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♪ [Theme Music] ♪
MICHAEL STOLER: Radio? Radio, 93 million people listen to radio.
So kids grow up in Brooklyn. They decide to get involved
with radio, they get involved with TV, and they don't get
involved -- they've been involved, I mean, the
Executive Vice President of all production for CBS Radio,
1010 WINS, 880. I got the legendary Scott Herman.
Thanks for being here today.
SCOTT HERMAN: Thank you, Michael.
MICHAEL STOLER: Tell me about your grandparents, how they
arrived here and a little history about them.
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, my mother's parents, my grandfather
came from Russia. He came over, his name was Weisskowitz,
so they told him, "You're Weiss" because they didn't want
to write the full name out at Ellis Island.
MICHAEL STOLER: It was easier, shorter.
SCOTT HERMAN: Much easier. My grandmother came from
Poland, and they were married over 75 years, lived in
Brighton Beach.
MICHAEL STOLER: That was Herman, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: That was the Weiss side, that's my mother's
side. My father's side, they were born here, both my
grandparents, but the ancestry goes back to also Russia and
Poland but they were both born here.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now, where did they grow up, in
Brooklyn or the Bronx?
SCOTT HERMAN: My grandfather grew up in the Bronx.
My grandmother grew up in New Hampshire and then made
her way to New York, and they actually met in the Bronx.
MICHAEL STOLER: So they're transplants, so how did they,
okay, how did they arrive in Brooklyn?
SCOTT HERMAN: My grandfather owned a hardware store with
his sister in the Bronx, and they somehow made a decision
that the future of the hardware store should be in Brooklyn.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now, the interesting thing is the
hardware store was in Brighton, which today is heavily
Russian, and that was called Herman's.
SCOTT HERMAN: Herman's Hardware.
MICHAEL STOLER: And we have a photo of Herman's Hardware,
and later on there's even a picture of you in
Herman's Hardware.
SCOTT HERMAN: Yeah, as a little boy in the hardware store.
MICHAEL STOLER: Little in the hardware store. So we were
talking about how your mother met your dad, now people
don't know about candy stores. Candy stores were like,
that was the place, you know. You got your egg cream,
you got your soda, you got your cherry coke,
and you got the newspaper.
SCOTT HERMAN: Your breakfast, your newspaper,
your magazine, your comic books.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, right, and sometimes if you
worked in that place, you might have the opportunity to put the
papers together, so if you worked the papers together,
you also had the opportunity to maybe get some free food.
So how does your mother meet your father?
SCOTT HERMAN: My father was 17, having an egg cream which
to this day is one of his favorite drinks still.
MICHAEL STOLER: With Fox's U-bet?
SCOTT HERMAN: Fox's U-bet, and my mother was 14, on the
pay phone talking to her mother. My father looks over,
catches her eye.
MICHAEL STOLER: Pay phone. You remember pay phones, yeah.
SCOTT HERMAN: Pay phone, my father looks over, catches her
eye, and that was it. He fell in love.
MICHAEL STOLER: So, the 14 and the 17-year-old,
and when did they get married?
SCOTT HERMAN: They got married, I think my father was -- my
mother was 18 and my father was 21.
MICHAEL STOLER: So they get married, they're living in
Brooklyn, in Brighton?
SCOTT HERMAN: Um-hum.
MICHAEL STOLER: And your father goes to work for
his father in Herman's?
SCOTT HERMAN: Yeah. My father had two brothers. The three
of them all worked in the hardware store, but my father
was the oldest, and he was the one that couldn't along with
my grandfather because he had ideas for the business,
my grandfather had other ideas.
MICHAEL STOLER: Your father goes into the business over
there, initially in the hardware store on Brighton 5th Street.
SCOTT HERMAN: Um-hum.
MICHAEL STOLER: And your parents were living at that
time, what, in Brighton or?
SCOTT HERMAN: Actually they lived on Brighton 5th Street.
