**
- My name is Michael Scott Shannon.
I'm a radio programmer and radio deejay.
I'm standing in 333 Meadowlands Parkway
in Secaucus, New Jersey. Why?
Because this is where the story began.
- Serving the universe.
- Good morning, everybody.
- The top of the Empire State Building.
- It's on the air everywhere.
- WHTZ.
We're going from worst to first.
- Z100, babe.
- Top hits. - Pop/rockin'.
- Z100! - They did it.
- They've gone from worst to first.
- They went from worst to first. - Worst to first.
- The winning formula is wild and wacky.
- Happy birthday. - You made my monkey weird.
- Z100!
- Z100, New York.
[ "Wanted Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi playing ]
- * All right
- Every kid dreams of being heard on the radio.
I was driving across the Driscoll Bridge
in New Jersey on my way back to my parents' house
and I was alone and it came on
and I started to drive fast and turned it up louder,
hoping to really to get pulled over
just so you could tell the cop, "That's me on the radio!"
* Wanted
- * Wanted
- * Dead or alive
**
- It was the summer of 1983.
Back then, the radio ratings
came in on the Associated Press Newswire.
People would stand around the machine
waiting for it to come off.
If we had taken this format,
if we'd taken this show to Des Moines, Iowa
or to someplace out in Kentucky, we would have had a great shot.
I see the number one station, the R&B station, WRKS.
I didn't expect to be in the top 10.
So I look down in the next 10, no Z100.
- But in New York, we're going against the best.
- And I get down to like 40 and 45.
- The biggest radio stations had a reputation that went back
20, 30, 40, 50 years.
- There are stations from Philadelphia
that are leaking into New Jersey,
but just had enough listeners to get in the ratings.
- A good rating is somewhere like over five close to a 10.
- And at number 51, W-H-T-Z.
- We had a two. A two rating is lousy.
- We were in last effing place.
I went home that night. I couldn't sleep.
My wife said, what's wrong? We suck. That's what's wrong.
**
- In 1983, I was vice president of radio programming from
Malrite Communications Group based in Cleveland, Ohio.
Malrite's chairman and CEO was Milton Maltz.
One day he popped his head in my office and said,
"Jim, we're going to buy a new radio station for New York City.
"Just outside the city limits
just across the river in New Jersey."
And that radio station had the approval of the FCC
to move its tower and transmitter
to the Empire State Building.
Now it was time to go find just the right person
to oversee the programming,
the talent, and the marketing of the radio station.
This person had to be just a little bit screwed up
because they were going to take on the biggest
broadcasting companies in the world,
and that person was in Tampa, Florida.
[ Static ]
- General on the Q Zoo, final chapter.
- Today, it was a time to cry. Scott Shannon was leaving.
- Some may say goodbye and good riddance.
- New York was calling.
- Well, for thousands, others,
it was an emotional, sad farewell.
- I really think that... [ speaks indistinctly ]
- Come on, ma'am, perk up.
- As co-keeper of the Q Zoo,
Scott Shannon bid final farewell to radio fans.
- Well, let's laugh right now, okay?
- He, indeed, will be missed. - And we'll miss him.
- Boom, I'm out of here.
- New York City was an impossibly saturated media market.
It is the toughest market in the world to break into.
If you want to be on radio in New York,
particularly in that era,
you were facing the giants of the business,
the Goliaths of the business.
- This guy kept calling me from Cleveland
and I had a stack of, you know,
those pink callback pads, you know?
So then I got a call from a buddy of mine
who is a program director, and he says to me,
"Why don't you call these people back in Cleveland?
"I just interviewed up there.
Then I realized that they kept asking me questions about you."
I said why don't you just call him?
And they said, "Well, we did, but he won't return our calls."
- And to come from the south with,
you know, kind of a funky accent.
I don't even know what Scott's accent is.
It was really a daunting task, to say the least.
- There are a lot of golden retrievers
in New York in the early '80s.
You had the traditional talk radio audience.
Listen to John A. Gambling at W-O-R.
And you still had WBLS and WKTU being very popular.
You had WPLJ,
which was a rock station with some pop tendencies.
You are WNBC, which had Imus in the morning,
Stern in the afternoon,
and really Top 40 music in between.
But those personalities were so powerful
that they overwhelmed the image of the station.
**
- Well, to understand what was going on in 1983,
you really have to go back to the mid to late 1970s
because a lot of very significant changes
in the media marketplace took place.
See, in 1974, when I started at WPLJ,
which became New York's dominant rock station on FM,
rock had a very broad definition.
It encompassed Led Zeppelin,
but also Carly Simon and Carole King
and Joni Mitchell the great Motown catalog.
Then came 1977.
Then came disco.
- * Oh, freak out
- And the rock community fragment.
- Basically, what wound up happening at radio
from the way I saw it was they could extract one lane
that they thought was really working,
and they could just format
a whole show or a station like that.
- * About the new dance craze
- I get out there and I got this really carefully
prepared presentation, you know,
so I could pass them out to all the goobers in the room.
And I play a tape of our morning show.
- * The Q Zoo in the morning
- This is Elmer Smud Pucker.
- * Shannon, Cleveland, Brooks, and Tedd Webb *
* Billy Bob, Phil, and Johnson's the latest man *
* Good morning from the Q morning Zoo *
- And finally, there's one wiseacre and he says,
"Well, what makes you think that you're ready
for the biggest market in the country?"
Then I just snapped, I don't need this job.
And I threw my little booklet at him
and I got up and I walked out.
So I'm at the elevator bank and out comes Mr. Malrite.
He's the guy who owns the company.
And he said, "Where are you going?"
I said, "I'm going home. I don't want to work for that idiot."
So he said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you're our guy."
And I said, "I got to make my plane back."
He says, "Oh, but you're still going to take the job, right?"
I said, "Yeah, yeah, I'll take the job."
Then I realized...
[ Horn honks ]
...I don't know anything about New York.
- Serving middle Tennessee
with 5,000 watts of fun power.
This is 7:30 in the... [ speaks indistinctly ]
Capital city!
- I originally met Scott in 1972,
when he was Super Shan at WMAK in Nashville.
