracuse.
Steve: Okay, so I worked at WHEN, like I said, part-time, and then I did full-time, seven at midnight, and then I moved to afternoon drive there briefly. And then I got fired cuz the owner didn't like me, which is fine.
JAG: Happens.
Steve: It happens. I was not everybody's cup of tea. I've worked a little blue back then. I wanted to be Howard Stern. Then I was offered a job at WKFM, which is 104.7 in Syracuse. Anyway, it was a rock and roll station and it was good. And I worked there for just a couple of years. I did mornings.
And then I got a call out of the blue from this guy who had just bought a radio station in Indianapolis and said, we'd like you to come work for us there. And I knew nothing about Indianapolis, but I said, sure, I'd, I'll pack up and go. And I did. And I thought I'd be there for a year or two and I stayed for 25 years.
JAG: Wow.
Steve: Now the good news is I didn't do the same thing for 25 years. I had worked with the same company, until they were bought out by Emmis. And Emmis based there. So I worked for Emmis. And Mr. Smuylan worked three floors up. So I was very familiar with the Emmis culture. I first did oldies. I slung oldies for a few years at WKLR in Indianapolis.
And then I went down the hall and started working at WIBC. Which was a full- service news talk station, flagship of the Colts and the Pacers and the Indy 500 and that was still a legendary radio station when I got there. So these were people that had been on the radio for 40 years, the legendary names and I got to know and work with them, and I was just a kid and it was just great.
And, to go out to the Indy 500 and stand next to Luke Palmer, who was this, and have him be a friend of mine and have him explain to me what's going on the racetrack was just terrific. I knew nothing about racing until I moved to Indy, and then I became really into it. So then I worked there for, again, a long time.
I worked at IBC. I was a news director. I did talk shows. I done a lot of different things. And then in 2014 they decided they no longer needed me, which again is fine. And I wasn't sure I was gonna stay in radio because at that time radio was very different than it was, and I just wasn't sure I wanted to do it anymore.
JAG: Of course.
Steve: And so I was gonna be the spokesperson for the Indianapolis Police Department. Okay. I had literally taken the urine test. That's how close I was. I took the urine test, I was ready to go. And out of the blue, thanks to my former program director at IBC, who used to be the program director here at CCO, he called me and said, don't take that job yet.
Call WCCO. They wanna talk to you. CCO's one of those, if they ask you to call, you call them back. You hear what they have to say.
JAG: Anybody who know radio knows those call letters.
Steve: Absolutely. So I did. And they flew me up and they, said, we'd really like you to come work here.
And I guess at that point I decided I wasn't ready to quit radio yet. And so that was in 2014. The good news is I had some family here, so I wasn't coming out here, just on a whim, like I was familiar enough with it out here and my only, I just wish I got here 10 years earlier, you get places when you get places.
I'm thrilled to be here again. Radio has changed very much, but it's cool to be at a station that, I believe, is truly what I got into radio for. Even with all the changes, this is one of those stations that is truly one of those classic Heritage radio station, still a full news talk radio station.
JAG: And I love that you're alluding to this and I often ask folks who are, we're still working in radio this toward the end of the podcast, but I'll ask you now, what is your current perspective, as comfortable as you are answering this question, about the current state of radio.
You're alluding to it and I worked in it for 15 years before getting out five years. It's not what it was in 1985, 95, 2005. But you're at one of those rare birds. It's still a big time news talk station. What's your perspective on the industry at this point in 2022 and 2023?
Steve: I guess I'm heartened by the fact that there still seems to be some appetite for local radio done correctly. Not just telling somebody, here's a stack of songs, play them and shut up . That's not local to me, because guess what? That's been copied on satellite and on internet and everything else. We had managers over the last 30 years in this business destroy the idea of local radio because they told everybody to. shut up.
And now they want people to talk and they're like why can't anybody talk on the radio? It's said you've been telling them to shut up for the last 30 years. That's why.
JAG: I think that's when the portable people meters came in, I think the flaw in it was, they said, oh, the research says that people don't wanna listen to DJ's talk.
And I said, no. What you should be saying is people don't wanna listen to bad DJ's talk. They'll tune you out if you're bad, but they'll stick around if you're compelling.