The hardware store at that point, because we moved the
store a few years later, the original store in Brighton
Beach was between Brighton 2nd and Brighton 3rd, and then
we moved to a bigger store on the corner of Brighton 2nd.
I remember to this day, people would come into the store to
try to cash a check, and my grandfather would always say,
"I have a deal with Lincoln Savings Bank. I don't cash
checks, they don't sell paint."
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, and Lincoln Savings Bank was the
big on the corner over there, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: On Coney Island Avenue-
MICHAEL STOLER: Across the street from Mrs. Stall's
SCOTT HERMAN: Right, and up the block from Brighton Beach Baths.
MICHAEL STOLER: Correct, which is now the Oceana, which
was Brighton Beach Baths. So now you're born, where were your
parents living when you were born?
SCOTT HERMAN: I think we were, I think they moved to a bigger
apartment when I was born. I think I was born on the
Brighton address, and the earliest apartment I remember
living in was Avenue Z in East 13th Street.
MICHAEL STOLER: So you're living on Avenue Z in East
13th Street, so talk to me about growing up in Brooklyn,
in the early years.
SCOTT HERMAN: Oh, it was wonderful. All I remember is
you played outside all day. There were kids everywhere.
You played stoop-ball, you played punch-ball, you played
kick-ball, you played stick-ball. You played all
day long, and then when your parents yelled from the
window, you went upstairs.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, and the windows, you know,
the fire escapes were the terraces.
SCOTT HERMAN: Right.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, these were the interesting
times of Brooklyn. Tell me about some of the jobs that
you did. I know you worked in the hardware store.
SCOTT HERMAN: I worked in the hardware store almost from
age 10 on, every Saturday morning. My uncle would pick
me up. We would go for breakfast at Dubrow's on Kings Highway.
MICHAEL STOLER: Dubrow's.
SCOTT HERMAN: Dubrow's, and then we'd go to Brighton Beach and
I'd work a 10-hour work day, and I'd make my $10 for the
day, and I'd wait on customers and do all the stuff that
you'd normally do.
MICHAEL STOLER: And you knew where the Farberware coffee
pots were and the --
SCOTT HERMAN: Everything, CorningWare, Pyrex, Rubbermaid,
plumbing supplies, keys.
MICHAEL STOLER: And the carts.
SCOTT HERMAN: The carts -- we had no room for carts.
MICHAEL STOLER: No, no, I know, but the carts for
the customers.
SCOTT HERMAN: Shopping carts.
MICHAEL STOLER: Shopping carts.
SCOTT HERMAN: Oh, yes. We put new wheels on shopping
carts, we did all this stuff, sold them screens for their
faucets, fixed their aerators, we did it all.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now, so you go to public school where?
SCOTT HERMAN: The first school I went to was P.S. 209 on Avenue
Z and Coney Island Avenue. Then we moved, I went to
P.S. 153 on Homecrest Avenue for one year, and then
P.S. 255 for 5th and 6th grade, which was 17th
between R and S.
MICHAEL STOLER: And then you go to Cunningham?
SCOTT HERMAN: Um-hum, which was across the street from
the elementary school.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right. Your dad really possibly brought
you into the spectrum of the media because he was involved
as a part time photographer, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Yeah. Early in his life, when he really made
the decision not to be in the hardware business, even
when he was in the hardware store, he'd run out and chase
fire engines, and in those days, he knew every cop in
Coney Island, Brighton Beach, that whole area, they all
knew him, and he took pictures for the Brooklyn Daily,
the Daily Mirror, the Journal American. He worked for all
these newspapers, and eventually did some work for the
Associated Press for many years, but he needed a real job.
He needed a full time job to make money.
MICHAEL STOLER: So he went into life insurance.
SCOTT HERMAN: Life insurance.