- * Super Shan, WMAK
- I didn't know if it was him or Elvis
because he tried to look exactly like Elvis Presley.
He had big hair, that big chin, and he was bigger than life.
Privately, Scott is very demure and very quiet.
And as soon as that microphone goes on, he's on.
- Scott's passion is being on the air.
He will do anything to be on the air.
Scott was hired to be program director
of WPGC in Washington, D.C.,
the Marriotts own the radio station.
No disrespect to the Marriotts, but there were Mormons.
They are Mormons. They're still Mormons.
The Marriotts didn't like him on the air.
You know, they basically said to him,
we don't want you on the air.
Scott was driven out of the WPGC
because he wants to be on the air
more than he wants to program a radio station.
- WPGC FM and AM morningside. It's 12:01.
Good afternoon!
- The day he left to interview in Tampa,
he drove his car
to the Baltimore-Washington airport
and he gets on a plane and he goes, has the interview.
A few days later, he calls me and he said,
"Hey." I go, "What's up?"
"I think I left my car at the airport."
I go, "Okay, like in short-term parking?"
"No, I think I left it like up against the curb
in front of the airport and if I did, the keys are in it."
And he was hired for the morning show,
which was his dream, and that's when he started the Zoo concept.
- * Good morning from the Q Morning Zoo *
* Rise and shine with folks like you *
- So I teamed up with another guy by the name of Cleveland Wheeler
and I told him I had this plan to do this show
called The Morning Zoo,
and it had deejay shenanigans, craziness, parody songs,
crazy phone calls, just kind of a free-for-all morning show
that sounded like nothing was planned.
Two and a half years later,
we had the highest morning show ratings in the country.
- Shannon has taken Q 105 and made it
the number one station in Tampa.
He's won an award for being the top deejay in the country.
- Scott and I were working in Tampa, Florida.
He calls me into his office one day and he goes,
Nobody can know this.
And he proceeds to tell me
that he's developing a brand-new station
called Z100 in New York City and would I like to join him.
- I go in and I tell my manager, I'm going to have to go.
I got to go to New York. I signed a contract.
What? What are you doing? You're number one.
You're making good money and you just met a girl.
I said, I'm a try to see if she'll go with me.
- We weren't living together.
We were dating maybe a year.
I traveled to New York for business, which was great,
and I love to come to New York and go shop.
And I loved everything that New York City had to offer,
but was not an aspiration to move there and live there.
I was a southern girl, grew up in Louisville
and then was living in Florida.
- She did agree to go with me on my first trip
to New York City,
and that is another story.
- We flew into Newark and Scott's so excited.
There's tons of traffic and he's looking.
It's nighttime and he looks up and he goes,
"Oh, my gosh, look at that.
I'm going to be talking,
that city, that's New York City."
And I said, "Honey, no, that's Newark."
* I hate myself for loving you *
I definitely remember hearing the Blackheart stuff
and what it felt like
to hear your song coming out of the radio.
It's always -- I get a big kick out of it.
It's like, hear one of our records come on, I crank it.
**
Because that was the dream, you know,
when you're kid is being able to be in a band,
make music that other people want to hear
and actually get it played on the radio.
* I hate myself for loving you
- Serving the universe
from the top of the Empire State Building.
- When we made that transition on WPLJ
from a pure rock station to a Top 40 station.
- It's time to make a change, the people are changing.
Let's do it.
We were about to enter Top 40's
second golden age in 1983
and ready for our climb right to the top.
And then out of nowhere came Scott Shannon.
**
- Live from the penthouse studios of WWHTZ, the flame thrower,
it's a nearly famous, highly outrageous,
but never, ever contagious,
Z Morning Zoo! - Yeah.
**
- Along about the time I was 13 or 14,
my dad was transferred to this place called
Fort Benjamin Harrison just outside of Indianapolis.
And I ran into two new friends down the block. Two brothers.
And they had a big sister who loved music,
and she had this little record box,
had a handle on it and had 45s in there.
And one day we just got into it and I said,
"Holy crap, what is this?"
And it was rock and roll music.
It was love at first sight.
Or listen.
[ Record scratches ]
So every week, I would pedal my little Schwinn bicycle
down the road to this electronic store,
and he had a little record section
and I would go through there and pick out one or two songs
every week that a guy could afford.
I notice he got in some new radios and I said,
"What's that right there?"
He said, "That's a transistor radio"
So I had in my hands.
Oh, my God, I got to have it.
"I'll put it on layaway for you."
I said, "Really?"
"Yeah. You give me a couple of bucks every week.
When you get enough money, you can have it."
Finally got that radio and I took it everywhere.
I still have that radio.
Then one day, one of my friends tells me about WIFE radio,
the station we all listen to Top 40 for teenagers.
- * Indianapolis
* WIFE
- They have a big window
right on the street, on Meridian,
when you're going into the city
and you can stand out there and watch the deejay work.
I'd stand there and look through that window
and see the disc jockey with the headphones and microphone,
the records, the turntable.
I said, "Holy crap, that's what I want to do."
- Wait a second. Did Scott Shannon create Z100?
- That's what I'm doing the movie about. Boom!
And you're in it. - Holy shit.
- So this is gonna be massive, dude.
- I didn't even know that!
- The station was basically designed and planned
to be the successor to 77 WABC,
which was the huge New York radio station,
and it covered half the country from the '60s.
I even had a jingle cut that brought back memories of WABC.
Theirs was... * 77 WABC
Whee! Had this little chime time at the end.
And I had one made that went...
* Z100
* WHDZ
Whee!
I didn't sing it that good, did I?
- * Z100 WHTZ
**
- There was nobody doing Top 40 radio back in the day.
WABC, which had been doing it for years and years and years,
which is where I came from,
was now all talk and played no music.
- There were several attempts with a few stations
WXLO 99X, WWDJ in New Jersey.
They did not have the brainpower behind them.
They were just playing records, so they failed.
- There were openings for small -- well, at the time,
they're small niches, Hispanic stations, for instance,
niches that were not unimportant
and would continue to grow as time went on.
The odds of any mainstream format coming in to --
to become a major player in the market were minuscule.
- There was a segment of New York radio that had gotten lazy.
