Documentary Review: 'Worst to First: The True Story of Z100'

In May of 2022 I will have been in radio for 27 years. Naturally, that means I know and revere Scott Shannon as a legend of my business. I’ve had the privilege of hearing Scott Shannon talk about radio in interviews and in person and it never gets old. The man is an indefatigable proponent of my profession since before I was even born. So, you can imagine that when I heard someone was making a documentary about Scott Shannon’s greatest accomplishment, taking New York’s Z100 from worst in the ratings to first, I was excited.

That excitement lasted about a minute before disillusionment set in. Looking as if it had been shot on an IPhone on a budget of fifty bucks, the documentary Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 in New York is a dull, fawning, and unremarkable documentary. Opening with a story from Jon Bon Jovi, Worst to First opens with a non-sequitur. The rock legend tells a story about hearing one of his songs on the radio for the first time and what that meant to him.

It’s a heartwarming but rather typical story for successful musicians of Bon Jovi’s era. Hearing your song on the radio for the first time pops up in every biopic of a successful musician ever. This story is notable in this review because at no time does Bon Jovi mention hearing his song for the first time on Z100 or because of the benevolence of Scott Shannon and his legendary morning Zoo Crew. In a documentary about Z100 and Scott Shannon that kind of specificity is important. This isn’t the only time this happens in Worst to First.

Eventually, the documentary gets down to the business of introducing Scott Shannon and how he ended up captaining the ship at a New York Top 40 station that ranked dead last in the world’s largest media market. It turns out to be not much of a story. The station had been bought by a company in Cleveland and Shannon was the biggest fish in the slightly smaller pond of Orlando, Florida. He may not have been the most likely pick for the gig but he wasn’t the least likely either.

The documentary proceeds to explain that Shannon had little success until the first ratings were announced and confirmed Z100 was in last place. At that point Shannon decided to make going worst to first his mission statement and marketing strategy. Shannon used the deep pockets of the new station owner to buy TV ads and on the air he declared war on other New York City radio stations, openly mocking competitors in a fashion never heard before in New York radio.

Shannon and his kooky ‘Zoo Crew’ created a morning show that was appointment listening. It was complete anarchy but it was entertaining anarchy. Shannon claimed that the station broadcast live from the top of the Empire State Building despite the actual studio being located across the river in Secaucus, New Jersey. He called the station the Flamethrower, an inside radio term for having a powerful antenna. Indeed, Z100 could reach from Jersey across New York and up to Connecticut.

In one rare and relatively minor insight, the documentary reveals that Shannon and his engineer added a little sweetener to the power of their ‘Flamethrower’ one that had them butting up against FCC regulations and fellow stations eager to catch the new kid in town bending the rules. The documentary does not state whether any consequences arose from the ‘sweetening’ but it is nevertheless a nice detail for radio folks to enjoy. Not sure if it will make much sense to non-radio viewers of Worst to First but I imagine few people outside the industry will be watching this documentary.

What I find shocking and disappointing is that despite Shannon having a breadth of incredible stories from his years in radio, Worst to First barely scratched the surface. The documentary is so busy fawning over Shannon to actually bother asking him to tell the amazing stories he has accumulated in his remarkable career. Even the big stories that Shannon does share aren’t presented particularly well.

One of the legends of Z100 that permeated into popular culture was how Madonna, before she became a global icon, used to take a cassette tape of her first single to Z100 nearly everyday in hope that Scott Shannon might play it. He did and is credited as helping break Madonna in New York and around the world. And yet, what we get of the Madonna story culminates in Shannon and Z100 getting to host the premiere of Madonna’s movie Who’s That Girl. There, the Material Girl tells a story about her first night in New York City and says nothing about Shannon or Z100 or how the station helped launch her career.

It’s hinted that Madonna invited Z100 to host the premiere in a thank you to the station but once again, the documentary is hindered by a lack of specificity. I understand Madonna is probably not available for an interview for this low budget documentary but there had to be someone who could corroborate how important Z100 was to Madonna becoming a star. Even Shannon himself doesn’t appear all that impressed with the role he played in launching a global icon’s career.

Another story that should feel more important but suffers from that lack of specificity is Shannon’s role in launching Joan Jett’s solo career. Jett’s manager and Joan Jett herself speak about how Shannon becoming a champion of one of her early singles was important but the story is told in disparate parts of the documentary with little or no reflection from Shannon himself about Joan Jett, a pioneering figure in music in the 80s. Her involvement in the doc and how Z100 helped her comes off like an afterthought.

The documentary touts Jon Bon Jovi, Joan Jett, Clive Davis, and Nile Rogers as being in the documentary but their contributions are negligible. Bon Jovi told the non-sequitur about hearing his song on the radio for the first time, which is intercut with footage from the Wanted Dead or Alive video, a song released well after Bon Jovi was a major phenomenon. Pop star Debbie Gibson pops in to tell the same story Bon Jovi told about the excitement of having a single on the radio for the first time but nothing about Z100.

If Clive Davis is in Worst to First or had an opinion about Scott Shannon and New York radio, I missed it. He’s in the credits but I must have looked away from the screen for the seconds he was there. Same could be said for Nile Rogers who talks about the effect mainstream disco had on the music industry and radio but, again, that’s rather tangential to the story of Worst to First. Only Tony Orlando actually seems to tell a story specifically about Z100 and that’s because he was the first celebrity guest on Shannon’s show in studio. He owed Shannon one for being one of the few stations to play music by Orlando’s then musical protégé Dawn.

At a mere 65 minutes in length, Worst to First doesn’t overstay its welcome but that is about the nicest thing I can say about this rinky dink documentary that somehow manages to feature an icon of his industry and fails to glean anything more than a vague recitation of history and some non-sequitur asides about celebrities who were really happy to hear their songs on the radio back in the day.

Worst to First: The True Story of Z100 will be available on VOD in North America on Friday, February 11th, 2022.