MICHAEL STOLER: So, now that's interesting because
that was the change to Cunningham which put you,
you went into -- your parents always rented apartments,
and then they rented an apartment in a three-family,
as they would say, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Right, so it's like a private house but
we didn't own it.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right. So on the third floor was the Herman's.
SCOTT HERMAN: Right, we lived up there.
MICHAEL STOLER: The second floor was another tenant.
SCOTT HERMAN: They were the people that owned it.
MICHAEL STOLER: Oh, they were the owner, okay.
SCOTT HERMAN: Right, the Natters, they owned it.
MICHAEL STOLER: And then the first floor was the
entrepreneurial insurance office of dad.
SCOTT HERMAN: Exactly.
MICHAEL STOLER: Okay, over there.
SCOTT HERMAN: And right next door was a grocery store.
I delivered groceries in one of those big bikes with the big
baskets, and delivered groceries in the area during the week,
and then worked at the hardware store on Saturdays.
MICHAEL STOLER: Then you go to Madison. I mean, even though
I'm a Lincoln boy and your parents went to Lincoln,
you go to Madison, and you graduate from Madison, and
there's a decision. Which college do you go to?
It was a rather simple decision, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Yes. It was Brooklyn College or
Kingsborough. It was four years or two years. There was no --
it's not like it is today. You know, I live in New Jersey
and the parents are always, "Oh, my kid got into these
5 schools, applied to these 12 schools." It wasn't like that.
I mean, we didn't even think about it. Nobody had money to
go away, and it wasn't a priority to go away. I had one
friend in my class, I remember, who got into Penn, and we didn't
even know Penn was a good school because we never
heard of these schools, and he went to the University
of Pennsylvania. It wasn't until years later I said,
"Boy, David was pretty smart, he got into Penn!"
MICHAEL STOLER: So you take Brooklyn College, and as you
said to me, the first semester of Brooklyn College was not
the best time for you, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: No, it was hard because I had a class at 9 AM
and another class at 3 PM, and time in between, and it was
hard, and it was -- I just didn't like it. I went in as a
psychology major, and my father did not go to college,
and he begged me to stay in school.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now, your mother did go to college.
SCOTT HERMAN: My mother went early on and then had kids and
she stopped, wound up going back later on in life.
MICHAEL STOLER: We'll talk about that later.
SCOTT HERMAN: But he begged me to stay. He said, "Join a club,
do something to stay in school. You'll enjoy it more." And I
went to the college newspaper, the Kingsmen, because I was
on the high school newspaper staff, and I just didn't get the
vibe. I didn't like it. It didn't strike me as being the
place I wanted to be.
MICHAEL STOLER: But, you know, I failed to bring it up but when
you were in high school, and your relationship with Grandpa
Herman and your other grandfather, you used to sit on
a steamer trunk, right, and try to do
baseball reporting, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, in the old days, you know, when
you went away to camp or the army, I guess, you had
this big trunk you went with. Now they all use duffel bags
but I had this trunk that I would turn upside down to make
my desk, and I would sit there with my tape recorder with the
Met game on with the sound off, and I would do the
play-by-play for the Met games.
MICHAEL STOLER: But that was in high school, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: That was even before that. That was high
school, junior high school. I think I did
it starting in 5th grade.
MICHAEL STOLER: So this was really your media
involvement, then?
SCOTT HERMAN: I didn't --
MICHAEL STOLER: You didn't realize it was
media involvement.
SCOTT HERMAN: No, but years later, I look back and I go,
"That was when," when people ask me, "When did you get your
bug for radio?" I can really trace I back to sitting at the
trunk and doing the play-by-play for the Mets.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, but you know, if you really go
back when the Dodgers and the Giants moved out to California,
there was simulated baseball, you know, they read it over
the -- there was a hit or something like that,
do you remember that?
SCOTT HERMAN: Um.
MICHAEL STOLER: So the Kingsmen, you see this, and --?
