Note: Thanks to Newhouse Professor Tina Perkins, WJPZ Class of 1993, for editing this episode of the pod.
Sue Mandel and Rob Weingarten may be the first marriage to come out of WJPZ. Members of the Class of 1985, they met on campus when they realized they went to rival high schools. In fact, in Sue's pictures of her high school boyfriends playing sports - Rob's often in the picture as the opponent! 35 years, several moves, and two kids later, he's still in the picture.
Today's WJPZ power couple were station leaders when we went to the FM dial. Sue's news department covered everything from the AIDS epidemic to the Grand Slam murder in Syracuse - yes, we have another Denny's reference in this episode. Rob's sports staff covered everything they could - including the high school basketball games of Felisha Legette-Jack, now the head coach of the Syracuse Women's team.
Sue decided she did not want to pursue the on-air route, so she got into the sales side of things, working remotely waaay before it was en vogue. Rob's sports career included work at WFAN, and helming sports stations in DC, St. Louis, and Tampa. He also began traveling for work - commuting to some of these gigs from Florida....as these Syracuse grads quickly fell in love with the Tampa climate.
Now, Rob works for the Gem Shopping Network - serving high end clientele with the hosting skills he first honed at WJPZ.
And you won't want to miss the story of an on-campus concert with James Brown, and what that had to do with New York State raising the legal drinking age to 21.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
Want to stay in the loop with WJPZ Alumni events? Subscribe to our newsletter on the right hand side of the page at http://wjpzalumni.org/
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. Excited to be joined by one of the first marriages, possibly the first marriage to come out of the senior staff of the radio station. Rob Weingarten and Sue Mandel from the class of 85. Thank you both for being here today.
Sue: Thank you for having us.
Rob: It's great to be here cuz we actually get to see each other.
We still spend a lot of our lives in different places.
Sue: That's probably the secret to our marriage, is he hasn't worked from home for years.
JAG: There you go.
Rob: Travel has been a key to our happiness.
JAG: So it was actually Phil Locascio from the class of 84 who suggested that I reach out to you, Sue, cuz you guys go way back, right?
Sue: Yep. Phil and I went to high school together. He's really probably the reason why I joined the radio station, cuz of his influence. He was a good friend. I visited him when I was a senior in high school. I don't think that's stayed with him, but he did introduce me to the radio station and then I introduced Rob after we started being friends first, in TCM 135, I think it was .
JAG: That's how they get you, Rob. They're bring you to the radio station first and then it goes from there.
Rob: Oh, it's funny too because how Sue and I met in class was strictly because I was wearing my high school jacket. We literally grew up 10 minutes from each other.
Went to rival high schools. So we knew a lot of the same people. We didn't know each other. She was like even showing me pictures of her high school boyfriends playing sports, and they're playing against me. I'm in the picture. Wow. She's here's my boyfriend. I'm like, oh, there's me.
JAG: Right Now you can pull up that picture and say, here's my boyfriend, here's my husband.
Sue: That was a little freaky.
Rob: I was already in the picture, quite literally.
I was literally in a picture and I'm still there, which is awesome.
JAG: I'm not sure which one of you wants to take the lead on this, but you were there as class of 85 at a really important time in the radio station's history.
This is, as the move was starting to happen to FM. Take me through the idea as best you remember as to how it actually happened.
Rob: It's such an incredible evolution. It's hard to really believe that a group of students was even able to pull this off. We talk about it now as history and it comes up again, banquet after banquet, and Rick Wright will tell the story and everything else.
When Sue and I first got there, there was a dilapidated house on University Avenue. With a makeshift studio and an antenna on top of Day Hall. That had the power of a Mr. Microphone. I don't know if you know that Mr. Microphone was a toy you bought as a kid, you could use the microphone to come outta your own radio at home.
JAG: I had one of those. Yep.