They just gotten kind of,
you know, we're number one, so it's okay.
There's enough money to go around for everyone,
there's enough audience to go around.
- I didn't like New York radio at the time.
There were no real sort of
adult contemporary stations at the time.
Obviously, the couple of the greatest R&B stations
in America were here,
but Larry Berger and PLJ were the the coup de grâce,
if you will, but it was soulless,
it was uninspiring, and it was ready for a takeover.
- So I walk into the fifth floor of the Meadowlands Hilton
and it was a beehive of activity.
But what stopped me in the middle of the room
there was this giant window
facing the Empire State Building,
and there was this mountain of a man kind of walking back
and forth matted hair, beard, khaki shorts, biting his nails,
talking to no one in particular, writing notes,
scribbling things furiously.
And this was Scott Shannon
planning out Z100 and the Z Morning Zoo.
- He got not only the soul of New York,
he got the beat of New York, but he also got New Jersey,
got Long Island, got Connecticut,
got all the surrounding areas, not just Manhattan.
- So I come up with this plan
because I really don't know the five boroughs.
Well, that's good because there's about 10 million people
in Long Island, another eight or nine in New Jersey,
and two to four million in Westchester and Connecticut
that picked up our signal.
I said, "That's what I'm going to do."
- He wanted to come up with music that he felt
could come and thread rock and rhythm and pop,
and the music was unlike any other mix at any
Top 40 had ever done.
It's at that point that I knew this was going to be something
that New York radio had never seen before.
- I'll tell you what, babe... [ speaks indistinctly ]
...hippest game in the city, baby doll.
I'm looking for the 100th caller.
I flew to New York City,
brought me over to this hotel Meadowlands Hilton.
It was a real dark room, and I couldn't figure out
why am I sitting in a room that looked like
it was just dark?
So he walks over and he turns the chair
against this big bay window and he goes, whoosh.
And he opens up this big bay window.
And it was the skyline of New York City
and goes, "I'm going to give you a microphone to talk to that."
Obviously, I knew Scott Shannon liked the song
"Hate Myself For Loving You."
I also knew there was a possibility
he would play the record, and we get this idea
to send a plane
with a tail over Secaucus.
And the plane says "Dear Scott play Joan Jett."
First day, the guy flies over the wrong part of Secaucus,
and Scott doesn't see the plane.
I'm having a heart attack.
- This is the room where it all started.
It was -- I don't know, it was a magic place to me.
I remember when we first were getting ready to go on the air.
I remember one day I'm standing here
and I'm just looking out the window
and all of a sudden, something hit me in the feet.
And it was our chief engineer, Frank Foti.
Rolled that little dolly out and he's,
"Huh, what are you doing?"
I said, "I'm just kind of soaking up the atmosphere, man.
I'm just -- I'm just feeling it."
I said, "Frank, I truly believe that radio history
is going to be made in this room."
He's still on his back and he said,
"Man, you just gave me goosebumps."
He said, "Let me get up there
and look out the history window."
Before we ever even signed on the air,
they were working on building a studio,
and I was promised by Mr. Maltz, Mr. Malrite,
that it would be a Rolls-Royce radio station.
So I went over to take a look at it one day
and I found out we weren't getting a Rolls-Royce.
We were getting a Volkswagen.
They had this fella in there and he said,
"You must be the new punk, Scott Shannon."
And I go, "Yeah, yeah, who are you?"
He said, "Well, I'm your boss.
I'm the chief engineer." I went, oh, boy.
And I got a hold of Jim, and I said,
"Jim, we've got a problem here,
"and unless I get another engineer in here,
I'm going to have to go back to Tampa."
I need somebody maybe a little hipper,
a little younger, someone who understands my language.
When he got through with the litany
of different engineers
that they had describing each one, I said,
"Is that all you got?"
And he says, "No, there is one more fellow,
"I don't know, though he's -- he's very hard to deal with.
"He sits in his office and cranks The Who up
at full volume all day long."
Well, is there another problem?
He said, "Well, he's a little crazy."
I said, "A little crazy?"
He said, "No, he's a whole lot crazy."
**
- I'd been told by some corporate folks,
they said, you were lucky to have worked around
some pretty intense people in Cleveland at WMMS,
which was the station I grew up on.
They said, Scott's like the people at MMS,
but on steroids.
- Next day, in comes Frank Foti.
Oh, my God, what a mess.
- And I hear this voice. So I go, "Is that Frank-o?"
Yeah, he goes, "Hi, my name's Scott Shannon."
- I told him, I want a radio station that pounds,
that jumps out of the radio.
[ Explosion ]
I want a flame thrower.
- * The flame thrower, Z100
- He said, "I'm your guy."
- The best way I could sum it up
is if I may borrow a phrase from Roger Daltrey of The Who.
You know, he's always talked about The Who's music
as somebody's punching you in the nose
and saying, I love you.
- It's like songs sound different on this radio station.
I don't understand how, but they sound different.
There's like a magic there.
From a technical standpoint,
the sound of the station was booming and loud,
and from an engineering standpoint, it was compressed.
It just sounded really, really cool.
- * It was only in my dreams
Well, my music started getting played, I was just like,
"Oh, my God, if I'm hearing this in my car right now,
like millions of people are hearing in their car, too,
to or in their bedrooms or the...
And it was really like this communal experience.
And I guess that's why it was so magical to me.
It just felt like a connectedness.
And I really put everything behind that dream
of being played on the radio.
* It was only in my dream
- I would stand right here
and then Ross Britain would be over here
and have the bells and the drums and all that stuff.
Claire Stevens would be back in the newsroom over there
and then she would move over here.
Jonathan B. Bell would be there until the stars came in,
and he had to move over next to Claire.
One of those Professor Jonathan B. Bell reports.
What's going on, professor?
- Well, we got lots of things
happening around town today, Scott.
I had heard about Scott Shannon before I actually met him,
and he had been described to me
as a nut case from Tampa, Florida,
who walked around wearing shorts all the time
and was somehow going to revolutionize New York radio.
And I thought, you got to be kidding.
- Scott came in not knowing anything about New York City,
and I think that gave him the edge.
He wasn't frightened by the city and intimidated.
