FEATURE STORY: Jane says farewell
“I hope you find some joy in the days ahead, and you have the chance to share it." Legendary broadcaster Jane Matenaer is retiring. A special feature story on her remarkable career in radio.
The Recombobulation Area is a 19-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
After 44 years behind the microphone, legendary Milwaukee broadcaster Jane Matenaer is retiring.
She made the announcement on the show she hosts, “Matenaer On Air,” on Monday, Nov. 3, alongside co-host Greg Bach and producer Calvin Butenhoff.
“I really want to take this opportunity to say: thank you,” she said, making the announcement. “Thank you for four decades of welcoming me into your homes and your cars and your garages and your barns or wherever you listen to the radio. Thank you so very much. I have been so fortunate for the last 44 years…You grieved with me, you celebrated with me, you gave me words of comfort and encouragement and congratulations and well wishes.”
Her final show as host of the program will be on Dec. 12. A parade of guests will be appearing on “Matenaer On Air” over the next several weeks to celebrate her amazing career.
Along with that celebration is a little reflection — on more than four decades in radio. To do that, I sat down with Jane at our Radio Park studios in Racine to talk about her remarkable journey. We covered everything from her first time behind a microphone, to the decades she spent hosting morning shows in Milwaukee. to the global (and beyond!) sensation that was “The Packerena,” to her last three years at Civic Media, which she calls “the proudest of my 40-plus year career.”
Jane Matenaer is from Hartford, Wisconsin, where she grew up above a funeral home. A “mortician’s daughter” and the youngest of six children, she grew up dreaming of being an actress, putting on plays “in the chapels of the funeral home” her family lived above.
“This started when I was very, very small, and this was a way to keep all of us out of our parents’ hair as they were getting things ready on Christmas Eve,” she said. “We would go downstairs to the chapels of the funeral home and practice our play, and then put on our plays. And on Christmas Eve, it was a tradition we did for decades. So I already had that bug.”
When she went to college, she started as a theater major, but then chose radio.
“To me, radio was always mind theater,” she said. “Back in the day, when I started, there were no cameras and you couldn’t see disc jockeys. And so to me, that was an opportunity to be theater of the mind. And I could do different silly accents and different silly voices and be a different character. And then the audience got to fill in the blanks with their imagination. And that’s what I’ve always loved about radio. It’s like reading a book. I always find the book is better than the movie.”
Listen to “Matenaer On Air” every weekday from 9-11 a.m. on the Civic Media network, and find podcasts from every show here.
You can find the episode where she announces her retirement embedded below.
Share a message with Jane and with “Matenaer On Air” by emailing JaneSays@civicmedia.us.
Matenaer graduated from the Brown School of Broadcasting in Minnesota in 1981, and began her career at KNUJ in New Ulm.
“New Ulm is a pretty small town in south central Minnesota, and they were bringing a new FM station on the air, but originally I was on the AM side, which played polka music and farm reports,” said Matenaer. “Very midwestern. And I think one of the first on-air shifts I did on KNUJ, they would give you live commercial reads about farm implements that are four-syllable words. That’s what I remember is reading that copy really, really quickly so everyone wouldn’t realize I had no idea what I was talking about or how to pronounce those words.”
She was there for three years and then moved back to southeastern Wisconsin for a job at WMYX, “The Mix,” where she started on overnights. Her first time on the air, though, she “started hyperventilating.”
“When I cracked open the microphone, I saw hundreds and thousands and millions of people, and I started hyperventilating,” she said. “I’m trying to give the forecast and I can’t breathe, and I sound like I’m choking. And I get it out, and go to the next song, and the phone rings and I answer it. And it was a listener who said, ‘I’m really worried about that disc jockey. Is she having a heart attack? Should I send someone over?’ I’m like, no, it’s me. I’m fine…He actually stayed in touch with me for many years, and I heard from him when I first started here. He was my guardian angel.”
She continued on overnights for a short while — “every weirdo in the world calls you at about 3:30 in the morning,” she said, adding that “I got really good at handling obscene phone callers” — but was soon offered an opportunity for a bigger role at the station.
“Jack Lee, also known as Jim Beasley, who was the GM of “The Mix” at the time had suggested they move me to mornings, which is quite a promotion considering I was very new to radio,” she said.
That began her career as the morning show host at “The Mix,” where she worked for more than 24 years.
She had nine different co-hosts over those years, and jokes that she was the “black widow of Milwaukee morning radio.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she said. “They didn’t ask me when they fired people … Some lasted three months, some lasted three years.”
But over that time, she built connections with her listeners, and with Milwaukee.
“I guess my biggest takeaway is honestly how gracious and kind people have been and how welcoming to me they have been for all of these years,” she said. “They treat me like a member of their family. And that means so much. I can’t even express what that means to me.”
One of the more memorable things she was a part of was the legendary parody song, the “Packarena.” The “Macarena” was becoming a global sensation and so were the 1996 Green Bay Packers. Along with her co-host at the time, Dan Weber, and then-producer Mike Clemens (now also with Civic Media, as a sports reporter), they wrote some lyrics at the suggestion of their program director, Brian Kelly.
