It was a rocky start for what would become one of radio’s most influential stations. When the summer Arbitron ratings came out for WHTZ (Z100) New York shortly after its sign-on on Aug. 2, 1983, the market’s new “flamethrower” was blowing smoke instead of shooting fire.
?PD/morning man Scott Shannon went on the air and read the ratings of each New York station in descending order. When he got to Z100 at the bottom of the list, he made a confession.
?“‘I came here to do a job, and I suck,’” Shannon recalls saying as he cued up Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now (Theme From Rocky).”Then Shannon made a pledge: “We are going to unite and put the greatest radio station in America on the air,” he said. “We are going from worst to first.”
?But with a bare-bones studio in the New Jersey outback and no marketing budget, Shannon needed help. He made listeners an offer: Mail a card or letter listing new listeners they recruited, and they’d receive a new Z100 flamethrower T-shirt. He also implored audience members to scrawl “Z100” on homemade signs, bed sheets, anything, and display them around town.?
Aided by an audience who loved an underdog and a hungry, young airstaff, Z100 did, in fact, fly—all the way to the top. Within 73 days of its launch, it was the No. 1 station in the No. 1 market, posting a 6.2 share among listeners ages 12 and older in Arbitron’s fall 1983 survey. Suddenly, the scrappy top 40 located in the swamps of Jersey was big news. New York’s TV stations and newspapers ran stories about its improbable ratings victory. In an April 1984 cover story, New York magazine proclaimed Shannon “the wizard of pop radio.” Even “Good Morning America” ran a national piece on the local station.
?Copycats quickly followed. Stations across the country flew their programmers and morning personalities to New York to listen to the upstart.
?“Hundreds of stations were ripping us off,” says Shannon, who now co-hosts mornings at Cumulus Media’s hot AC WPLJ New York. “Whatever we were doing wrong or right, it got copied.” The “Zoo” became the hottest morning concept in radio.?
While its “worst to first” saga sounds like a radio fairy tale, the reality is New York was waiting for a station exactly like Z100. Top 40 had gone radio silent in the market that spawned one of its most celebrated stations, WABC. The market void for a station that played the biggest hits from multiple genres was as wide as Broadway. Shannon and company reflected New York’s high-octane energy and don’t-mess-with-me swagger.
?“Z100 was big, loud and braggadocio, but it was also humble, relatable and within reach,” he says. “People understood our struggle.”
?The rapid-fire ratings triumph was no fluke. Z100 stayed on top for 17 of the next 20 quarterly Arbitron ratings periods. When it wasn’t No. 1 it was No. 2.
?Shannon says his inspirations for Z100 were WABC and pirate radio. Fresh from top 40 ratings victories in Tampa, Fla., and Washington, D.C., he set about building an ‘80s version of WABC. Fascinated since his youth by the pirate stations that pumped pop and rock into the United Kingdom from offshore ships, he wanted to convey that renegade vibe with a station that seemed to suddenly sign on out of nowhere.
?For months before it launched, Shannon and music director Michael Ellis holed up at the Meadowlands Hilton in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. They perfected the station’s ultra-tight music rotations and performed dry runs. The format was all top 10 hits. Ballads were limited to one per hour. There weren’t any jingles at first, little clutter and even fewer commercials.
?“It was like jack-hammer radio; it didn’t stop pounding,” Shannon recalls. “I wanted it to mirror the feel of Times Square in New York.”
?Unable to find DJs in New York or other top markets that fit the brash station’s sound, Shannon recruited talent from Oklahoma City, New Orleans and Tampa.
?The station’s impact was profound. “WABC and WNBC captured New York like no one else had, until Z100 came on the scene,” says Palmese Entertainment/Azoff Management president Richard Palmese, who began promoting music to the station in the Shannon era. “There was an immediate reaction in the market. They could really move product and break artists.” ?
Top 40 was entering a watershed music cycle when Z100, in the words of its most iconic ID, began “serving the universe from the top of the Empire State Building.” From 1983 to 1985, the format rode a wave of massive hits from Michael Jackson, the Police, Prince, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran and others, along with outsized soundtracks from “Flashdance” and “Footloose.” Z100 planted its flag just as the swell was building and made an indelible mark.