You could tell he wasn't from these parts.
And I think that's what made him stand out.
He surrounded himself with a lot of caring,
trusting people who not only communicated well
with the audience, but they elevated him.
- 6:27 in the morning it's time for Claire Stevens.
- Good morning, it's 35 degrees at this hour.
- Well, I must tell you,
Scott Shannon meant nothing to me.
I was so new in radio and I was so naive
and I was working at this little tiny station
that was kind of isolated.
I got a call and they said,
"We were not able to get you in Scott's office,
"but my wife got you on our home radio
"and played it over the speakerphone
"to Scott Shannon.
How soon can you get out here?"
I sat in Scott's office and he's saying,
Well, you'll say this and you'll do that and bah, bah, bah.
And I'm going, "Time out."
I said, "Don't you want to interview anybody else?"
And he said, no.
"When I hear what I want, I know it."
- Yes, Ross Britton and Scott is going to be a rotten day.
Thank you very much. - I was a talk jock at WABC.
I started there when they were still music,
and then I was fired pretty much the week
that Z100 went on the air.
So I went over to Scott a couple of weeks later and I said,
"Hey, you know, good to see you. I'm looking for a job.
I know you have an afternoon opening."
And he said, "Nah, you're a morning jock.
No, I want you to work with me."
- So I get to the Meadowlands Hilton and I'm dressed up
like the former Madison Avenue person that I was.
And there he is with the big voice,
and he's Scott Shannon.
- And I said to myself, "This is a nut house.
"And the guy that's running the place is wearing
a Hawaiian shirt and shorts."
- Oh, my God, what have I got myself into?
- He was able to create deliberately
and hilariously dysfunctional family.
At the same time, it was an endearing family.
- Eddie Grant was a lead singer of a group --
- The Supremes. - Not the Supremes, you nitwit.
Let me take you to the production office
right here.
This used to be the home of the late J.R. Nelson.
J.R. would be here. He was a big guy.
He didn't take any crap from anybody, especially me.
And he had a little like a table here.
And then I would come back from lunch,
I have a bunch of notes on the napkin
that I came up with
while we were having lunch and maybe a cocktail or two.
And -- and I would say, turn the mic on, J.R.
Z100 wants you to help us go from worst to first.
We need your help.
And then he would put it to music
and sound effects and all that.
And then within 30 minutes, it would be on the air.
- Any broadcast or duplication of this material
without the expressed written consent
of J.R. Nelson Productions will cost you a fortune.
- With J.R. Nelson in sports the lion's mug, the Steelers,
the Cowboys beat the Cardinals.
The Giants are going to a one back offense
for the Raiders' game on Sunday, and Marvis Frazier doesn't have
much of a chance to beat Larry Holmes tonight.
So say the experts.
Z100 weather looks like this.
- Now in addition to the Morning Zoo,
which was crazy enough...
- The deejays here at the Z Morning Zoo are up
and getting ready to entertain you.
- * Heigh-ho!
- We also had deejays named Jack the Wack.
- Oh, Jack the Wack here getting ready to go commercial for...
- Hollywood Hamilton.
- At Radio Z100 with Hollywood Hamilton.
- Dr. Christopher Reid, Janet from another planet,
and one of the most incredible deejays I've ever heard,
Shadow Steel.
- [ Speaks indistinctly ] ...just about 5:00.
It's been a long, hot, nasty week.
I think it's time we kick this sucker
in the head and get out of here.
- But there was one other character who was very popular.
His name was Mr. Leonard.
- Mr. Leonard is sicker than a dog this morning.
- I apologize for trying to call up and guess
that I know I'm unintelligible, but I'm a desperate, Scott.
- He drove a lime green pinto.
He had a matching lime green leisure suit,
complete with cherry red shoes.
- What in the hell is Mr. Leonard doing? Leonard!
- Back there, weaseling around.
- The guy comes to work.
He's been in the control room one time since he's been here.
- And he was like the common man,
well, he was below the common man.
- Well, what about 8-3-7-5 on the telephone line?
- No, that's Tommy Tutone. - That was Tommy Tutone.
- Well, who the hell is this Tommy?
[ Laughter ]
- The problem was he had trouble waking up in the morning
and many times didn't even show up for work.
- Where in the world are you? Everybody's here.
- * Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday! *
- Hey, stop, stop all that. Where are you?
- What do you mean where am I?
I thought this was a holiday. It's our birthday.
- Scott was known to use the hotline.
He called me one day and he said, "Magic Matt,
"there was some dead air between commercial number three
and commercial number four."
And I said, "Not on this show. There wasn't."
I said, "You must have been listening to
our competition, WPLJ."
- He said, "Well, let me look at my digital.
No, says 100.3."
He said, "No, that's my --"
I said, "Absolutely not on this station."
I said, "I would never, ever commit a felony,
"such as dead air on Z100,
the biggest station in the world."
And he said, "Yeah, looked again. It says 1-0 --
That's Z100. Don't you [bleep] up my radio station."
Click.
[ Radio stations changing ]
- It's eight minutes after 6:00 a.m.,
August the 2nd, 1983.
[ Ring tone ]
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, radio station
WHTZ signs on the air.
WHTZ is owned and operated
by Malrite Communications Cleveland
and operates on an assigned frequency
of 100.3 megahertz,
with studios and offices in Secaucus, New Jersey.
Signing on the air,
this is WHTZ, the Newark,
the new Z100.
**
New York, it's time to wake up.
- The kids are telling everybody about this great new station
that was broadcasting from the top
of the Empire State Building.
- Serving the universe
from the top of the Empire State Building,
WHTZ.
- Live from the top of the Empire State Building,
the flame-throwing hot rocking Z100.
- Everybody broadcasts from the top
of the Empire State Building.
There's a master antenna on top of the Empire State Building
that all the stations share the rental on.
We're all there.
There was nothing unique about what he was really doing,
but everything unique about the way he was describing
what he was doing.
- Serving the universe from the top
of the Empire State Building. - Well, it's true.
- Every radio station comes from the top
of the Empire State Building.
- They give you the impression that they were broadcasting
from high on top of the Empire State Building.
But in truth, it was across the way.
