Today's guest is one of many alumni who took the lessons of WJPZ and applied it to every job she had before and after graduation.
Tina Stoklosa is a Philadelphia native who was obssessed with the news growing up. The first in her family to go to college, she new Syracuse's Broadcast Journalism program was the way to go. And while TV was always her first love, the camaraderie of Z89 quickly pulled her in. She started doing a Saturday morning news update, and worked her way all the way up to news director. In between, she was filing live reports on WJPZ during the 1992 Election of Bill Clinton.
She did play in the "music" sandbox as well - "Tina T" did some on-air shifts, eventually working professionally in Syracuse.
Following graduation, she landed in northern Michigan, working for a news director who liked to hire Syracuse grads. She tells the story of how she transitioned into producing, got to bigger Michigan markets, before getting the chance to return to her hometown of Philly. First she worked at WPHL, before moving to WCAU, the station her and her family grew up watching.
Tina credits WJPZ for teaching her how to write news, among other lessons. And she has maintained close friendships throughout the years with her 1995 classmates. In fact, you'll even hear who's son she's a godmother to.
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. Today's guest is somebody I've never met before but was connected to me by the infamous Mike Murphy from the class of 95. She is one of his classmates, Tina Stoklosa. Welcome to the show.
Tina: Hi, how are you? It's so nice to be with you Jag.
JAG: Thank you for doing this. So tell me a little about yourself. We were talking offline, you're a Philly girl, how did you find Syracuse and then eventually the radio station?
Tina: I am a Philly girl, born and raised, and I always wanted to be a TV news anchor reporter. I watched the news for fun as a kid and then just stayed with that. I always wanted to do communications and broadcasting.
I went to an all girls high school in Northeast Philadelphia, and this was obviously before the internet. Where am I going to college? I thought I wanted to go to NYU. My mom said, you're not going to NYU, you're not going to New York City. I said, all right let me look around and let me look in this big book about what colleges offer.
And I got on a page about Syracuse University and they had a major called broadcast journalism. And it wasn't communications, it was broadcast journalism. And that was so specific. That's what I wanna do. That's where I wanna go. First person in my family to go to college. My dad is an immigrant from Poland.
So this was a whole, I had to navigate this on my own. And they were very supportive and agreed to make one road trip to Syracuse. We checked out Newhouse and that was it, and got in and here we are. So I really have no regrets. I really enjoyed my experience immensely except for the snow.
JAG: Of course, yes.
Tina: It was a great four years.
JAG: So you were one of those, you stepped on campus as a high schooler and you were like, yep, this is it?
Tina: Pretty much, yeah.
JAG: Okay. So you get to campus and how did you find out about WJPZ?
Tina: I never wanted to do radio. I never had radio on my horizon. I wanted to be, like I said, a TV anchor reporter. Which I laugh about now. But I saw that WJPZ was looking for people to join their radio station. So I went to a meeting pretty early on and, found out that I was gonna do my first on-air newscast, like one of the first Saturdays of the semester freshman year, I couldn't believe it. I'm like, oh my G-d, I'm gonna be actually be on the radio. I was going crazy. This is incredible. As nervous as I can be, I show up, I write my little newscast thinking it's the greatest thing in the world and I ended it with, and now here's sports with Mike Murphy.
JAG: Ah, yes.
Tina: Mike Murphy was the guy I tossed to for our first newscast and sportscast together, JPZ in September of 1991. And we're still great friends. It's crazy.
JAG: It's funny how friendships get forged in that little dingy radio studio and that all hours of the night and all hours on a weekend morning as well.
Tina: Yes. It was really dingy back then too, but it was great. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that they gave me the opportunity to do this so quickly in my college career. It was pretty awesome.
JAG: Was there a little bit of a news rivalry with WAER as well, or was that mainly on the sports side?
Because I feel like there was some of that on the sports side of the totally different vibes of both radio stations.
