Greg Zanoni may have sold WZBN—a Central Jersey news network based out of Hamilton—back in 2012, but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to work in the television industry.
The former WZBN president is now working for WPHY, a satellite station that serves Mercer County as well as other areas of Central Jersey.
However, unlike his time at WZBN where Zanoni produced multiple local news segments, he is no longer producing content for TV. A satellite network, Yootoo America, provides WPHY with programming, ranging from movies to talk shows.
Zanoni works to maintain the signal path from WPHY’s East State Street station to Philadelphia. His other day-to-day operations include programming the server with commercials and local programming and filing FCC compliances.
“I’m basically the general manager at the station,” he said. “There’s only two employees here now.”
In addition to working for WPHY, Zanoni is also the general manager of Nadia Communications. The company helps corporate executives hone their presentation skills.
“We have high definition cameras in the studio, and we’re able to record the presentations of corporate executives—whether it’s for finance meetings, investor day meetings, conference calls, somebody getting ready for a TV interview,” he said.
The presentations are recorded and then immediately played back with the client so they can analyze their speech and see how their message is delivered. Zanoni also works to produce their videos as well.
“We can produce messages for large corporations that can be sent to all of the employees around the world,” he said.
Training reporters was one of his favorite aspects at WZBN, and he’s happy to continue with that line of work.
“A lot of the reporters came out of college, and when they came they had really little experience being on TV,” he said. “We would take them in the field, teach them their presentation skills as they’re doing news stories, their in-camera work in the studio. They were on-air, but they gained a lot of experience in a different situations while they were with us.”
Zanoni said a lot of WZBN reporters went on to work at larger network TV stations around the country, including Tracy Wolfson who is currently a national sportscaster for CBS Sports.
“It’s great because we saw the raw talent in them when they were starting,” he said. “And it’s just great every time you watch them now you have a good feeling that you were able to help them out in the beginning.”
While Zanoni said he’s happy with his decision to sell WZBN, he misses the day-to-day operations within the news industry and being out in the field.
“You’re always behind the scenes at different events—from political events to just simple human interest stories—those are the kind of things you really miss,” he said. “You really got a sense of the community, and the people, and the good things people are doing—and the bad things.”
Zanoni launched WZBN with his father Louis Zanoni in 1993. Over the 19-year period they worked there, they saw the company transform from a small station covering Mercer County high school sports to a thriving news station. They covered topics ranging from human interest stories to hard-hitting news.
Zanoni said the Federal Communications Commission and the business economics of the television industry ultimately led to the sale of WZBN.
The FCC needed more frequencies to allow for greater wifi and cell phone coverage. However, with a limited number of frequencies available, they needed to take roughly half of the TV stations in the major market off the air. The FCC decided to hold an incentive auction for broadcasters to buy up their bandwidth.
“The only space available to do this was in the TV spectrum,” Zanoni said. “Their philosophy was if they could squeeze the TV stations into a smaller bandwidth, they’d have a frequency they could sell to the phone companies.”
As as result, investment corporations started to buy TV stations in top markets around the country in an attempt to make a profit when the FCC held their incentive auction.
“We were offered a value for the station that we thought was fair at the time, and we decided to take it instead of waiting for the incentive auction,” Zanoni said. “Basically, we were at a time that it made sense for us to take that deal.”
