Meet Author and Journalist Frank Cipolla

Frank Cipolla has been in the radio business for 30 years, with is first job coming in a section of rural New Jersey that, for a young man from Queens, was a learning experience.

It was in a small radio station that doubled as the owner’s home and often employed the skills of a local plumber who doubled as the mayor.

“I started at WCRV in Washington, N.J., and the owner had been thrown out by his wife the year before, and he actually lived in the station, in his office,” said Cipolla. “It was the classic, small radio station with all the trappings of people just starting out…I lived in Queens, so living in  a farming area was crazy, and all the stories were about reports on cows.”

Cipolla has come a long way since his days of cow reports and having the boss constantly looking over his shoulder, even when he was asleep. The noted television and radio reporter went on to a successful career with WNBC, where he was the afternoon news anchor for the “Soupy Sales Radio Show.” He also worked alongside Howard Stern and filled in for Charles McCord on the “Imus in The Morning Show.” Later, Cipolla was a regular on the then-fledgling  News 12 New Jersey,  worked with UPN-9 in New York and currently works as a news anchor for Wall Street Journal Radio.

At , Cipolla will visit the to talk about his time in the local news business and discuss his book, “It Shocked Even Us.”

“It’s really a love letter to the business,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of people who leave the business and write books where they‘re trashing the business.”

Trashing the business is the last thing on Cipolla’s mind. In fact, he speaks about his career like someone who can’t wait to tell you all the great stories he’s lived through.

“If you know people in radio specifically, we are kids that never really grew up,” he said. “We’re the kids that ran away to be with the circus. My wife, who’s a very successful business woman, worked in radio for a time, said ‘I don’t know how you work with these people.’ If you love radio, you get radio. We’re just big kids who get paid and we love it a lot.”

When he visits the library, Cipolla will talk about some of these “kids,” and the stories that happened behind the scenes.

“I went into television in early 1990s, and there are so many funny stories and so many celebrities I met over the years and this is all the things that went on behind the scenes you never get to see,” he said he said about his book. “You don’t realize all the problems you get before it goes on the air.”

Whether it’s the time he had to get into a small boat and paddle through a flood ravaged area and brave electroction to turn on an antenna that had gone out, or when he saw a fist fight involving Soupy Sales, his stories might have local names and places, but they are indicative of the types of things that happen anywhere in the country.

“In any interview I’ve said, just because I live and work around New Jersey, these stories happen in every single newsroom and radio station in America. I’ve had people in Washington and other areas tell me that and this is 'my' story.

“These stories are relatable to every single market in America. The characters you meet up with are the same personalities with the same problems you meet up with in the street and studio.”

If you don't catch Cipolla this month, then you'll have a second chance to meet him in February, when the Middlesex Chapter of Brandeis National Committee sponsores an apearace at 1 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, t the library.