SCOTT HERMAN: The newspaper wasn't for me in college,
and I see a poster for WBCR, Brooklyn College Radio.
I didn't even know the school had a radio station. So I walk
in, and I talked to, I don't even remember who I talked to at
that point, and they said, "What are you interested in?"
I said, "Sports." I loved sports. Sports editor of the
high school paper, played baseball most of my life."
He says, "Well, go do an audition." They take me to the
back, I do an audition. They said, "Okay, you
have Mondays at 4:30 PM."
MICHAEL STOLER: For one minute.
SCOTT HERMAN: One minute, 60 seconds of sports,
Mondays at 4:30.
MICHAEL STOLER: Which relates, you know, you give me
22 minutes and I'll give you the news, right? So, one minute.
SCOTT HERMAN: I took all day writing that one minute.
I wrote it, I rewrote it, I wrote it again,
I wrote it again. I mean, it had to be the most perfect
60 seconds of my life, and I loved it. I looked forward all
week to that one sportscast. I just fell in love.
MICHAEL STOLER: So what happens next? You're looking
for a job or something? You have a mentor, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, I had a life-changing moment in that
I switched my major from psychology to TV and Radio,
and I had a class TV, Radio, Speech, and Writing with
Sister Camille D'Arienzo.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right over there,
our friend Sister Camille.
SCOTT HERMAN: Sister Camille, who was a religion commentator
on 1010 WINS. She still is, she's been there over 40 years,
but she was my professor for this class, and it was probably
the first "A" I ever got in school., and I remember for
her class, one of the projects was you had to do an on-scene
report, and I did the fact that it was raining on election day
which hampered the turnout for elections, and she loved
it. She said to me-- I interviewed people that were
voting, why did they go out in the rain -- she loved it.
She said to me, "You should do this for a living," and I said,
"Are you going to help me?" She said, "Come back in your
junior year," and like Tuesdays with Morrie in his book,
it was like Thursdays with Sister Camille. I would go to
her office all the time and hang out with her and talk
to her, and she recommended me to 1010 WINS in my junior
year of college for an internship, and when I went
in for the interview, the news director saw my resume and
at that point I was general manager of the college radio
station, and he says to me, "You're running your radio?"
I said, "Yeah." He says, "Do you know how to edit?"
I said, "Yes." He says, "Have you done news interviews?"
I said, "Yes." He goes, "Do you want an internship or a job?"
I said, "I'd love a job." He said, "$3.85 an hour."
MICHAEL STOLER: On the short hours, what,
4 o'clock in the morning?
SCOTT HERMAN: 4 o'clock in the morning till noon on Saturdays-
which destroyed my Friday nights because I had to be
at work 4- as a news production assistant, and that was my
start in the business.
MICHAEL STOLER: And then you also worked Sundays also.
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, four weeks into the job, they liked me so
much, Fred Hornby was the historic morning editor at WINS,
and Fred worked with me on Saturday and told the news
director that I was wonderful and he should give me the
other day on Sunday. So I went to school Monday to
Friday, and worked Saturday
and Sundays at WINS.
MICHAEL STOLER: And then you graduate?
SCOTT HERMAN: They actually held a job for me. A fulltime job
became available in my senior year, and they asked me if I
wanted it, and I knew if had taken the job and quit school,
I'd never go back to school, and I had made that commitment
to my father to finish school, so I said, "I need to finish
college." They held the job for me.
MICHAEL STOLER: And what was that job?
SCOTT HERMAN: It was a fulltime news production assistant,
working 11 at night till 7 in the morning.
MICHAEL STOLER: And this is when you got married also, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, I graduated in June of '80, I started
working fulltime the next day after graduation, got engaged
4 months later, and got married 14 months later.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right. The great thing that helped you
at WINS was the strike, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: There was a strike in 1982, the Afterins,
the After Union went on strike, and the Writers Guild went
out in sympathy of the Afterins, and they looked at me.
