Roxy with the elusive Maynard James Keenan of Tool and A Perfect Circle fame.
After a 42-year career in the music industry, most notably sixteen illustrious years at the United Stations Radio Networks preceded by many more successful years in network radio, music video television and production and local radio, the popular and influential Roxy Myzal will be relinquishing her work duties and taking it easy (or at least as easy as she can take it!). Roxy claims it was not an easy decision, but she will be shifting into a much lower gear in her personal life as of December 31, 2017. The announcement comes from USRN’s EVP/Programming, Andy Denemark, with whom Myzal has worked closely with since early 2001 at the company’s New York offices.
J. Roxy Myzal started out in Boston, MA in 1975 as the director of the Boston Record Pool, an organization of disco DJs. Roxy attained notoriety in the music and broadcasting industry as the Music Director of New York’s WXLO-FM (known as “99X, Rockin’ The Apple In Stereo” before it flipped formats to become “98.7 Kiss-FM”). She went on to high-profile promotion jobs at Atlantic Records and Chrysalis Records based in New York, and then to Rolling Stone magazine where she worked on the highly successful syndicated rock radio show “Rolling Stone’s Continuous History of Rock and Roll.” Then she was hired by DIR Broadcasting as Director of Afffilate Marketing.
By the mid-1980’s, Music Videos started to become popular and the late Top 40 radio legend Rick Sklar of ABC Radio suggested her for a job as Music Director for a burgeoning UHF television station in Boston, “V 66,” owned by local radio giants, John Garabedian and Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg.
After V66 was sold to the Home Shopping Network in 1987, Myzal moved to Los Angeles, working with Robert Kardashian at the short-lived MCA Radio Network, but decided to change careers to produce music videos until the early 1990’s. When the SW Network was created in 1994, she returned to New York to develop hip-hop and rock programs for that company. One of the rock shows she created evolved into the very influential weekend program known as hardDrive hosted by Lou Brutus. When USRN acquired the hardDrive program, its 125 affiliates and its interview library in 2001, Roxy Myzal came along with the programming assets and continued to oversee the programming and production of that show. She also oversaw the development of the hardDrive brand by creating the nightly 5-hour version of the show known hardDrive XL, as well as the annual rock tour known as hardDrive Live. Her work on these rock shows has earned her numerous awards, much adulation and the respect of the top echelon of radio programmers and rock performers. If a rock star is going to interview with anyone, it would be with Roxy Myzal. She also helped to bring the morning show prep division that began at SW Networks to USRN, now known as The Pulse Of Radio, and created branded online and digital content.