Tina: There was definitely the sports rivalry. I don't know. I don't wanna say anything bad about anybody at this stage of the game, but I just felt like we were more accepting for all, let's just put it that way.
We accepted everybody and you didn't have to fit certain criteria or pass a test per se, or who you know, and this kind of connection, like we just took everybody and I think it was great. My roommate who was a com design major, and she's a graphic artist now. I got her sophomore year to do some reports. She never wanted to do this. She just did it for fun. It was just a great atmosphere.
JAG: I had somebody once on a previous episode of the podcast refer to us as the island of misfit toys.
Tina: That's pretty accurate. I like that.
JAG: So take me through your time at the station. What did you do
Tina: there? I started out as a news person. I dabbled in a little bit of sports. I became friends with a lot of the sports guys, who still to this day are some of my best friends in life. And, that wasn't really my comfort zone, but they helped me out. And I covered the 92 Election when Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States and did a live report that night on election night.
So that was pretty cool. Somebody actually shared that air check with me pretty recently, and I couldn't believe how I sounded like Minnie Mouse that night.
JAG: Where were you broadcasting? Were you in studio or were you out on location?
Tina: I was in studio. Okay. And then I became a DJ as well. Tina T was my on-air name, which is funny now because my married name's initial, it begins with a T. So it's just silly how I was Tina T back then.
JAG: It was Fate, it worked out.
Tina: Yep. It was Fate I guess. And then end of sophomore year was elections for news director and that was, news was my passion. I always wanted to do news. I never really wanted to do radio, but I really enjoyed it. And long story short, I became the news director for my junior year and I learned a lot. It was a great experience. It really was, it really taught me a lot. And some of those skills, have served me well. Even today. So it really was great.
JAG: I'm curious, we'll get into your career also in some of the lessons that you learned at the station. For those who have come back to the Banquet fairly frequently, the class of 95 is always the most well represented class. So many of your classmates tend to come back every year.
Are there people that you haven't mentioned yet that you could think about that that you made relationships with while you were at the station?
Tina: Yeah. And guess what? I've never been to a single banquet since. Can you believe that?
JAG: We'd love to have you next year.
Tina: Yeah. I always try to talk Mike Murphy into it and it used to be in February, which was television sweeps. Now it's an early March, and unfortunately life, happens and whatever. I would like to come back one year.
JAG: We all know that Syracuse, the first weekend in March was a hard sell for a lot of times. But I will say once you come once, it tends to become habit forming.
Tina: That's correct. That's correct. Mike and I are still good buddies. In fact, I am his son's godmother, which is really cool. And his son is now like 21 or 22, so that's a long friendship. My assistant news director when I became news director was Dave Voice, though. Also one of my really good friends still to this day.
We keep in touch. I keep in touch with Andy Wasif, Phil Soto Ortiz. Bill Abelson, Pete Gianesini is one of my dearest friends. He was never at Z89, but everybody knows him.
JAG: A friend of the station, for sure.
Tina: Yeah. He is a friend of the station.
JAG: Yes. And current president of the Syracuse Alumni Association. Just took over.
Tina: That is correct. That is correct. Ryan McNaughton and I worked together in my first TV job was in Michigan and Ryan ended up coming to Michigan too, and we ended up living in the same town, so that was pretty cool.
JAG: Where was that in Michigan?
Tina: So my very first TV job was as a, now they call them MMJ's in the business.
Multimedia journalists. Back then it was a one man band. Also a sexist term. One man band reporter. I was at the NBC station in northern Michigan. The TV market was Traverse City, but I actually covered the Bureau of Gaylord, which was like population 5,000, if that. And I lived above a toy store on Main Street in downtown Gaylord.
And I covered basically the tip of the Mitt. And if you're in Michigan you know what that means. Girl from Northeast Philly thrust into a job in northern Michigan where the newspaper came out once a week and I had to find my own story every single day in a bureau, which was my apartment, an hour and a half from the TV station.
JAG: Wow.
Tina: Needless to say, I'm now a producer.