Rob: And, anybody who ended up in radio probably did. That's what we started with. And then between our freshman and sophomore year, the university was doing maintenance. They tore the antenna off of the top of Day Hall and we had nothing. We were literally the background noise on the cable information channel for university television.
It was the only place you could hear us. I think that's the real testament to everybody who was on Sue's staff doing news, my staff doing sports and the entire music staff. Because you were literally doing it for nobody. It was absolute practice. Then, Bob Flint and Mark Humble and Eric Fitch.
Through Chris Mossman, it's a two and a half year process really starts that process of acquiring the FM signal. I still can't believe we pulled it off.
JAG: Sue, anything to add to that?
Sue: No, I agree with everything. The house that we started out with was probably not safe for us to even be broadcasting from.
Rob: But you had the rats as an audience. Even if nobody was listening, you knew there were rodents listening to you perform. So there was always something.
Sue: And we would go there in the middle of the night when you think about it, now, I wouldn't let my kid go there. And we did. And we showed up and we broadcasted and it was really a practice.
That's exactly what it was learning how to do.
Rob: Do we have that picture of me with a Daily Orange walking to the house when there. 30 inches of snow, outside? And I was still gonna show up to do my sports cast. I look worse than an Eskimo. 18 below outside. But that's what we did for the longest time.
We were performing it for nobody and then all of a sudden we really had an audience. It was incredible.
JAG: The move to FM, you started the studio, that was when you moved to Watson, right?
Rob: Yeah, we had moved into Watson Theater and started broadcasting from there a little bit prior to getting on FM okay. So we had the nice studios and then the FM signal came along just a little bit after.
When we got the Watson Studios, they were a blessing and what Fitch and his team were able to do and build for us there is actually nicer than some of the first places I worked.
JAG: Definitely, I think that's true for many of us that worked in radio.
Rob: When I got to my first radio station and the board was actually older and more dilapidated than what I was used to and it's wow. Yeah, we had it really good there. By the time we wrapped up.
JAG: And I gotta imagine, Sue, your news staff probably expanded pretty vastly when you've had some real dedicated people in the old place and now you've got this brand new place and you're on FM. Then people must have wanted come outta the woodwork to be on the air.
Sue: It's funny cuz I remember like recruiting people, I was an RA. I recruited the kids on my floor. It's constantly be recruiting. Are you in Newhouse? Are you interested? One of my favorite people was part of my floor and just met great people and recruited them and they became dedicated people. Jennifer Ludden was one of the people on my staff.
She's at NPR now. Dorian was on my staff. Julie Arden. Everybody is being in all kind of facets of broadcasting over the years, and it's stuck with them.
JAG: So how did you two go from being friends to more than friends? They're both nervously laughing and looking at each other.
Sue: I thought he was cute.
Rob: She took these really great notes in class and I had a history of sleeping in class.
I really needed her. I had a class, prior to TCM 135. With somebody else who Sue knew. So I'd walk over to the class with this guy, Greg, and we ended up sitting with Sue. And then one day after class I throw the jacket on and then we started being friends. And then eventually I asked her out. It wasn't that long.
It was in the fall of our freshman year. It was out, it was October 18th.
Sue: 16th.
Rob: 16th.
Sue: Who's counting?
Rob: I inscribed that date on the inside of my wedding band, so I wouldn't forget it. University Union was showing No Nukes and I never miss a Springsteen event. So we've been together ever since.
JAG: That's fantastic. Married how long, and kids?
Rob: Take Rachel's age. Oh, you don't give Rachel's age either half the time! But 10th Rachel's age and had 10. It'll be our 35th anniversary in May.
Sue: And we have two kids. We have a son who's 28, and a daughter who is 24.
JAG: Excellent. So tell me about each of your career paths since graduation. For those of the alumni who don't know you,
Sue: I quickly realized. He was more talented than I was.
Rob: And she is so wrong about that. She was such a good hair talent. Phil will tell you that anybody will tell you that she could have been on the Today Show without the scandals.