“Brian Kelly and I went down to Chicago, down to the Loop and recorded for hours until about 11:00 at night,” she said. “And then I drove back and got two hours of sleep and went back on the air, and we debuted it.”
It was a hit. It was played all over the world, and the station sold cassette tapes with the song for $5 apiece for a charity fundraiser, eventually raising more than $90,000 for the Child Abuse Prevention Fund.
Not only was it a global hit, it also was played in outer space.
“That’s probably one of my proudest things,” said Matenaer. “The captain of the space shuttle at that time was from Wisconsin. And for the wake up call on the space shuttle one morning, they played the “Packarena.” … So, there is a videotape of him floating around in the space shuttle doing the “Packarena” to my voice. I will live on that forever. So, if the aliens ever come and attack, it might be my fault.”
It was a huge hit, perfectly of its era, and it took off in ways that surprised all parties involved.
“None of us thought that it would turn into what it did,” she said.
Matenaer was part of a number of other charitable fundraisers at “The Mix,” including starting their annual “Stuff the Bus” event with Hunger Task Force — the goal was to fill up the bus with donated food.
“That turned into an enormous fundraiser,” she said. “People are so generous. Wisconsinites have always blown my mind with their generosity, their compassion, their willingness to help out other people who are less fortunate. I used to cry every year after we would finish (the event), because there would be so many people who were not driving up in BMWs, they’re driving up in a piece of junk station wagon full of groceries, and they would tell their stories about how they struggled at one point and needed a food pantry, and now they were in a position to give back.”
Matenaer also helped spearhead a $75,000 fundraiser for “Rides and Reins,” which provides low or no-cost therapeutic riding lessons for children and young adults with special needs.
Along with those charitable endeavors, Matenaer got to experience so much in her decades hosting morning shows in Milwaukee.
“I think about how lucky I’ve been to have access to things because of this job,” she said. “I broadcasted from sitting outside on a billboard above I-94. I got to go up on a hot air balloon with the Milwaukee County Zoo. I went up in a trick biplane and did hammerheads and all kinds of tricks — and then came down on the ground and pulled over on the freeway so I could get sick, but that’s another story. I climbed the mast of a tall ship and helped furl the sail. I got to go into the basement of the Milwaukee Public Museum and see all of their archives. I got to go behind the scenes at the Milwaukee County Zoo and do things like that. I’ve been so blessed and so fortunate to be able to do that as part of my job.”
After “The Mix,” Matenaer would go on to lead the morning show at B93 and later join 620 WTMJ as part of their news department and morning show. Presented with the opportunity to join Civic Media shortly after its inception in 2022, Jane joined 540 WAUK first as a producer, working with Kristin Brey on the show, “As Goes Wisconsin,” and then as host of the daily program “Matenaer On Air.”
“There are very few media companies, in particular, that will give a 60-something-ish woman her own show,” she said. “It doesn’t happen. Certainly not with someone my age. They want someone younger, prettier. But that’s just the nature of the business. It is a visual business now. So, I have been so fortunate to be given this opportunity and for them to trust me with it.”
This experience, hosting her own show with her name right in the name of the show, has been “life-changing,” said Matenaer.
“I think especially today, with so much going on and so much bad news, it is more important than ever that we recognize and seek out those little moments that give you hope, that give you promise, that give you joy. Those are precious, precious things.” - Jane Matenaer
She’s hosted alongside Greg Bach, the co-producer of the Milwaukee Comedy Festival and co-owner of comedy venue The Laughing Tap, who became the full-time co-host of “Matenaer On Air.”
“I want people to understand I wouldn’t have been able to do a show by myself if it weren’t for Greg sitting across from me,” said Matenaer. “I was never comfortable enough with just doing this myself. I prefer to play off of someone; I think it’s more interesting, I think it provides different perspectives. And it’s a friend. It’s having a friend across from me at the table. So Greg has been instrumental in “Matenaer On Air” and what we’ve done and hopefully have connected with folks.”
Matenaer and Bach have made it a point to add some levity to the show, which often touches on challenging and difficult political topics. Near the end of each show is a more comedic segment called “This Shouldn’t Be A Thing,” which follows “Audio Sorbet,” where they discuss a non-political or lighter topic.
“Because we cover things that are so heavy and can be so dark, I have always believed it is important to keep some levity somewhere,” she said. “For me personally, I have to laugh or I’m going to explode. That’s how I deal with things. That is my coping mechanism is jokes and silly things. And granted, we are in very serious times right now. I don’t ever want people to think that I don’t appreciate that. But at the same time, if you don’t have a release valve for some of this anxiety, you’re going to explode and that’s not healthy.”
Along with bringing some humor and levity to the show, Jane always ends every show by talking about joy.
“I hope you find some joy in the days ahead, and you have the chance to share it,” she says.
“We have to find joy,” she said. “It doesn’t always land right in your lap. And it might not be a great big thing. It can be a small exchange with someone…And I think especially today, with so much going on and so much bad news, it is more important than ever that we recognize and seek out those little moments that give you hope, that give you promise, that give you joy. Those are precious, precious things.”
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be silenced. Find some joy and find some community and we’ll keep fighting forward together.”
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Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer and at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social.