JAG: How long were you in the Northern Lower Peninsula?
Tina: I was in Gaylord a very short time. I was a reporter for only a few months and then, small town tv, so the news director who hired Syracuse grads and I took this job basically because the last week of senior year as I was scrambling to put my resume tapes together on a VHS tape.
The late Don Edwards called me into his office and he said, Tina, I have one of my good friends here. He is the news director in Traverse City, Michigan, and let's call him up right now. I was like, not ready for this. What's going on here? I'm like, Professor Edwards, I'm still working on my tape, puts him on the phone.
And wonderful guy by the name of Mike Conway and spoke to him on the phone and he liked to hire Syracuse grads, and he said, send me your tape. So I'm like, okay, sure. I have it ready. Absolutely. It's ready right now. Scrambled to finish that up and sent it out. Sent out like maybe a hundred tapes.
And that was the first job that I ever got in tv, that very first tape I sent out. He hired me. He was a great guy. He unfortunately got let go. Our 6:00 PM producer at the time was having an affair with the married General manager and stepped down for personal reasons, so they needed a 6:00 PM producer.
Long story short, that became me. So I moved from Gaylord, Michigan to Traverse City, Michigan. Didn't know what I was doing. Had a veteran anchor team who really helped me along the way. And made some great friends there. Was only there for a very short time. Ironically, that 6:00 PM producer that stepped down for personal reasons, right after the news director was fired, became the new news director.
Yeah, very funny. Everyone's yeah, I'm gonna leave. I'm done. And I'm just like yeah, me too. I don't know what the heck I'm doing. Like I really, I never wanted to be a TV producer. I wanted to be on the air. I wanted to be doing this, I wanted to be famous, blah, blah, blah.
JAG: We you at least able to enjoy summers in Traverse City, cuz it really is beautiful up there.
Tina: Beautiful. Summers were beautiful. Yeah. I started there in August. I started in Gaylord in August. I moved to Traverse City in November. And then I got a phone call in February from the CBS station in Saginaw, Michigan. Hi. I heard you're a great producer. We're looking for producers. I was like, is this a prank call?
I've literally been producing the 6:00 PM newscast here for three months. I didn't know what I was doing. Fake it till you make it, right? Yeah. So I came down for an interview got hired, doubled my salary, so then I moved to Saginaw, Michigan. So I was in Saginaw for a year and six days.
JAG: The big city, Saginaw at that point!
Tina: Big city. It was Bay City, Saginaw, Flint, Midland was the market. So that was a whole different Michigan experience. It was never my dream or destiny to stay in Michigan. It was honestly my dream to come home to Philadelphia. And I did that, like I said, a year and six days later, I got hired by the Tribune station at the time, WPHL TV, Channel 17.
JAG: You're like at that point, my math is right, like mid-twenties and you're already back home. Major market producing news.
Tina: I was 23.
JAG: Wow. Yeah.
Tina: I came home at 23, which is incredible. Yeah. I came home at 23.
JAG: That speaks to your abilities as well, to pivot from being on air to being a producer and to get noticed and to really be able to make that leap to a major market at that age.
Tina: Yeah, and I wouldn't have done that as an on-air person, I think. Producers, if they know what they're doing. Which at the time I really didn't think I did, but apparently somebody thought so, they were in demand and a lot of newsrooms at the time were very producer driven shops.
So that was my deal. And I stuck with it and I never turned back and. Thought, what if, this was just, it clicked for me and it fit in a way that maybe the whole on air slash shooting your own video thing didn't fit for
JAG: me. So do you feel like you're able to relate to the talent better because you did have some of that experience as an MMJ, as we'd call it these days?
Tina: Absolutely, a hundred percent, because I know what it's like to be out in the field and I was never on the air in a big city trying to fight microphones at a press conference. I was out there, I know how long it takes to get from point A to point B because I was driving a heck of a lot, with my camera and my gear and my separate, everything was big and bulky back then with the three-quarter inch tapes.