But that is the plight of New Jersey, right, everybody?
We do all the heavy lifting
and get none of the credit for it.
They made of that nothing defy its geographic reality
and instead, transfer the whole ethos
to Manhattan, to the heart of Manhattan,
and then not only to Manhattan,
but to the -- to the gorilla building,
to the -- to the top of the top.
- We claimed the Empire State Building
and everything that emanated from the Empire State Building
over 27 counties in the New York metro area.
Our goal was to be larger than life.
- Serving the universe from the top of
the Empire State Building.
This is the new Z100.
And then there was a little pause
and then it was Scott's way of telling other radio stations
we were in town.
- Get out of our way.
- I couldn't believe it. This guy is crazy.
He's going after other radio stations in town.
He's literally calling them out
and telling them to get out of the way.
And here we come.
- Z100 was the rebirth
of that Top 40 mentality.
It existed on some of the AM stations,
but to have an FM radio station playing all the hits,
that was a novel concept at the time.
And PLJ and Z100 both basically did it
at the same time and created the ultimate radio war,
which for those of us who are students of it,
we were all about that.
- What station did we rescue you from?
- CBSFM. - Oh, my God.
- New York radio stations had indirectly referenced
other radio stations in the past.
In the '60s, famously WMCA and WABC, the good guys.
- * Ringing with the good guys
* WMCA
- They had a great rivalry going on,
but they never directly referenced each other.
When Scott started calling out other radio stations on the air,
particularly WPLJ,
he got phone calls from people saying,
"You can't do that, that's illegal.
Won't the FCC fine you for doing that?"
Said, of course they won't. It's not illegal.
- We always like to take personalities from the market,
not just radio, but, you know, everybody and make fun of them.
- Could you do us a favor? - Sure.
- Could you tell Roger Grimsby something for us?
- All right. As long as it doesn't get me fired.
- [ Blows raspberry ]
- When one of the ratings came out
and Imus had fallen in the ratings,
Scott offered to start a fundraising campaign
to bail Imus out of his -- of his problems.
- My friend Don Imus. - Yeah.
- Hey, watch this. Aah!
- Basically Scott is the ultimate radio attack dog.
He does his best work when he had a target and WPLJ
saw what was happening at Z100.
They changed the Top 40.
But it was a wimpier,
more corporate version of Top 40.
And so Scott called them what they were -- wimpy radio.
- What we suddenly faced
was like nothing I had ever experienced before.
- We have a radio station here.
They used to be album rock and roll station.
- Mm-hmm.
- And they changed their format recently
and their program director, Larry Booger has a song out.
It's called, "We're Going Wimpy."
It's their new call letters WIMPY.
We'll get that on right now.
Here's Larry and the Wimps and we're going wimpy on Z100.
- We did a skit about the program director of WPLJ,
and Scott said, "Make it Larry Booger."
And then it just went wild.
- They start their tape recorder just like Larry Booger at 5:59
so they don't miss a single second of the Z100 Morning Zoo.
- The name became so stuck to poor Larry Berger
that all around New York,
people were calling him Larry Booger.
- The audience loved it. The clients? Not so much.
- This television station has refused to accept
your commercial advertising for Z100.
- And it's breaking my heart. - Is it really?
Now there is a federal law that limits how much level
you can put into the transmitter.
And I know for a fact because I measured it myself
that our competition, WPLJ, that they would break that law.
It's called over modulation.
It would be like, you know,
speed limit's 55 miles an hour
and they want to drive 75.
Okay, you guys want to drive 75? We'll drive 75.
Well, Larry Berger was so competitive himself,
he had the technical measuring device on his desk
that would -- where he could look at Z100 and PLJ.
Well, one time he would -- he was looking at his monitor,
thinking we were breaking the law and he called me.
I had my assistant, Steve Pepe, go and flip some switches
so that his monitor would look all crazy.
He was like, "Frank, I got to call you back.
Something's not right here."
"Yeah, Larry, you're a dumb ass." And I hung up on him.
So there was a writer for "The Daily News"
in those days named George Maksian
and for whatever reason, he just wasn't a believer in Z100.
- George was a great guy, but he was old school
in his radio taste.
He loved John Gamblings.
So when when Scott started, he wrote a column about it
in which he pronounced the new Z100 to be vulgar.
- Coming home one day and opening up "The Daily News"
and seeing this article by George Maksian
saying I hope he has a roundtrip ticket back to Tampa
because this guy's the worst.
- My first comment says this product hillbilly from Florida.
Remember that? - Yeah.
- And he would write all of these negative articles on Z100,
and it would drive Scott crazy.
- Take his ways back to Florida.
- Yes, there's hope he's got a one-way ticket --
- Roundtrip ticket. - A roundtrip ticket.
- Go home. - Boy, I was broken down.
If you ask most experts or self-proclaimed experts,
it was destined to fail this hillbilly from Tampa
going to launch a concept that had worked in Tampa,
but hadn't worked anywhere else.
- And finally, I just got mad and said, I'll tell you,
I'll just show that idiot.
And he's still that. An idiot.
- So Scott made up these stickers that said,
"I break for George Maksian!"
So I hear it. Kenny Lane, get in here.
Go to the office. Sit down, close the door.
"I need you to do something with these. Go figure it out.
Earn while you learn. Figure it out."
- In a way it was --
It was kind of cool to have so many people
talking about you, even if it was bad.
- So I figure maybe I can go
put the stickers all over "The Daily News"
delivery trucks.
- The newspapers hated it.
- I see a guy who's sitting
by one of the trucks having a cigarette and I said,
"Excuse me, I've got some stickers here
for George Maksian."
- That guy's terrible.
- Do you think I can put them on some of the trucks?
- Other program directors hated us.
- I must've hit 20, 25 trucks.
- He's a horrible disc jockey.
- Now I see the door wide open
and I go in and it's a security guy sitting there
and I said, "I've got a package for George Maksian.
Can I drop it off?"
- The ad agencies hated us. - I go up to the third floor.
I find a couple of people who are up there working,
and I said, "Hey, I've got a package here
for George Maksian."
- He doesn't sound like New York.
- Would you mind pointing out his desk?
