Island Park native, Elvis Duran produce Z100 documentary

When Island Park native David Katz left his job at Don Buchwald & Associates in 2007, it was a huge gamble for the talent agent. After 15 years at the agency whose namesake helped launch Howard Stern’s career, Katz was embarking on his own journey with the then mostly unknown afternoon D.J. Elvis Duran.

Now the CEO and partner at the Elvis Duran Group, Katz is celebrating the successful venture with Duran in the upcoming documentary “Worst to First,” on Z100’s rise, set to release On Demand Feb. 11.

Duran and Katz are excited to unveil the documentary commissioned by Scott Shannon, who helped build the New York radio giant Z100 in the early 1980s, as producers of “Worst to First.” “It’s arguably the best radio story in history because no other station has ever done that in a market like New York,” Katz told the Herald. Forty years after Shannon’s efforts began, the station is still the world leader in radio listenership and boasts the most popular morning show with Duran.

The documentary sees the likes of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Jon Bon Jovi and Joan Jett, platinum recording artist Debbie Gibson, and Shannon and Duran outline the amazing story of Z100’s renaissance.

“Elvis has no fear,” Katz said of the start of the Elvis Duran Group in 2007. “It was a gamble for me because I had a steady job with about 50 clients at the agency, and here I was about to leave all that and go off with one client.”

Katz, 58, grew up in the Harbor Isles section of Island Park. “It was just the most idyllic little suburb in the world,” Katz said. “No matter where I have gone in life, I have yet to come across people who have talked about their childhood the way my Island Park generation talks about their childhood here.”

A graduate of West Hempstead High School in 1981, Katz then went on to attend Syracuse University’s prestigious Newhouse School of Communications. Originally, Katz wanted to call play-by-play like another Syracuse alum, Marv Albert, but migrated to the sales side of television and radio. After graduating Syracuse in 1985, he started his career in Scranton, Pa., at a TV station selling airtime before doing the same for WLIG on Long Island.

Through 1990 and 1991, Katz lived in Los Angeles and traveled the country selling syndicated TV shows, including “The Howard Stern Show.” While on the job, Katz met Don Buchwald, Stern’s agent, and was recruited to join his agency in 1992.

“It was a remarkable thing to be on the sideline watching that,” Katz said of Stern and Buchwald’s growth. “They took over the radio world and watching them do that methodically evidently came in handy later on with Elvis and me.”

Elvis Duran was doing afternoons on Z100 when he and Katz started their business partnership in 1994. Patty Steele, current co-host with Scott Shannon WCBS’s morning show, was working with Duran at the time and connected the DJ and Katz. Katz started representing Duran, Steele and many others at Z100 and began his own business within the agency to work with the next generation of radio hosts with the blueprint of how Stern and Buchwald competed and succeeded guiding him. It was that experience that Katz said helped he and Duran start the Elvis Duran group in 2007 and dominate the airwaves for the next decade plus.

“I’d be lying if I told you that the day I meant Elvis Duran in 1994 that I saw in him who he is now,” Katz said. “When you’re just spinning records in the afternoons, you don’t have a lot of time to show your personality. It’s really once you get to the mornings when you get time to talk, and that’s when I started to believe he could be this superstar.”