And a separate tape deck with a separate camera and the, it was not fun. It was definitely a big learning experience for me.
JAG: So what have you done in your time in Philadelphia?
Tina: I worked at PHL Channel 17 for five and a half years. I started as weekend producer, then became weekday producer, then became executive producer, and then it was just time for a change.
The station was great. I made some of my best friends there that I still am friends with to this day, but it was a small market type station in a big market. So it was time for me to move on. When I was in college, I interned at WCAU TV, the NBC station. It was CBS at the time when I was in college, it was always the station my family and I grew up watching, and people in Philly and you make connections. And I was hired there September of 2002. So I've been here for over 20 years, which is crazy.
JAG: And what's your current role?
Tina: I am currently the senior producer here of a lifestyle and entertainment show called Philly Live.
It's a big change from what I was doing, I was strictly hard news and doing all the shows and dealing with all the breaking news, and I still do that to an extent, but now I'm involved with a lifestyle entertainment integration shows, we make some significant cash for the station as well. And we get to do a lot of fun, creative things and at this point of my career, it really came at the right time, so I'm very happy.
JAG: Do you feel like there's more of an appetite for that type of show now where people can get their headlines on their phone in about 10 seconds when they wanna know what's going on in the world, as opposed to waiting for traditionally the six or 11 o'clock news and you're able to do something a little bit different? Do you feel there's more appeal in that in 2023?
Tina: I think there is. I think we have the right type of clients that wanna spend money and get their product or their clients on a TV newscast in a tasteful way. We make it happen. I think it helps that I have such a hard news background so I can weed out the BS from the stuff that actually would be a good story and how to tell a good story and the right people to talk to and not the right people to talk to and what to feature and what's gonna look the best.
So yeah, I feel like everything that I've done so far, including radio, has led me to this role because, radio, I never really wanted to do radio, but I learned in radio how to write. Because you don't have the pictures that you have in tv. You have the words. So that's something that I really learned from radio is that descriptive writing that I think has carried through with me all these years.
JAG: Being the great producer you are. You're perfectly segueing me into my next question, which is...
Tina: You're giving me a big compliment here. You've never seen one of my shows. Have you?
JAG: You've been in Philly this long. I'm pretty confident in your skills and if you, especially if you were trained at WJPZ.
At JPZ, you've said it a couple times now, you didn't plan on doing radio. You weren't interested in radio, you learned the basics, you learned writing. What other lessons did you learn at the radio station, whether it was, managing the news staff as news director or anything along those lines?
Tina: So I say I never wanted to do radio. but while I was there, I did dabble a little bit in AER. Cause I spent the summer between my junior and senior year up in Syracuse to work. Okay. Because I got a job at B104.7, today's hot new country. I was an on-air talent there making $6 an hour working overnights and I decided to stay up there cuz I figured the experience that I would get that summer would be great.
In addition to everything else I was doing, I was an intern at WTVH. Which was Channel 5 at the time. I was actually Tracy Davidson's intern. If anyone listening remembers Tracy Davidson. And I've had the pleasure of having her as my colleague here at NBC 10 for all of my 20 plus years. You never know who you're gonna work with.
I knew her since I was, I mean she remembers when I turned 21 and we still work together. She came here first. She was in Syracuse. She's from Central New York and came to Philly and I came to Philly a couple years after she did, and we still worked together. So it's pretty interesting. But back to radio.
So I was an intern at TVH that summer. I worked at JPZ. I worked at WAER as an announcer for like their jazz stations, cuz my good friend Eric Cohen, who people listening may know, worked at WAER for many years as a jazz announcer. And helped get me in there. And then I was at the country station, so I did a lot of radio and then outta college, I was trying to get a TV job.
It took me like three months and I thought it was like an eternity. Oh my God, I have this college degree and what am I gonna do? And so I did a little bit of radio stuff in Philly, like I worked one summer at Q102 in Philadelphia. Brian Lapis actually helped me get that job. Yeah, that was the summer after my freshman year.
