In the 50 year history of WJPZ, there have been many trying times and events.  But dealing with a once-in-a-century global pandemic was certainly a first for the station.  That's what Kyle Leff, Class of 2022, walked into when he was elected General Manager in the Spring of 2020.

In this episode, Kyle walks us through 4 semesters of COVID-19 on campus and at WJPZ.   When everyone the campus shut down in 2020, the staff had employ technology and a skeleton crew to keep the radio station on the air.  As was the case for all of us, there was no playbook for how to handle a situation like this.

When the students returned in the fall of 2020, precautions had to be taken - from staggering jock shifts to wiping down equipment before and after each person left the studio.   And for the entire 2020-2021 school year, jocks were on the air masked. But WJPZ was one of the few campus organizations that could exist in COVID - Kyle talks about what that did for the station's recruitment efforts.    Then in the 2021-2022 year, the station slowly got back to normal, now with a much larger staff.

Kyle praises the leadership at the station - both before and during his tenure as GM - as working together to solve problems and keep the station running through the pandemic.   And it was this lesson of collaboration that has served Kyle well in his first post-graduation job, on the air at B94.5 in State College, Pennsylvania.

Beyond COVID, we talk about the radio industry in 2022, through a recent grad's perspective.   Kyle believes great radio is still being made by smaller radio companies, and he takes us behind the scenes at his current gig.  Live on air, social media content, and more.

Join Us in Syracuse on March 4th: https://bit.ly/WJPZ50BanquetTickets

The WJPZ at 50 Podcast is produced by Jon Gay '02 and JAG in Detroit Podcasts

Connect with the WJPZ Alumni Association: https://wjpzalumniassociation.org/