Sue: I didn't love it enough to cover community events and be up in the middle of the night, two in the morning.
And I just felt yeah, if we were gonna travel, we were gonna be together, it would be for him. I decided to just get into the business side of the business and in college I started interning at an ad agency and then eventually my path took me through different ad agencies, supervisor, and then I went into sales.
In 92 because he got a job in DC and I needed to move from New York. And the only thing I felt would be comparable was a sales position. So I started selling advertising and that's what I've been doing ever since. Now I'm at a TV station. I'm the national sales manager for a station at Shreveport in Louisiana, working remotely outta my home.
JAG: Wow. And Rob?
Rob: Okay. Long sordid career through radio. 10 other careers too. Let's see how I can shorten this up for you. So after we graduate, I'm hell bent on being a sportscaster. So of course the first job I got was doing news. First radio station was 107.1 in New York, Howard Sterns, old Station, WRNW, which had just switched the call signs over to WZFM.
Moved out of the dilapidated house in the Private Parts movie into an equally barren studio that was on top of a bank in Pleasantville, New York. So I started there as a newscaster, moved to their morning show to do sports, and then got to go to their night show and I was the night DJ from the seven to midnight for about a year.
And that's all JPZ right there. Because I did news at JPZ for Sue occasionally, so I was ready to do any job in radio anyway. And this particular radio station I got to do all. They bumped me up to operations Manager. But while I was there, I started board oping weekends at WFAN cuz I was still, hellbent on being a sportscaster. That's who I was.
JAG: That's where you wanna be is WFAN!
Rob: And this is the very early days of WFAN. So I'm working there. I think I got to be on the air like twice, I'm working my way up, doing some weekend producing. I'm having a great time in. This is the real early days of sports radio, so it's pioneering stuff.
It's never been done before, right? We could literally do whatever we wanted and I got to work with guys who would go on to become legends, so it was great. But while I was there, a couple of the people who were part of the FAN family went to Washington DC to start WTEM, which was the first sports station in Washington, and I think at that time became the third or fourth, 24 hour sports talker to go on the air.
And I went in there as a producer and board op and within three weeks was the overnight talent. So I was the overnight talent there for about two years. And then of course they realized they were spending way too much money and I was part of the wipe out of half the staff.
JAG: Some things never change.
Rob: Something's never change, but fortunate things happen. I picked up a gig writing television news for a few months, and while that was happening, got the opportunity to go to Tampa to program a sports radio station that was rivaling a more established brand in town. And I went down there, took over the afternoon drive, took over the radio station, and we did real well with, which was 820 The Team in Tampa.
And then lo and behold, Clear Channel and Paxon Communications who owned us merged, forming a 16-station cluster. Eight stations had to get axed out and I woke up out of the job. One of the great things of all time, cuz we had won all the battles and we still somehow ended up losing the war.
JAG: That's radio for you.
Rob: Yeah, it's radio. It was a great run there. That was when Sue said, you can go do whatever you want. We are never moving again.
JAG: You fell in love with Tampa.
Rob: I love it here.
Sue: Not necessarily, but I fell in love with, having my kids have a stable place to live. Doctors, I had my job. Back then people didn't work remotely like they do now. Have your fun, but I'm not moving.
Rob: So now my options become a little bit limited. But I actually I got hired by Big League broadcasting to program 790 The Zone in Atlanta. And I went and did that for a couple of years and that was great.
They let me travel. Then they bought 590 KFNS in St. Louis and they said you're already getting on an airplane. It doesn't really matter where you go. Go program that one. So I've programed KFNS for a while and then after about a year and a half of that, it was time to come home and see my kids.
JAG: That's fair. That's fair.
Rob: And I was tiring of radio at the time. I had some good opportunities to go on to other markets, but that was done. I did a bunch of other things, but for the last 15 years, discovered that I have a knack for selling stuff on television. Been doing shopping's television for 15 years on boutique channels, and that's now almost as long as my sports career.