Cause I met him at the Banquet. Maybe I should go to a Banquet. Anyway. See, so yeah, I guess just like all those different experiences and honestly the different formats. Like I know nothing about country music at all. I again fake it until you make it.
JAG: Were you also Tina T on B104.7?
Tina: No, I was Tina Tyler, and I tried to do a little southern drawl and that kinda back fired on me one time.
JAG: Your a Philly girl in Syracuse doing a southern drawl.
Tina: It wasn't really southern. I dunno what it was. I thought it sounded good, but then I listened back and I'm like, wow, it really did sound like Minnie Mouse
yeah. Good times though. Honestly, I don't know if I just answered your question, but I think just drawing upon all of those different media experiences, so having the, a lot of radio backgrounds and honestly TV people are, TV people, some of them are great and some of them. It's just, radio people don't care what they look like. So it's a whole different, you know what I mean?
JAG: It's why I always loved radio.
Tina: It's a whole different type of personality and person that you get to know and I always said radio people have hearts of gold and TV people don't always have that. But ultimately, as I look back, it all worked out. Somehow.
JAG: Absolutely. Are there any funny stories you remember from your time at JPZ that you still can call Murphy or whoever from your classmates and look back on and laugh?
Tina: I'm sure Murphy has told stories about me. Probably something to do with prank calls. He used to like to prank call and got me in some weird prank call thing once that I honestly took myself too seriously and probably didn't handle the right way. Oh, there were some prank calls and. I don't know.
JAG: You're begging me to ask a follow up question here as to what was going on here.
Tina: He probably told the whole story. I don't know if it's worth repeating, cuz I don't wanna name people's names. But you know what, I'll say this. There were experiences that I learned from definitely good and bad at the station, and sometimes I just realized I needed to lighten up.
Like I took myself very seriously. Spent a semester, fall semester of my senior year in Madrid, which was great. Came back and I think that was like, all I took a break from all of this, like highly competitive, you have to do this to get a job and kind of stopped and smelled the roses before graduation and it all worked out.
I have to say I went to an all girls high school and the last thing I wanted to do is go to college and join a sorority. I really just wanted no part of that and I feel like I found my place at WJPZ. That was my little fraternity slash sorority. Most of my friends were sports guys, honestly.
And I realized that guys are cool to hang out with and I dunno.
JAG: You never had that experience prior.
Tina: Yeah, I didn't have that in high school. Like girls are ugh. I have great girlfriends, don't get me wrong, but the guy friends that I meet in college that I'm still great friends with to this day are like family to me, honestly.
If I ever needed anything from any of them, I could call them in a second and I know that they'd be there for me and that's pretty awesome.
JAG: And it's funny, as we've been chronicling 50 years at the radio station in this podcast, you're hitting on two themes that have just come up time and time again, whether we're talking to alumni from the 1970s or from the 2020s, and that is that for many of us, myself included, didn't do Greek life because JPZ was either our fraternity or our sorority.
That was our people, that was our home, that was our vibe that we found. And then just making those lifelong friends. You've mentioned several in the podcast today, Tina, that there's just something in the air at that radio station where being, long hours with these people, that it's a bond that really seems to last a lifetime.
Tina: Yeah. And when you look at the grand scheme of things like, that was only a few years, like I think of all the, little reunions that we've had over the years for weddings and baptisms and birthday parties. And trips and many of them sporting events. I've always loved sports. And they've come to Philly and we've gone to games. Ask Mike Murphy about a Phillies doubleheader when the Phillies were awful. Awful playing at Vet Stadium and Tina, we're gonna go and we're gonna sit there for the whole double header. And I think he was there probably for eight hours at the Vet. All kinds of things that we've just done through the years and just, trips we've taken together, meeting up like road trips.
It's been a great experience to have those guys as my friends. It really has been. I'm really lucky.
JAG: I think that's a great place to leave it. Tina Stoklosa, Class of 1995. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Tina: Thanks Jag. Appreciate it.