[ratnobMember]

I’m delighted to announce that Gary Berkowitz will join us on JingleMad next week to discuss his legendary gift for programming great radio stations (WNIC and Q95 Detroit, Fresh NYC and many more) and choosing brilliant jingles.

We’re hoping to start early in the week, so have some questions ready – about IDs on radio today and yesterday …

[IainJohnstonMember]

Geoff, will he be “on” real-time-ish at all for near-interactive Q & A’s?
or we do submit posts and he follows them up ? (thinking 5-hour minimum time zone difference between USA and UK, at least)

(Nice “exclusive” by the way Geoff! well done Sir!)

[ratnobMemberAuthor]

Once he’s on here – post a question and he says he will post as soon as he can …

[loujosephs]

Did you know the first package Gary ever did for a radio station? It was from the Quality jingle company for WERS FM in Boston.

[ratnobMemberAuthor]

Lou

As ever, you amaze us with your obscure knowledge. If you were in the UK we would nickname you Ceefax!

[jammin]

woooooooooow! berko’s gonna be on JM! can’t wait!

[Barras]

Great news Geoff, remember those JAM jingles from Z106 that you sent me to digitize, Andre Gardener at Z106 had nicknamed them the “Berkotron Package” !

[ratnobMemberAuthor]

Ah, yes: great jingles. And yes, Andre called them the Berkotron cuts”. There’s a question to ask GB next week …

[loujosephs]

Not all that hard as Gary and I went to Emerson at the same time, and I was also one of the first people hired by him at WROR…

[loujosephs]

http://www.ibcworks.net/wers.htm Gary and the duck the early years…

[loujosephs]

Extra stuff, Floyd now holds down afternoons at the Big D WDRC FM in Hartford.
Ray C has hung up his headphones but some up from time to time on 1280 AM,

[garyberk]

Hi to all…Thanks Geoff for asking me to show up here..Special hi to my good friend Lou Josephs. We had many jingle adventures together in our Emerson years! Just for the record, The “BerkoTron” package was created by Jon Wolfert (as you all know I am a MAJOR Jam guy). We did some custom cuts for WHYT in Detroit and Jon put them into a package called “Berkotron”. A jingle freaks dream..having a package named after him. Almost as good as being on a demo! So let’s talk jingles…I’ve got some good stories!

[ratnobMemberAuthor]

Gary: a big welcome from all of us here at JingleMad. So how did you first get into radio?

[garyberk]

I grew up in NY. One day when I was about 10, I saw Peter Tripp broadcasting live on WMGM (now WINS) from the Marine recruiting booth in Times Square. That’s all it took. I knew right then that I wanted to be a DJ. Major influences were WABC and WMCA…then later all the great big 50k rigs that I could hear at night in NY…WCFL, Chicago, WBT, Charlotte, WFIL, Philadelphia, WKBW, WPTR etc. I also loved my local station, WGBB, which at the time was owned by Susquehanna. My first job was interning at WGBB and the first on air was at WTHE (country format) on Long Island. Went to Emerson College in Boston where I did weekends at WEIM, Fitchburg, MA and WSAR, Fall River, MA. From there to WPRO, Providence as an intern and later as jock, music director, and eventually became the first PD at the legendary 92 PRO-FM (Jam jingle city there!). From Providence it was off to Boston (WROR) then Detroit (WHYT-WJR-WKQI) then to consulting in 1990.

[IainJohnstonMember]

Welcome to JM Gary >

Couple of questions from me to start:

1) when hired to consult for stations, would they give you free rein once you were “inside” the general brief of what they wanted, both in styling their programming to suit their market and in selecting/custom-commissioning the best imaging/jingles for the project; or would they tend to attempt to “micro-manage” your work – and what would your reaction have been if they did try to do that?

2) Have you ever consulted/programmed stations outside the USA, i.e. into more unusual markets or audiences?

Thanks!
Wixy1360 (Iain Johnston, Scotland UK)

[garyberk]

Hi Lain…I never expect a station to give me total control. Every now and then they do, and I must say, I really like that (plus the stations always sound great! lol). What I do expect is they will listen to me and work with me to help fix the problems they hired me for. I see myself as the architect of the station and the programmers are the builders. I always present a plan and strongly fight for all parts of it. When I believe strongly in something, I really stick with it.

As for stations outside the US, yes. I have consulted in Canada in Toronto, Montreal and London, ON. Hope this answers your questions. Nice to meet you here.

[MarcMannetje]

Thank you for joining us Gary!

For the last few days we were discussing the evolution of the jingle over the years. Did you and do you see major changes in the market these days?

(Marc Wiers, The Netherlands Europe)

[IainJohnstonMember]

Thanks Gary…
Supplementary question (which everyone would ask!)…what has been the best-resulting CUSTOM jingle package (ANY producer) that you have ever commissioned for a specific client?

Iain Johnston (thats letter “I” not “L” !!!! – yet another mis-spell to add to the long list LOL! )

[garyberk]

Hi Marc- Lots of changes in jingles these days ( and not for the better). To me, jingles are jingles. They are supposed to put the stations names in people’s minds musically. Trying to sound like today’s music makes the jingles sound lame. The reason we all love jingles from the past are they made the station stand out. They had character and were fun. These cuts with machine noises just plain stink (me thinks)…

Iain, sorry for spelling your name wrong. I’ve done customs with a few different companies, but as you may expect me to say, there is nothing like JAM. Jon always does the best. He is on 99% of my stations. They have a sound, feel and vibe that no other company can get. Jon is the ultimate master. I just did Q-Cuts for a new AC I put on in California and the client thought they got a custom package!

[glen]

Which station??

[glen]

Which station??

[RobinBlamires]

Some good responses Gary.
Trying to think of one that hasn’t already been answered… OK,

What was the most challenging jingle custom package/project you have worked on?

[RobinBlamires]

Some good responses Gary.
Trying to think of one that hasn’t already been answered… OK,

What was the most challenging jingle custom package/project you have worked on?

[MarcMannetje]

Thanks Gary. I’m still using a lot of WNIC-cuts at our AC-station, they work fantastic! We have been using them since 1998 and got every sequal afterwards. To freshen them up we just resung the jingles with new lines. And all thanks to you, Gary

[MarcMannetje]

Thanks Gary. I’m still using a lot of WNIC-cuts at our AC-station, they work fantastic! We have been using them since 1998 and got every sequal afterwards. To freshen them up we just resung the jingles with new lines. And all thanks to you, Gary

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