JAG: So you're selling specific items for specific companies or you're working for the networks? Paint that better picture for me.
Rob: The channel I'm with now is called Gem Shopping Network, and we just sell premium luxury jewelry to a very wealthy clientele I can't believe I'm doing this for a living. I can't believe I'm actually good at it.
It's a really successful place and it's been a great way to apply what I learned. People always say why are you good at this? I said, because if you're a good talk show host and you can tell the good story, you can pitch anything. You can sound like an expert on anything. So people think I know what I'm talking about and I managed to sell some stuff.
JAG: You mentioned doing news sports on air and then doing that in your radio career. I'll ask the both of you, what skills or lessons did you learn at the station that have served you well in your time since getting outta Syracuse?
Sue: You know, I didn't work with the sales staff at the radio station, but I've been doing that now for 30 years. I just, learned to really pitch things and make nice to people and just get people excited and interested in, and something that I have to offer, which is what we did at this radio station, pitched what we were programming, some of the events that we used to do like dance marathon and special events like that. How about you?
JAG: Yeah. Rob, you wanna jump in here? Anything else you haven't mentioned yet?
Rob: For me especially, it all comes back to the sports side. I was playing lacrosse at the same time I was at Z89. I'm a team guy. I was always a team sports player. As I've gotten older, I've gotten into golf and stuff, but when I was younger, I was never into individual sports.
I was always about the team. I always wanted to be in a team environment and there was no better team than the entire team at Z89.
Sue: That is true.
Rob: And my team within the team, the sports department just some incredibly great guys and we got to do so many great things. And that team concept that we all had there in pre-corporate radio.
That team concept was at every radio station you went to cuz you had a full staff that did everything. And I think one of the reasons I'm out of it now is because I never really adjusted well to the corporate culture. The corporate pods, all the syndication, eight people running eight stations, that didn't feel to me the same way that it did in the radio environment that I started in.
Z89 was the perfect prep ground to get into radio when we got into radio. But radio is a much different landscape now and I know that Z89 is preparing people for that as opposed to what soon I came out it cuz it was just a completely different universe.
Sue: And you felt like a family. We had the new staff worked well with the on-air of talent and the sports. I remember being part of the crazy morning crew and Dave Dwyer calling me the queen of ad lib.
Rob: That may be a been a little sarcastic.
Sue: That was very sarcastic, but I loved it. We were just like buds, friends, and it didn't matter. Then you got up at the crack and dawn. To go to the radio station.
It was just something you all worked together and I can remember senior staff meetings where we were like hacking out over the, even the senior staff of the following year, two, three in the morning.
Rob: There was always certain rivalries with WAER, but particularly for news and sports because that were the two departments where both stations had a full presence and a lot of the AER guys got to go on and be Sean McDonough. But they were so jealous of what we did on the Crazy Morning crew and how much fun we had and what we could get away with, and they were always asking me, can I do a couple of those? Because we were having such a good time. I've always felt better as a rebel and an upstart.
And that's who we were and that's what we did. That's why the whole thing about getting on FM is just such a great feeling to be able to pull that off. And for us to be able to do that at the time where the university took WAER over and just made him into a corporate public broadcasting station, there's no richer or better feeling.
JAG: And that's a decade before the Telecom Act happens in 96. It's funny to me because these themes keep coming up in the podcast. We're almost 50 episodes of interviews recorded in the podcast now already, and so many these themes.
Rob: Oh, so we were way down the list, huh?
JAG: It was chronologically whenever I could book you guys, but plenty more to come. There are so many themes that just keep coming up over and over again. Whether you graduated in 75, 85, 95, 2005, 2015, or you're gonna graduate in 2025. And that is the family of JPZ and that pull of when you first walk into that radio station and how you felt and yeah, you make a really good point, Rob, Sean McDonough.
