The story of disc jockey Scott Shannon and the spectacular, against-all-odds rise of New York’s Z100 radio station in the 1980s was so compelling that it needed to be told, according to Indian River Shores resident John McConnell.
“People need to know what happened, how it happened and appreciate this special chapter in radio history,” McConnell said from his Sea Forest home, “because what Scott did at Z100 was unprecedented.”
In fact, it was McConnell – a former New York radio executive and now radio-TV talent agent – who along with Shannon’s wife, Trish, came up with the idea of making a documentary about the overnight transformation of a nobody-cares stop on the FM dial to one of the most listened-to radio stations in America.
One of the film’s executive directors, he also got the project off the ground, which meant convincing Shannon to do it.
“Scott was not easily convinced,” McConnell said of Shannon, who became McConnell’s first agency client after McConnell resigned as senior vice president of programming at ABC Radio nine years ago.
McConnell hired Mitchell Stuart – an Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, director and documentarian – to make the film, a process that began in September 2019 and took more than a year.
More recently, McConnell used his local connections to get “Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 New York,” included in this week’s 2022 Vero Beach Film Festival.
A Saturday screening, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. at the Theatre Guild, will be immediately followed by a 1980s-themed dance party at the Heritage Center, where Shannon, his wife and Stuart are expected to attend. The film will be shown again at 12:30 p.m. Sunday at the Courthouse Executive Center.
“Worst to First” made a splash when it was released in February in New York, where it received a flurry of mostly favorable media coverage. It has also fared well on video-on-demand platforms, such as Apple/Amazon and GooglePlay, Xfinity On Demand, DirectTV, and spent several weeks as the No. 1 music documentary on iTunes.
“The documentary does a tremendous job of capturing Scott’s vision and passion and how he made it happen, so I think it’s going to be well-received here, too,” McConnell said. “I can’t tell you how many of the people I’ve invited told me they grew up listening to Scott and Z100.”
For those who don’t know …
Shannon left a wildly successful morning radio show in Tampa in 1983 to chase a dream in New York, where WHTZ (100.3 FM) was mired at the bottom of the ratings.
Just 74 days after Shannon’s arrival, Z100 had risen from the radio dead, climbing from No. 51 to No. 1 in the market. And it was his anything-goes “Morning Zoo” show, where he was joined by a cast of misfits, that set the tone and pace.
It was, McConnell said, “the stuff of legend.”
How did Shannon do it?
He immediately recognized that the New York radio market in 1983 no longer had a Top 40 station and changed Z100’s format to fill the void. He then marketed Z100 to the entire New York metropolitan area by having his on-air personalities repeat throughout the day that the station was broadcasting from the top of the Empire State Building.
He brought celebrities into the studio, and motivated listeners with contests and prizes to recruit their friends into Z100’s audience.
Shannon spent only six years at Z100, leaving in 1989 to launch “Pirate Radio” at a radio station in Los Angeles. He returned to New York in 1991 and resurfaced at Z100’s biggest rival, WPLJ, where he was the program director and morning-drive co-host.
In 2014, Shannon moved to WCBS-FM – New York’s most prominent classic-hits station – where he hosts a still-popular morning-drive show.
Z100, meanwhile, continues to draw big ratings using the same Top 40 format Shannon implemented nearly 40 years ago.
To help Shannon tell his Z100 story, Stuart brought in rock stars Jon Bon Jovi and Joan Jett, as well as Debbie Gibson and Taylor Dayne – 1980s-era pop stars who share their personal stories about the station’s impact on their careers.
Singer Tony Orlando and comedian Joe Piscopo also appear in the film, which in one segment recalls a then-unknown Madonna harassing Z100’s music director on a weekly basis until Shannon finally agreed to play her demo record. The club favorite “Holiday” went on to become Madonna’s first hit song.
“Scott launched an industry,” McConnell said. “Not only did hundreds of shows try to copy his style, but hundreds of stations followed his format. Thousands of people have been employed by stations doing what he did.
“Scott might be the only radio personality who was No. 1 in the ratings on three different stations,” he added. “And his influence is still being felt.”
That’s why, McConnell said, he and Shannon’s wife were so adamant about making the film.
They both had watched the Showtime documentary about a Long Island-based station that embraced new-wave music in the 1980s, and they thought: Why not do one about Scott?
They already had the perfect title.