Steve: No, that's right. And at the same time, now people are like look at all the podcasts. That's all podcasts are, are people talking! And sometimes it's good and sometimes it's awful! I'll let listeners decide what I am on this particular podcast, but that's the whole point, right? Is that given an opportunity and given a good product, people will listen. And I think that podcasts are certainly showing that to be the case.
And I think the most successful radio companies are gonna be the ones that can thread that needle. Because I still think, there's just, I just saw a study recently for all the talk about internet listening and so on. Overwhelmingly, people who listen to AM and FM radio. They are listening terrestrially from the antenna into their AM/FM radio, wherever that is.
Streaming is certainly there and streaming is going to be the future, but for right now it is still over the air, so it's still viable. Now the question is what kind of content are we giving people to listen to so that they make the point to go and listen to you? And that's the key. But it always has been.
JAG: Somewhere. Rick Wright is smiling. Listen to this right now.
Steve: I hope so.
JAG: Steve, what are some stories that stick out to you from your time at JPZ, or either funny stories you look back on, or lessons learned that served you well in your career to this point.
Steve: I was talking about the studio and the old two or three story wooden building there.
I think that's where the hotel is now. The Sheraton. Is that a Sheraton? It was right there. That's where the old building was.
JAG: Come on back to a Banquet. We all stay there and right on the spot.
Steve: Yeah, I know. I would like to do that sometime.
JAG: You'll be the only one coming from Minneapolis. Actually, Rusty Berrell will be coming from Minneapolis too, but you'll be the only one in coming from Minneapolis that's gonna have better weather in Syracuse in March than you're used to.
Steve: Yeah, that's true. That's very true. I, you won't hear a complaint from me.
JAG: You'll be there in a bathing suit!
Steve: That's exactly right. But no, I thought of that floor, that rickety, going up the back steps and going and working one morning and it was, I was a freshman cuz I'd only done that for a few months when I first became freshman to do that morning show and something was on fire. I smelled smoke.
JAG: Oh geez!
Steve: And I was like, wait, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here, but I think the building's burning. And so I waited as long as I could trying to talk myself out of it as my next song was getting ready to start. And I said, I think I better call the fire department. So I called the fire department, but I still stayed up on the third floor cuz you know, I didn't want the song to end.
Even though I probably could count on one hand the number of people who were actually listening at that point. So the firemen come up and there's some sort of thing that's burning, not in our area, but in a different part of the building. It's a little thing, it's no big deal. But I remember the firemen coming in and being just bemused and they're looking around at this, just this really interesting looking studio. And they're like, what is this?
That was their question, what is this? And I said, it's a radio station. Can we listen to it anywhere? I said you can, if you get on your cable or I have to and they were amused and then they just left and that was it. So then I continued my little radio show, but A, was terrified.
And then B, I was amused that they like had no idea and they were almost scared to be where they were because they really had no idea what was going on. They just stumbled across this little radio station with this guy all by himself in his house. Spinning records, and I know they had no idea what they were walking into. I just remembered that recently. As far as what was your other question?
JAG: Just anything that you learned while working at the station that served you well when you got into the professional radio world.
Steve: Wow. There are so many. I look at that in those days when we were there and it was that core of folks in my class.
We were all really good friends. It was like a club, but there was a purpose to the club and we all shared that common interest of radio. And it was the first time I had ever been around that many people who were like me, who looked and listened at radio like I always had from the time I was the little kid in the basement with my little radio station set up. And I was the kid who, when I was in the car listening to the radio, I'd turn it up when the song was ending, cuz I wanted to hear what the jock was saying, and then I turned it back down a little bit. I didn't need to hear the song cause I'd heard that a thousand times. But I wanted to hear what the jock said and I was around people who shared stories like that and it was so cool.
And we'd listen to each other and we'd say, oh, that was a great break. Yeah. That sounded great. Or, I remember Bob Flint used to come in and when we'd step on a vocal, talking up a ramp, he'd walk in, he'd be shaking his head and I'd be like "what?" And he'd start stomping on the ground and he'd go, oh, you stomped on that one.
You stomped on it. And then he walked out. But it was just blowing us crap. It was just having fun. And that's what we did. And that really did set me up for, that was what I aspired to do when I got into radio. I wanted to be around people. I liked people that got what I did and enjoyed it as much as I did.