Never heard of him. But Shawn McDonough is some guy, WAER had all these big names and prestige. You look on the walls and all the framed pictures at Newhouse. This podcast has shown not only have a number of JPZ folks, present company included, gone onto great things, but we had fun doing it.
There was that dichotomy of personality, and some people worked at both, and it worked out for them. For me, before I was even cleared to do a sportscast on the air at WAER, I was the chief announcer in charge of all the jocks at Z89. Those were my people. That was the fun, that was the family that I found at Syracuse, and you hear these stories repeated throughout the generations.
They echo of this atmosphere in this amazing place that is JPZ any folks that we haven't mentioned yet that come to mind that you've made friends with and stayed in touch with over the years? Either one of you?
Sue: Oh, yeah, so many.
Rob: Tons. For us especially, we live about 30 minutes from the Mossmans. Chris has been incredibly close to both of us, but particularly me forever. And now we still go to concerts together and the difference is instead of tailgating and getting high before the show. We now catch the Early Bird together in Florida, . And after an early bird dinner, we go see some act that's now 75 years old, but we're still loving it.
JAG: Old Country Buffet for the win.
Rob: Always, but it's great to still have them around.
Sue: And my best friend is somebody I recruited to work at the radio station who just still my best friends to this day. So many people I have from Facebook. We have the Z89 people. We have college people, high school people, but so many.
Rob: Bokoff only lives an hour from us and if he ever gets off the cruise ship, we're gonna get together.
He's always on vacation.
Sue: And we started the alumni association in our apartment in Scarsdale.
Rob: There you go. That's right. We did do that. Yep. We don't participate in the alumni association anymore, but we were there at the beginning of it.
JAG: Love it. Tampa's nice this time of year, why wouldn't you wanna come to Syracuse in March?
Sue: First week in March when it always snows.
Rob: The last time we did a banquet who was inducted that year. It's about five, six years ago. The banquet is starting when we get the phone calls, then our flights to Florida are already canceled cuz of a snowstorm in Syracuse. We had to spend the entire banquet trying to rebook our flights cuz we both needed to get outta there for work.
And our daughter had a final. Syracuse in March.
JAG: I remember that year because my now wife came as my girlfriend. And that's by the way, unlike you guys who met at Syracuse. When you bring a significant other to the banquet, you know it's serious. You know it's probably going somewhere.
So the first year that I brought her was that year. Banquet starts, your phone is ringing. Oh, it's US Air. Oh no. This is how I knew she was a keeper. She said, here, gimme your phone. I'll give you my phone. I'm gonna go up to the hotel room. I'll wait on hold with. US Air for two hours so you don't miss the banquet and get to see all your friends.
I'm like, you are a keeper.
Sue: Aw, that's great.
Rob: And I'm sitting there I just started a new gig. I gotta be on the air tomorrow night. We gotta go make this flight work. It was still a great weekend. Even the people who were not close with anymore and just connected with through Facebook, whether it's Bob Flint, Mark Humble, Mary Mancini, they still feel like family.
And when we see each other, no time has gone by. Although when Sue and I walk into the banquet, everybody turns heads and goes, I can't believe she's still with him. She's still there?
JAG: How'd she do it? God willing that I'll be my wife and I in a few years. Before I let the two of you go. And thank you so much for coming on today. Any other funny stories you remember from your time at the station that we haven't covered? In a half an hour or so here?
Rob: There's tons. I know you talked with Chris and Phil and Bob about me being the guy out there driving around trying to see how far the signal went.
JAG: Were you going north or south?
Rob: I had the north. I had the longer night I put the car on 81 and I just started headed north. And of course we didn't have cell phones, so I had to find a payphone to call Chris and say, still got it! Yes. Still got it. All right. I'm up here in Fayetteville. It's a little spotty. We had an ulterior motive for that. We were trying to secure the rights to the Syracuse Chiefs.