I was a manager at that point. They created a management
job for me called Unit Manager.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, so you were out of the union?
SCOTT HERMAN: So I could work through the strike. They were
preparing that they wanted me to work during the strike.
MICHAEL STOLER: But you had a job as an administrator,
buying pencils, whatever it is.
SCOTT HERMAN: Yeah. I made sure the cars were registered,
they were gassed up, they got oil changes.
MICHAEL STOLER: Make sure the press credentials
and everything right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, I parlayed that job into an editorial
management job, and when the strike hit, I kept the station-
not me personally -- but kept the station on the air because
I was the only person who knew the formatics and how
the station worked. So Westinghouse, who owned the
station at the time, brought managers in from every station
we had, radio and TV, and I was the guy that trained them
on the format, on how we did things, and the station sounded
very good during the strike. They didn't know what they
were doing, the people, but they had great voices, and
I was the one that was charged with making sure
it sounded like WINS.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right. So after the strike, you got promoted.
SCOTT HERMAN: They promote me to assistant news director,
and it was wonderful. I mean, I assigned the reporters, I did
all that. I know Stan Brooks was on your show in the past,
he passed away recently, but Stan took me under his wing.
Now again, I was assistant news director of WINS and
I was 24 years old. I'm a kid.
MICHAEL STOLER: Now, you spend a couple of years at WINS and
then somebody calls you up at Group W, the Westinghouse
broadcast, and they said, "Philadelphia." You didn't even
know what Philadelphia was?
SCOTT HERMAN: I had never been out of New York because I
went to school in Brooklyn, lived in Brooklyn. We moved
to Manhattan shortly after I started at Brooklyn College --
I did the reverse commute back to Brooklyn -- but never lived
out of New York. Never really went away anywhere.
MICHAEL STOLER: So Philadelphia, what happens?
SCOTT HERMAN: I didn't realize it was only an
hour-and-a-half down the turnpike. Philadelphia to me
could have been ten hours away, but that was the first time
I kind of had my own newsroom that I was responsible for,
and I loved it. I loved every minute of it.
MICHAEL STOLER: So from Philly, where do you go next?
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, then Westinghouse bought a
Chicago radio station from NBC. NBC was getting out of the
radio business at that point, and we bought WMAQ 670.
It had gone from a country station to a talk station,
and then we were going to make it an all-news station,
like a 1010 WINS.
MICHAEL STOLER: Which was perfect,
which was your expertise.
SCOTT HERMAN: Right up my alley.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, and then, which is one of the other
pictures, when you were in Comiskey in Chicago, you get
back on the field and you throw a pitch with your
son over there.
SCOTT HERMAN: Yeah, that was a highlight. We carried the
White Sox on WMAQ, so we were an all-news station but we
carried the White Sox, and they had WMAQ night. So I went to
throw out the first pitch of the game and I remember
Steve Lyons caught the first pitch for the White Sox, and
he comes up to the mound to hand me the ball, and my then
3-year-old son was with me on the mound. Now he's 28
and gave me a granddaughter recently. I'm standing there,
he brings me the ball and he goes, "Normie from Cheers
threw the ball last night and threw it over my head.
Don't screw it up." And now I'm really nervous. I'm standing on
the mound at Comiskey Park. I threw a strike.
MICHAEL STOLER: So you spend a little time in Chicago,
a couple years in Chicago?
SCOTT HERMAN: A couple years.
MICHAEL STOLER: And then you go to LA?
SCOTT HERMAN: I go back to Philly to television.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right. You go over in Philly, over there
you're radio and television, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Yeah. They brought me in as a television
news director for the NBC Affiliate.
MICHAEL STOLER: You see, these are cameras.
I realize you know microphones.
SCOTT HERMAN: It's been a long time.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right.
SCOTT HERMAN: And I do TV for about a year-and-a-half,
and then they have this idea: since I now know TV,
and I was so good in radio, why not put radio and television
under me, so now I'm running the all-news radio station,
and the television news department, and I'm the
director of news programming for the building, basically.