- Other deejays hated us. - First, I was thinking,
I'm going to put one sticker down, and then I thought,
Why do one? I've got a box of stickers here.
I don't want to come back with them.
- Everybody made fun.
- And I start putting them all over.
And I know when he comes to work in the morning,
he's going to see I break for George Maksian stickers
all over the office.
- You know how bumper stickers are.
You don't get them off as easy as you get them on.
- * Tell it to my heart
* Tell me I'm the only one
* Is this really love or just a game? *
I'll never forget when Z100 hit,
because there was this moment that I said, who is this?
And it was Whitney Houston. Who is this?
And it was Aretha Franklin.
They started playing pop music like I remember WABC,
but it was more than that.
It was polished. It was pure.
* Tell it to my heart, tell me I'm the only one *
- I wanted it to be about the music,
the music was the most important part of it.
And we were the conduit from the people to the music.
I wanted to have the people who made the music on the radio
talking about the music,
and I wanted our disc jockeys to know what they were playing.
Very few record promotion guys would bring us records.
We had to go buy our own records at Tower Records.
We couldn't get any celebrity guest on The Morning Show.
They didn't want to come to Secaucus.
They didn't know where Secaucus was,
and we had an intern by the name of William Brownstein.
William heard me complaining
about not having any famous people on the show.
He said, I can get you a guest, a famous guest.
I said, "William,
who do you know that could possibly be famous?"
He said, "Well, because every year
"I volunteer for the Jerry Lewis Telethon.
And here in New York, Tony hosts that and he likes me."
- * Whoa, tie a yellow ribbon 'round the ole oak tree *
- So Tony Orlando comes by.
He's our very first guest on Z100.
- I walk in and there's this energetic,
unbelievable young man
introducing me to someone who I already knew.
I knew Scott from being on the road when I had Candida out,
he was the first person to ever play a Dawn record.
Oh, my God, Scott. Well, come on.
Let's do the interview.
- Whether it was an artist or an author or an athlete,
they would stop at MTV.
They would stop at the "Today Show."
They would stop at "Good Morning America."
He and I sat down and we decided that Z100
has to become a destination for all things music.
- Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome, Mr. James Brown.
Good morning, Mr. Brown. - Ow!
- Z100 really was a major factor in what was
a really a renaissance
in a sense of a musical culture in the city.
'83, '84, '85 in the mid-'80s, then.
It was a catalyst.
You had this great music going on,
but Z100 brought it together in a way and a form
in a -- in a package that others had not.
- I have met a number of radio guys in my career
who -- their attitude was I don't care.
Is it a hit? Is it not a hit?
Is my listener going to care? Because I don't care.
You know, and that would break your heart
because you worked so hard to write a song,
record a song, promote a song,
and you go out there and the attitude was like,
what does it matter to me? It's all widgets.
So you needed guys that loves music.
You know, he loves the music,
and it doesn't have to be rock and roll.
But he also -- he gets the rock and roll thing.
He played new music, he played hit music,
and he would fall in love with songs
and play them no matter what the chart position was
at any given time, which was unique.
When you're really using the phrase to be a great
radio person, love of music allows you to be different
to not be totally predictable.
And for that contagious spirit to come through.
- One of the most amazing things for me is to remember the people
that walk through our hallways
and these people got up really early in the morning
and they came to Secaucus.
And I was promoting "Johnny Dangerously"
or "Wise Guys" one of the films,
"Would you go on The Morning Zoo?
Would you go on with Scott Shannon?"
I said, "Are you kidding me?" This guy wrote the book.
- Oh, my God, I got through finally, my first time.
- Oh, how do you like that?
Oh, it's your first time, I'm so excited.
- Stations like Z100 made me feel like
I had the freedom to do really experimental projects,
and if we somehow nailed it, that it would wind up on Z100.
We didn't -- we didn't -- we didn't try to say,
"Oh, let's make a Z100 record,
"let's make a record from our hearts
"that we think is really cool.
"And if they think it's cool, home free."
- When Z100, when those deejays, and they got behind it
and when people were pulling for you and pushing and --
and the radio was on fire for you,
you just never got higher.
Everybody was in it together. It was a beautiful feeling.
It took Top 40, Top 20 music,
and and turned it into a lifestyle.
You know, it became a brand. It was really interesting.
It was a marvelous time to be on radio and to break.
- You know, you're looking for signs.
Do I have a hit record?
Do I have a record that is not
just going to be a local or regional hit,
but do I have a record that's a national hit
that likely couldn't go --
let's say to the Top 10 of the charts.
So that in memory,
it's hard to think of a more important ad
than Z100, which says to you,
okay, you have a hit record.
When it came to my career,
you know, when I started to pay attention,
in essence, when I was born in 1983,
that's when I would pay attention to --
to what a radio station meant from a business standpoint,
not just, you know, a kid with his ear to the speaker.
And so the reach of Z100 was felt from coast to coast.
- It was a tough ad to get.
But if you got it and it went on the radio and it worked,
it was exciting and it was more exciting
because it wasn't cookie cutter, all of the same sound.
It wasn't all rock or pop/rock or dance.
It was the best of the best.
- If you were an artist and you know
that you wound up on the Z100 playlist
because that's what we all wanted to do.
We want to crossover because crossover means that the person
that you don't expect to love your music, loves your music,
and I don't care what people say.
If they tell you something other than this, they are lying.
They are lying. They are lying.
One of my fondest memories of going up to visit
with The Morning Crew was a Christmas special,
and I was in a sweater and a scarf.
And Michael Damien, who's still a friend to this day,
was up there and he was wearing a hat, a black round bowler hat.
And I said, "Oh, I love hats. Can I try that on?"
And took the hat off his head, put it on, walked out with it.
That was the black hat
that you've seen throughout my entire career.
It was given to me by Michael Damien on The Z100
Morning Show with Scott and the crew.
- We signed on the air in New York,
a brand-new radio station, a little mini radio station
that wanted to go from worst to first.
- So the next morning I get up, I go to work.
- He just went nuts.
- I don't say a word to the members of the Zoo.
Long about 8:00 I pull out that Associated Press
list of radio stations just rolled up.
