.kasper bio.
Born & raised in Youngstown, OH, Kasper’s radio carrer began at the age of 17 when he got an internship at the legendary WHOT in Youngstown. The internship led to a board-op position on their AM sister station running the controls for high school football games and ethnic specialty shows. After 6 months, Kasper was invited by Program Director Tom Pappas to hit the airwaves on the FM side. He started with weekend overnights, then onto weekend nights, and then fulltime Overnights/Assistant Music Director. During hs time at HOT, he also did part-time/swing work at another legendary Top 40 radio station, WBZZ/B94 in Pittsburgh.
From there he landed his first night show and Assistant Program Director/Music Director stripes at WRTS/Star 104 in Erie, PA.
The south came calling next and he accepted the Afternoon Drive/Music Director position at another heritage Top 40, WXLK/K92 in Roanoke, VA.
In 1999, Clear Channel Communications had just signed on a new Top 40 radio station in Cleveland, OH - a market that had been without a Pop music station for over a year until the company flipped Religious-formatted WZLE to WAKS as "KISS 104.9." In March of 2000, Kasper was hired by then-Program Director Dan Mason to be the station's first ever Night show host/Music Director. In July 2001, KISS made the move to a full-market signal and became "96-5 KISS FM." Kasper would end up winning the 2003 A.I.R. Award for "Best Cleveland Night Show", jockconference.com's first ever "Slammer Of The Year" award, and was nominated for "Top 40 Assistant Program Director/Music Director of the Year" at the 2003 Radio Music Awards.
Alongside his duties at WAKS, Kasper began to syndicate his show to other cities via a technique called "voicetracking." It all started with the morning drive slot for sister station WQEN/103.7 The Q in Birmingham, AL. Since 2001, he's been heard on a number of station across the country - WKSC/KISS 103.5 Chicago , WDCG/G-105 Raleigh, WKST/96-1 KISS FM Pittsburgh, WZKF/98.9 KISS FM Louisville, KKRZ/Z100 Portland , WHYI/Y100 Miami and WKKF/102-3 KISS FM.
After 4 years at WAKS, Todd Shannon, the Program Director at Philadelphia's WIOQ/Q102 came calling and Kasper made the move to Philly as Q's Afternoon Drive host while continuing to voicetrack other markets.
After a year, the opportunity to get back into programming was offered and in September 2005, Kasper returned to WAKS and re-assumed duties as Assistant Program Director/Music Director/Afternoon host.
Along with his role at KISS, Kasper can also be heard weekdays on XM21/KISS21 on XM Satellite Radio, WAKZ/95-9 KISS FM in Youngstown, andweeknights on WFMF/102.5 in Baton Rouge. Over the past 3 years, he's been nominated for two awards at the 2005 Radio Music Awards - "Top 40 Personality of the Year" and once again for "Top 40 Assistant Program Director/Music Director of the Year" and most recently for "CHR Music Director of the Year" for the Radio & Records 2007 Industry Acheievement Awards.
He lives in the Cleveland suburbs with his wife Krissy and their two dogs, Buffy and Sadie.
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