I had a great time. It was wonderful.
MICHAEL STOLER: And then in southern California?
SCOTT HERMAN: No. Then back to WINS.
MICHAEL STOLER: Back to WINS, right.
SCOTT HERMAN: So I meet the president of Group W Radio
at the time, Dan Mason, who ironically is my boss today.
He left and came back. He's the CEO of CBS Radio today.
Dan comes to meet me in Philadelphia and says,
"Would you like to come back to radio fulltime?" And I thought
he was talking about being news director, and I said,
"Dan, I'm past being news director of a radio station.
I'm a television news director now," you know, I've
hit the big time.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right.
SCOTT HERMAN: And he says, "No, no, no, to be general
manager of 1010 WINS," and you've got to understand,
to go from $3.85 an hour at 1010 WINS to being the general
manager is as close as you're ever going to come..."
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, but you're also elevated from
90 Park Avenue to 888 7th Avenue, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Fancy new digs.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right.
SCOTT HERMAN: And I said...
MICHAEL STOLER: But the general manager at
WINS at what age?
SCOTT HERMAN: I was, let's see, that's 1993. I was 35.
MICHAEL STOLER: 35 years of age.
SCOTT HERMAN: Which at that point was pretty young for a
general manager of that sized station, because WINS was the
biggest radio station in the chain.
MICHAEL STOLER: And at that time, you were competing
with 880 because they were separate.
SCOTT HERMAN: Right, we were separate companies.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, so you were competing with CBS News.
SCOTT HERMAN: Right. We owned, Westinghouse owned
1010 WINS and WNEW FM, 102.7. CBS owned 880 and 101.1,
WCBS FM; and then a few years later,
Westinghouse bought CBS.
MICHAEL STOLER: So you're the general manager of
WINS for how many years?
SCOTT HERMAN: Ten.
MICHAEL STOLER: Ten years, and then you have an opportunity
to go out to California, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: No, I stayed here. I mean, my California trips
were just to help stations on the west coast but I was never
fulltime on the west coast.
MICHAEL STOLER: Okay. So you're at WINS for these ten years.
SCOTT HERMAN: And they always gave me second jobs,
so I ran WINS and I ran WNEW FM. I ran WINS and I ran the
CBS Radio Network for a year. Then I got WNEW FM back again,
so I kept having different second jobs.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right. Right, but you also were involved
with some major changes like the Fan. Talk about
how that was created.
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, Fan was originally owned by a
company called Emmis, run by a guy named Jeff Smulyan,
and then Fan was bought by Infinity, and then Infinity was
then bought by CBS. So now when we buy Infinity,
Mel Karmazin comes in as the head of CBS Radio, and now
we own six stations in New York because in addition to WINS
and 880, and 102.7 and 101.1, now we own 92.3 K-Rock,
so Howard Stern comes into our company, and we also owned
WFAN on 660 AM, so now this is when the world of radio
and TV are changing because now you're allowed to own
more stations in a market, the era of consolidation. So now we
own six radio stations and channel 2 in New York.
Now it's a big company here in New York.
MICHAEL STOLER: When do you join CBS -- I mean whichever entity
because there were so many, when you leave --
you left WINS when?
SCOTT HERMAN: I left WINS in 2003, when my buddy
Joel Hollander was the general manager of FAN in the Infinity
days. I was the GM of WINS in the Westinghouse days,
and we were two guys, he was from the Bronx, I was from
Brooklyn, running big AM radio stations, so we became
friendly. Actually, one of our clients, Helene Naman, put us
together and said, "You guys, you guys would get along great.
You've gotta meet each other." Helene put us together.
We become very good friends. Joel then leaves the company,
after we become one, Joel leaves the company to run Westwood One,
which was a network syndication company, and then comes
back to CBS to become the CEO of CBS Radio, and Joel
calls me and says, "Look, I'm going to corporate, it hasn't
been announced yet, do you want to go to corporate with me?"