I unroll it like this all the way down to the ground
and I'm gonna read them on the air.
- He was reaming out the entire team.
You know, this is not working.
You know, we got to raise our game.
We might as well just pack up our things and leave
and let the station go to dead air.
- I started reading from number one
and I get down to 20.
I said, "No Z100 and guess what? We're number 51."
I came here from Tampa, Florida, to build a great radio station.
And guess what? We suck!
- In the background,
you hear the little "Saturday Night Live"
Debbie Downer sound effects.
- I almost fell out of my chair. No one ever says that.
No one ever says you're doing poorly in radio.
- We are going to build a great radio station
and I'm talking to you, the listeners.
You have to get on board and help us.
- He recruited the audience to build our audience.
- You know, that's a genius.
- Scott said, send in your name and the name
of 25 of your friends that you have turned on to Z100.
- Let people know that this station is on.
Take out an old sheet, get a magic marker,
write Z100 on it
and a hanging out your window in Brooklyn, the Bronx,
Staten Island, Long Island, wherever you are.
We need your help.
- People would hang signs out their windows
and people were wearing their Z shirts.
If they had jackets, they had pins on them,
you know, for the station.
- They became our advertising agency.
- Take a piece of paper, make a homemade bumper sticker.
Put it in the rear window. "I listen to Z100."
I want our listeners to be a part of our trip.
We're going to play more music. We're going to play better.
We're going to give away the most money.
- You could win $20,000.
$25,000.
$30,000.
We will build a great radio station.
I promise you, I guarantee you it's going to happen.
- Then you hear the little "Rocky" music coming up.
- We're going from worst to first.
Nothing's going to stop us.
- So he got the audience on our side, made us the underdog.
- And long by that time,
I noticed Claire had already evacuated the room.
She was scared.
She thought I was having a heart attack or something.
John Bell says, "Your muscles in your neck are all stuck out.
You're okay? You need me to call a doctor?"
I said, "We're going to be fine.
We just have to go from worst to first."
- We're going from worst to first.
- And then he told all of us,
take a case of Z100 t-shirts,
put it in the trunk of your car, and every time you see somebody
walking by with one of those worst to first signs,
give him a t-shirt.
I drove through the streets of New York
and saw people hanging sheets out of office buildings.
"Z100 worst to first."
- We built that up step by step by running contests.
- [ Speaks indistinctly ]
$1,000 all day long, you're the second one today.
- And being at everything that went on in New York City,
you saw the Z100 can.
- We're at 51st at Avenue of the Americas.
It has tons and tons of t-shirts,
hats, buttons, and more.
- The fact that it was -- that it grew at this lightning pace
was a remarkable tribute to, you know,
viral growth at the time when there was no viral.
- This could have been the first viral campaign
10 years before the Internet even was invented.
- It showed a sense of determination,
a sense of ambition,
and people always root for the little guy.
It's just human nature.
It's the "Rocky" movie. That's exactly what Z100 was.
- Here is this new station
and we were doing something nobody else was doing.
This hodgepodge of people and personalities
that nobody had ever heard of who were suddenly challenging
the monsters of New York radio.
- And it wasn't just us.
It was the power of the people who love that radio station.
A great radio station has emotion, it has a soul.
And that day that radio station got that effing soul.
- It was a rant.
It was, and I'm sure, a calculated rant, of course.
- And next time, the book came out...
- What I have here are the advanced ratings,
and this envelope hot off the presses
has been hermetically sealed
in a mayonnaise jar
on Funk & Wagnalls' front porch.
Okay, here's the scoop.
[ Laughs ] They did it. They went from worst to first.
- Scott Shannon's next up.
- That's right, he's going to tell us how his station
went from worst to first.
- Scott Shannon's Morning Zoo took the station
from worst to first in 74 days.
- And in that short time
lived up to its slogan from worst to first.
- And took the station from worst to first.
- After the 74 days, we had caught the market flatfooted.
We had run over everybody.
These were wonderful radio companies.
This was Infinity.
This was Doubleday, this was CBS, ABC, NBC,
Westinghouse.
- I had a test. I call it the Ray's pizza test.
There was an Old Ray's pizza,
which is now closed on 6th Avenue and 11th Street.
They always had WKTU on.
All of a sudden, sure enough,
I went into Ray's pizza and I heard Z100,
and I knew that was an indicator.
They found us that we were --
we were passing the Ray's pizza test.
We were on our way.
- They started at the very bottom of the barrel
and it was like lightning.
Z100 became the biggest thing in New York radio
and therefore, around the world.
- That is Scott's marketing genius.
- I obviously was popular in Tampa and was on TV
and in the newspaper and all that,
but nothing could have prepared me for what hit me
when we got to first place in New York.
- They're the hottest duo on your radio dial.
- Joining us now with the wizards of the hit radio.
- A relative newcomer is the king of morning drive.
- Helping bring this music our way
is Z Morning Zoo deejay Scott Shannon.
- The wizard of Z100 program director
and disc jockey, Scott Shannon.
- It was all a blur to me.
I mean, one minute I'm flying into Chicago
to be on Oprah, and the next minute I got
"Good Morning America"
in the studio with us, cameras everywhere.
- The Zoo is a Molotov cocktail
of call-ins, characters, contests.
A lot of clowning.
And, of course, the Top 40 chart busters.
It is the number one radio show in the nation,
and we join zoo crew deejay Scott Shannon and Ross Britton
in the Z100 control room
and live on the air.
Hi, guys.
- 10 minutes after 8:00 in the morning.
Good morning, how are you? - I'm just fine.
How are you guys?
- I did Regis's show probably 10 times
I was on with Geraldo Rivera.
I was absolutely blindsided by all that.
I mean, it was on the cover of "New York Magazine."
The guy sat me down and did like five pages on me.
There's not five pages in me. That's not why I got into radio.
I got into radio because I love turning the microphone on.
I love putting the headphones on and talking to people.
Wait a minute. Good morning, Z100. Guess what?
You got $1,000.
[ Cheering ]
- I can't believe it.
- It's our birthday, but you got the present.
I love that part of it. That kid is still there in me.
I still feel that way when I get up in the morning.
I can't wait to get to work.