Because WAER had lost them when they went public broadcasting. Triple-A baseball. This was the holy grail. Trying to prove to them that we had a viable signal, but unfortunately the timing just didn't work out. We couldn't get the station on the air in time. And that was one play-by-play opportunity we lost.
We always found ways to get play by play on the air. It blows me away that right now the Syracuse women's basketball coach is Felicia Legette. We did her high school games at Nottingham High School.
JAG: No kidding?
Rob: Yeah, because we would do anything to do play by play. So when they offered us the opportunity to do some girls' high school basketball, we ran out and we did it.
And it was her and she was great then. And then she came to Syracuse. So we ended up, while she was a player at Syracuse, securing the rights to Orangewomen's basketball. Cuz WAER didn't want it. She became the star player at Syracuse, led him to the NCAAs for the first time, and now she's the coach. So I just think that's really cool.
JAG: Really cool full circle story. Sue, anything that pops to mind for you? Whether it was being on the Crazy Morning Crew or anything else that from behind the scenes?
Sue: I loved the Z 89 Z Word of the Day. That was like my favorite. It's funny cuz Rob and I were talking last night and I was thinking about the stories that we covered.
We started covering the AIDS crisis. And then there was this Grand Slam breakfast murder that happened in Syracuse. Where a woman went to Denny's and ordered a grand slam breakfast, and that was the big news story of the year.
JAG: Hang on, let, I need to know more about this. So she got whacked while she was having her grand slam breakfast?
Sue: No. She whacked her husband after having Denny's Grand Slam breakfast. And that was the big trial.
JAG: So she had the breakfast, then killed him, didn't kill him, then celebrated at Denny's.
Sue: I think she killed him, and then went to Denny's afterwards.
Rob: This is why I've never gone to Denny's ever.
JAG: You should have gone with the moons over my hammy.
Sue: Yeah. I remember we went to find out what this grand slam breakfast was all about.
Rob: I won't order a grand slam breakfast for that reason.
Sue: It was a great training round. It really was. And a lot of my staff went on to be in news, unlike myself.
JAG: It is interesting when you think about the big news stories that coincide with different generations of Z89 and JPZ folks. You had the AIDS epidemic, right? Not long after you graduated, unfortunately, was Pan Am 103.
Sue: Exactly. It was two years after we graduated.
Rob: You had to report that they were raising the legal drinking age in New York to 21. We were the last ones to come in with an 18 year old drinking age.
Sue: That's true.
Rob: It was our senior year that it shifted to 21.
JAG: And you guys are like so long, suckers!
Sue: Exactly!
Rob: Forced the University to close the Jabberwocky, which was probably the best bar and club for music in Syracuse. Cuz the university decided we shouldn't be in the student run bar business if the students can't drink.
So the Jabberwocky we blew all of the money they had in the promotional account. We got James Brown to play the last night, which is probably the greatest night of my life.
Sue: Wow!
Rob: In a club that fit about 500 people. If you stuffed it, James Brown closed it out.
JAG: That is incredible.
Sue: A number of us used to go there for happy hour after our shift.
Rob: And oldies night. Because it was literally right across the courtyard from Watson Theater.
Sue: I remember sharing a many a drink with Phil Locascio there, and even Mark Humble.
Rob: And it only took one Jabberwocky drink, which was a very healthy cocktail, to knock both Sue and Phil out. Neither one of them can hold much liquor. The Jabberwocky. Mackie did them a solid.
JAG: The names change. Some of the stories stay the same. For my class in 02, it was Darwin's and there was a drink they called the Electric Gatorade. Same idea.
With stiff drinks and James Brown that is a great place to leave it. Sue Mandel and Rob Weingarten from the class of 85.
One of the first, maybe the first great love story in the history of WJPZ. Thank you both so much for coming on the podcast.
Sue: Thank you so much for having us.
Rob: It was great. Thank you.