Now I have a big decision to make because leaving WINS,
which was the best job in the world, was hard for me.
It's like being captain of a ship, and I remembered one of
my old bosses telling me, "You'll have bigger jobs in
your life but you won't have a better job," which is very true,
but it was a bigger job, and Joel was a corporate so I
went, and I went to become Executive Vice President of
the Eastern Region, so there were five of us that divvied
up the country, and I kind of handled the Northeast.
MICHAEL STOLER: How many stations did you have?
SCOTT HERMAN: Whoo, it was about 40 at the time. I think it
was six markets, 40 stations, was kind of what I had under
me, and then several years later, Dan Mason, that original
guy that made me GM of WINS in '93, comes back to the company
as the CEO of CBS Radio, and decides he doesn't like this
model with five divvying up the country, he reorganizes and
says, "It's going to be me and you," and that's the way it's
been for the last eight years.
MICHAEL STOLER: So your role today is what?
SCOTT HERMAN: I'm the Executive Vice President of Operations,
so basically every one of our cities -- we're in 26 cities.
Every city has a general manager, we call them the
market manager, that runs all the stations in that city.
MICHAEL STOLER: And how many stations in total?
SCOTT HERMAN: 126, and 17 or the markets come under me and
9 come under Dan, but we both deal with all of the markets at
any given time.
MICHAEL STOLER: Right, and then it's radio.com where you
have all the opportunities to listen to every --
SCOTT HERMAN: On the stream, radio.com is our digital effort.
It's almost like a mall. It's a mall of all of our radio
stations to listen to whenever you're on the road. Anywhere
you want in America, you can go to radio.com and listen
to any of our stations.
MICHAEL STOLER: So let's talk a bit about the family. Later on
in your mother's life, she goes back to medical school?
SCOTT HERMAN: Well, she went to Brooklyn College to
get her degree, then she decides she wants to be a doctor.
Now, she can't get into an American medical school
because at her age, she wasn't going to get in, so she applies
in Mexico. So now she goes to the Berlitz School to learn
Spanish, and then goes to medical school in Tampico.
We actually had to get married in December because we had
to get married during my mom's Christmas break from school.
MICHAEL STOLER: Okay. So that's mom. Mom and dad are
living on the Upper East Side. You met your
wife in homeroom, right?
SCOTT HERMAN: Seventh grade homeroom in Cunningham.
My recollection is I was in row 5 seat 1, she was in row 6 seat
1. I fell in love the first time I saw her. It took her about
20 years later but I fell in love the first time I saw her.
MICHAEL STOLER: And let's talk about the children.
Tell me about them.
SCOTT HERMAN: We have three kids. Our oldest --
MICHAEL STOLER: His name?
SCOTT HERMAN: Sean is 28. He's married to Naomi.
I have a granddaughter, their daughter, Skyler Fay who is
3 months old, and Sean's in the IT business. Naomi's a
social worker. My daughter is the middle child, Jamie.
She's 25, a school teacher, a first grade teacher in
Pennsylvania, married to TJ who works in the banking business,
and they gave me my first grandchild, my grandson,
Kye, I have two, Kye Liam, he's six months old. And my
youngest, Gregory, is the tallest Herman on record.
We've gone back centuries. He's six feet tall.
MICHAEL STOLER: It's like my son David who's like 6'4".
We have no idea how he came.
SCOTT HERMAN: We don't know where his height came from
but Greg is graduating this year from Washington U. in St. Louis.
MICHAEL STOLER: So it's really great to always have a
Brooklyn boy, a guy who went to Brooklyn College,
who understands everything about the city, and who's been a
great leader in the field of radio, and thanks
for being here today.
SCOTT HERMAN: Thank you so much.
♪ [Theme Music] ♪