- I love Scott. He's always been really wonderful to me
and very friendly to me and, you know,
but always wanted me to do that shtick stuff.
But, you know, Scott, I like my rock and roll serious.
- There's a reason people are switching to Z100 because...
we're serious. - We're serious.
- My mother will never, ever speak to me this is...
- Hello.
[ Explosion ]
- One of the brilliant things
about Scott Shannon and the Morning Zoo
was his ability to ferret out a pop culture.
What was the hippest thing happening?
He saw where the trends were.
- One day our music director came in and said,
"There's a lady out front who won't go away.
"She comes every Tuesday,
and she insists that we have to play her record."
- * Borderline
* Feels like I'm going to lost my mind *
- Madonna used to call us on a regular basis.
She was not Madonna then.
She was just a woman
who was trying to get her record played.
So I quizzed him, I said, "Is anybody else playing it?"
"No, no. But she says it's big in the clubs."
I said, "Well, this isn't a club, it's a radio station."
He said, "She's very insistent she wants to see you now."
She would say to Scott, "That if you play my music now,
I will do something special for Z100 when I'm a star."
- So I said to her, I said, "If we play your record at night
"a couple of times, will you stay home next week?
You don't have to come back, right?"
She said, "Right."
And she said, "I promise I'll make it up to you."
Now that particular song was called "Holiday."
We put it on at night, it got a couple of phone calls,
I think it was her calling.
And -- and so we moved it to daytime
and it became a pretty big hit for us.
- Madonna decided to be a movie star
with a soundtrack, obviously.
The name of the movie,
and the name of the single was "Who's That Girl?"
We make a deal with Madonna that the world premiere of the movie
in Times Square will air on Z100 live.
- On the way to the Madonna appearance at Times Square
with a rabid audience of about 15, 20,000 people.
I'm sitting there with Scott Shannon
and just him and I in the limo.
He insists on wearing a Z100 t-shirt.
I was all dressed up.
I had the blazer. I thought I was looking pretty good.
We fought all the way there. I ended up wearing his shirt.
- We had like 10, 12,000 people gathered together
in Times Square. They built a big stage up there.
They had like 50 or 60 photographers
and videographers down in the bullpen in front.
People hanging out of windows all up and down the street.
Madonna fans as far as you could see.
She arrived in a limousine,
jumped up on stage in a beautiful gown
and welcomed everybody.
Told the whole story
of how she arrived in New York for the very first time.
It was one of the best days in the history of the station.
- You started broadcasting from the top
of the Empire State Building,
and now Z100 heard all around the world.
That's something.
- It's just what I do. I mean, that's my job.
My job is to build radio stations and to do radio,
and ever since I was a kid, that's what I wanted to do.
And, you know, it just comes with the territory.
- The Z100 New York Morning Zoo
with Scott and Ross
the last time around.
**
- It's the 2019 iHeartRadio Jingle Ball,
the biggest holiday music event of the year.
- * Alarm clocks ring in my head *
* My body's still screaming, it's dead *
The legacy of Z100 from inception
was David and Goliath.
- Scott set a tone.
He set an image that transcended hipness,
and he was just by himself.
- Scott Shannon is probably the best program director
in the United States of America, as well as being
one of the finest air personalities in the world.
- New York is a place where radio personalities are bigger
than the music they're playing.
For me, you know, he'll always be one of those guys. Giant.
- Scott had these incredible personal relationships.
He made it a point.
Don't just play the song. Get to know the person.
You know? What's making that person tick?
It really sets the tone for the radio world.
- He created something that could keep going,
that Elvis could come and continue that legacy
and create something a little different
and continue that.
We've all seen those whether it's shows,
whether it's radio or television or whatever,
that has a quick rise and a quick fall.
Didn't happen with Z100.
You're talking about almost 40 years.
- Scott was -- was a renegade,
an outlier who just had it right here in his gut.
- How do we hold hands and win together?
And that was what Scott solicited from everybody.
- We may not have agreed on everything,
but at the end of the day, the amazing thing that happened
was that the right thing came out of the center.
- Z100 was more than just a radio station.
There was something about what was being broadcast
over that radio frequency that united millions of people.
- When I walked down the hall and look in the window
at the radio station that used to be my dreaded enemy
and is now among my best friends and I see that group of people,
I understand that Scott Shannon's influence
is still very much there.
Understanding your audience, who's listening?
What do they want to hear? What do they not want to hear?
And that was always the importance with Scott
and his reign at Z100,
and it's definitely the importance with us.
We've got to keep an eye on where we're going.
We have to listen. We have to learn.
Z100 is New York City.
It just always has been, and it always will be.
- Surveying the universe
From the top of the Empire State Building.
Z100 -- the flame thrower.
**
- * The alarm clock's ring in my head *
* My body's still screaming it's dead *
* When you can't get to sleep it's so rough *
* Getting up in the morning's so tough *
* Zoo
* Aah, aah
* When I cut myself when I shave *
* And my hair won't even behave *
* There's only one thing left for me to do *
* Crank it up to the Z Morning Zoo *
* Good morning on the Z Morning Zoo *
* Rise and shine with folks like you *
* Get up with the Morning Z Zoo *
* Well, I'm ready to give up the ghost *
* 'Cause I'm burning my coffee and toast *
* But I'm doing the best I can do *
* Getting up with the Z Morning Zoo *
* Good morning on the Z Morning Zoo *
* The Z Morning Zoo
* Aah, aah
* Good morning from the Z Morning Zoo *
* Rise and shine with folks like you *
* Good morning from the Z Morning Zoo *
* Get up with the Morning Z Zoo *
* Get up with the morning, get up with the morning *
* Get up with the Morning Z Zoo *
- * Something in your eyes is making such a fool of me *
* When you hold me in your arms and love me *
* Till I just can't see
* But then you let me down when I look around *
* Baby, it just can't be found
* Stop driving me away I just wanna stay *
* It's something I just got to say *
* Just try to understand
* I'll give it all I can
* 'Cause you got the best of me *
* Yeah
* Borderline
* Feels like I'm going to lose my mind *
* You just keep on pushing my love *
* Over the borderline
Good job, dad.