And I've gotta say in the stations I've been at. I have been ultra-fortunate that's pretty much been the case, that I have found people. I have been surrounded by people who, almost a hundred percent, there are a few outliers, sure. But most of them are absolutely those types of people. And this is the first experience I had being around them.
And then you get to meet them like over the years or remember them. You talked about Rob Berrell. I came out here, I was on the air a day, I think, on CCO., and I heard the name Burrell, and I was like, was that Rob, Rusty Burrell? He was a sales manager here at CCO just before I got here. And he called me and we went out to lunch within a week, yeah. Because he and I worked at JP PZ at the same time. And no matter where I go, it seems that, if I tell them I'm from Syracuse, the question is AER or JPZ. And when I say JPZ, I love getting. "Really? Me too." And that happens and it's great. And you talk about, what was it like then versus what was it like when you were there?
Heck, I know Todd Parker's name came up in the Rick Wright episode. That's an interesting story because in 1981, Hot Hits was just becoming a thing. And it was this format that Mike Joseph had put together. It started in Syracuse at WFBL. And it was just jingles and it was just crazy high energy. His second station was in Philly, which is where I'm from.
So I went back for Christmas in 1981 and I heard this Hot Hits format and it just blew me away. And there was this guy named Todd Parker did afternoons. And when I got back to Syracuse, I think it was Rick Wright that told me Todd was a JPZ guy. I said, really? So I called him, I think a spring break and I was nervous because this was a really great radio station and this was, "Hi I work at JPZ.".
"Oh really? Why don't you come on down? I'll show you around the studio."
And so Todd Parker showed me around WCAU, FM, hot hits, and it was cool. And you could tell that he had A, the same love of radio that I did and that we all did. But B, he had a sense that he was showing the next group of people, yes, here's what we can aspire to, here's what it looks like at this level.
And I always appreciated that it was the one and only time I had ever talked to him. But I'll never forget it. And I've always tried to keep that in mind. If I meet anybody and if they're close by, I say, hey, come on by. Let's talk. And that's cool. And you don't get that very often in any, I'm guessing, in any other kind of business, right?
JAG: WJPZ. Just using those call letters is almost like a secret handshake across generations.
Steve: I think that's exactly right. That's a perfect way to put it. And there is that, AER/JPZ, not that you had to pick, but many people did. Because there was just a different sensibility.
Again, I always go outta my way to say there was nothing wrong with WAER. They have their own history and believe me they're doing fine. Thank you. But it was just a different sensibility and what you went to school for and what. Trying to get out of this. And that was the beauty of that.
As far as I was concerned. I learned just a ton. I learned how to handle people. As a program director, I had to, sit people down and say, don't bring your own records in, or whatever it was. And do it in such a way that they didn't get all annoyed or whatever. And they're the types of interpersonal things that I think I learned too over the couple of years that I was there.
JAG: It's really interesting in that the conversations I've been having with so many people that the equipment was different. Maybe the building was different, maybe it was a computer or a cart deck instead of a record player. But the stories are also similar through 50 years of this and that. And I called it a secret handshake because we all had so many of the same experiences, even if the colors of the walls were different.
It was such this common shared experience that we've all shared for 50 years. And again, all I had to do was reach out. I got your name from some of your classmates. We've never met before, had never had the pleasure of meeting you before, Steve. But as soon as I said JPZ, you're like, yeah, great. Let's do a podcast. So I really appreciate you taking a few minutes and sharing some memories with us and spending some time with us today.
Steve: No, it was just, it was great. It was great walking down memory lane for me. I really appreciate you reaching out and you are so right about that. And I'll just close with this.
That all these years later, again, I left Syracuse in 1987, left Syracuse, left school in about 1984, and the fact that these memories a come flooding back to me and the people. Like you said all these years later, they're like, yeah, Steve works at CCO in Minneapolis. Call him. There's just something to be said for that, and I think it's really special and I hope whatever happens and whatever equipment's being used, I hope that sense and that sensibility of JPZ never goes away.
JAG: All right. Steve Simpson, thank you so much for the time today. Take care.
Steve: Thank you, appreciate it.