{"id":8306,"date":"2013-09-17T09:42:13","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T13:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8306"},"modified":"2014-01-25T18:09:49","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T23:09:49","slug":"tom-scharpling-96-from-newbridge-to-music-video-visonary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=8306","title":{"rendered":"Tom Scharpling \u201995: From Newbridge to Music Video Visonary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tom<\/a>
Tom Scharpling \u201995 is host of \u201cThe Best Show on WFMU.\u201d Photo \u00a9 Mindy Tucker.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just before nine o\u2019clock on an early spring evening, Tom Scharpling bursts through the door of the massive record room on the second floor of WFMU\u2019s offices in downtown Jersey City. He\u2019s been at the station for a little while, but it\u2019s time for him to get ready for his weekly show, not-so-subtly entitled The Best Show on WFMU<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As he listens to some power pop emanating from his laptop, he peruses the racks to find the songs that he\u2019ll play during the first 15 minutes of the program. After picking the music, he runs down the guest lineup with his associate producer and call-screener, \u201cAP\u201d Mike Lisk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree calls in a row: Feuerzeig, Fielder, then Wurster,\u201d referring to filmmaker Jeff Feuerzig and comedian Nathan Fielder. The third person is Jon Wurster, Scharpling\u2019s comedy partner, who will be calling in from his North Carolina home as yet another character from the fictional New Jersey town of Newbridge, this time as abusive community college handball coach Orenthal Harrups.<\/p>\n

Scharpling, who graduated from TCNJ in 1995, has been doing Best Show<\/em> since 2000. The show has evolved a bit over time, going from two hours to three, and with Scharpling monologuing more and taking less calls. But two things have been constant: his desire to be himself and his partnership with Wurster.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was nice to have a thing where the buck stops with me and this is mine,\u201d says Scharpling, who was a writer and executive producer on the USA Network show Monk<\/em> from 2002\u201309. \u201cIf you just write for TV like that you feel like you\u2019re very lost, your voice may get lost in there a little bit. I would recommend to anybody working on a collaborative thing like that to try to have a thing that\u2019s your own on the side because you won\u2019t feel swallowed up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show, which airs every Tuesday from 9 PM to midnight EST on the public radio station, is extremely popular, at least by the standards of public and Internet radio. Between the broadcast, the station\u2019s online stream, and the podcast of the show that\u2019s available on iTunes and elsewhere, Best Show attracts an audience in the six figures. While Scharpling doesn\u2019t know exactly what percentage of the audience comes from each format, he knows that he\u2019s brought enough listeners to the station that his show alone raised over $200,000 during WFMU\u2019s March 2013 pledge marathon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are my people,\u201d the central New Jersey resident said over lunch at a local diner a week later. \u201cThey\u2019re there for me. Hopefully they check out the station and fall in love with the station too, but I think I\u2019m the one bringing them in the door to introduce them to WFMU.\u201d<\/p>\n

He may be speaking to hundreds of thousands, but when he finally opens the mike and starts talking, he\u2019s a man alone in front of a mixing console. \u201cIt\u2019s boring; just one person in the room,\u201d he tells me before he goes on the air, but his actions once he\u2019s live indicate otherwise. He speaks with his eyes closed, head moving back and forth like a concert pianist as he monologues about topics ranging from the death of legendary record producer Andy Johns to a small Twitter battle he\u2019s having with Chuck Woolery. \u201cWhaddya expect from a guy like that?\u201d he says about the game show host. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t bring anything to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the show goes on, he takes calls from avid listeners, interviews his guests, and monologues some more. But the highlight is the comedy routine with Wurster, where they stray from the abusive coach routine to discuss a fake version of Saturday Night Live<\/em>, rattling off lists of fake cast members and fake musical guests in the show\u2019s fake history. They\u2019ve been doing this on the radio since the late \u201990s, when Scharpling had a more music-oriented show on the station. Wurster and Scharpling met at a Superchunk show in 1992, shortly after Wurster became the band\u2019s drummer. They bonded over the Chris Elliot sitcom Get A Life<\/em> and a very obscure MTV VJ.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had this kind of litmus test that nobody had matched, and Jon had the same one. It was VJ on MTV one summer named Smash,\u201d he said. \u201cHe was this old dude who they plugged him on in the summer for some reason. I floated it to him or he floated it to me because we both had the thing and we both knew it. That was when it was like, \u2018Oh man. I think we have a two person club here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

These sketches are planned for the most part, but just like the town all these characters reside in, they\u2019re a natural product of the conversation between friends. \u201cI don\u2019t think we ever consciously set out to have this fictional town, it just evolved and seemed logical to put all these people in one place,\u201d wrote Wurster in an e-mail. \u201cI do remember Tom saying at one point that the town should have \u2018bridge\u2019 in the name because there\u2019s so many places with names like \u2018Old Bridge\u2019 in New Jersey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Monk<\/em> ended, Scharpling has had a development deal with Comedy Central that didn\u2019t lead to a series; he\u2019s currently producing and writing an IFC pilot with comedian Chris Gethard. But much of his creative energy has been devoted to writing and directing music videos, a mini-career that started in 2011 when Ted Leo asked him to direct one for his band. \u201cBy that point, I was thinking about doing a short film or something,\u201d says Scharpling. \u201cThis will be the perfect way to do that because it\u2019ll be something that gets seen by people. So, I put a little money aside to go do the short film,\u201d with a little help from Leo\u2019s label.<\/p>\n

After that video came out, acts like The New Pornographers, Kurt Vile, The Postal Service, and Aimee Mann have asked Scharpling to write and direct videos for them. Scharpling sees the videos as something that could become a viable part of his career, but just like with the radio show, the fact that he\u2019s currently making little or no money doing it is putting some strain on him. \u201cI can\u2019t do everything for free. I do the radio show for free. I do these videos for free. At a point, I\u2019m the one who\u2019s got to say I\u2019m taking a step forward with this. You\u2019ve got to take your lumps and learn how to do it and I feel like I did that. So, now it\u2019s time to see what the next step is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does that mean that The Best Show<\/em>\u2019s days are numbered? \u201cI don\u2019t know how long the show will go,\u201d writes Wurster. \u201cIt seems to be more popular than ever and we are really grateful for that. We had absolutely no idea it would get as big as it has when we started all those years ago. But to this day we really only do these calls to make each other laugh. We\u2019re essentially performing for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the show wraps up for the evening, Scharpling is tired but happy that another show came together. It\u2019s something he hopes he can keep going. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard because the show\u2019s special to me. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve built up and it didn\u2019t exist before. It\u2019s not like I am taking over The Tonight Show<\/em> that some other dude got going and I\u2019m on the continuum with it. It\u2019s like, no, it didn\u2019t exist and now it\u2019s this thing that I love doing and that a lot of people love hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Best Show on WFMU\u201d host and former \u201cMonk\u201d writer and executive producer has found a new outlet for channeling his creative energy: writing and directing music videos. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":280,"featured_media":8307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-fall-2013"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/280"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}