Jerry Lee (born April 20, 1936, in

Sharon, Pennsylvania Sharon is a city in western Mercer County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city, located along the banks of the Shenango River on the state border with Ohio, is about northeast of Youngstown, about southeast of Cleveland and about northwest o ...

) is a noted crime prevention philanthropist, proponent of

evidence-based policy-making Evidence-based policy is an idea in public policy proposing that policy decisions should be based on, or informed by, rigorously established objective evidence. The implied contrast is with policymaking based on ideology, 'common sense,' anecd ...

, and the former owner of the

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

radio station

WBEB-FM WBEB (101.1 FM) is a commercial radio station licensed to serve Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station broadcasts an adult contemporary format, switching to Christmas music for part of November and December. The broadcast ...

101.1. Currently he is working on promoting the effectiveness of radio commercials, owns SpotQ Services, Inc., is the President of the Jerry Lee Foundation, and is involved in continuing to encourage the adoption of evidence-based criminology. Additionally, he was the original donor of the

Stockholm Prize in Criminology The Stockholm Prize in Criminology is an international prize in the field of criminology, established under the aegis of the Swedish Ministry of Justice. It has a permanent endowment in the trust of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology Foundation. ...

, the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

(later the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology), the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, and helped found many organizations/initiatives such as the

Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy Evidence-based policy is an idea in public policy proposing that policy decisions should be based on, or informed by, rigorously established objective evidence. The implied contrast is with policymaking based on ideology, 'common sense,' anecd ...

Early career

In 1960, Jerry Lee graduated from

Youngstown State University Youngstown State University (YSU or Youngstown State) is a public university in Youngstown, Ohio. It was founded in 1908 and is the easternmost member of the University System of Ohio. The university is composed of six undergraduate colleges an ...

, Ohio with a bachelor's degree in economics. After a brief stint with a management consulting firm, he became the general manager of WAQE FM in Baltimore. This was his first job in Radio before moving to Philadelphia in 1963 where he joined a new radio station being launched.

Radio Station - WBEB-FM

Jerry Lee was hired by David Kurtz, the owner of WDVR 101 FM radio station, three weeks before the station went on the air in 1963. David Kurtz was trained as an Engineer and gave Jerry Lee the opportunity to work for the fledgling station. Jerry originally offered to work for very low pay but with a very high sales commission and set a goal for himself that the station would be the Number 1 rated FM radio station in Philadelphia in 12 months. He offered to quit if he did not achieve this goal. Originally, Jerry Lee had the title of Sales Manager but soon was running the station. Originally the station was licensed to broadcast at 5,000 watts of power while the competition broadcast at 20,000 watts. Lower wattage makes it harder to find the station on the dial, which often means a station will have lower ratings and sales. By 1966 despite its low power, WDVR 101 FM had the largest audience of any FM Radio station in the country according to the Arbitron ratings. In order to create such a large audience, Jerry Lee employed a novel strategy for the time. While other stations played familiar songs 70% of the time, he insisted that WDVR play 100% familiar songs. The station was originally assigned a low wattage because they would have interfered with the signals from two other radio stations. Jerry Lee saw this as one of the primary operational restrictions holding the station back. In 1968 Jerry Lee negotiated a mutual interference agreement with WCBS FM in New York City and in 1970 an agreement was reached with WGAL FM in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that allowed the station to achieve full power. In February 1967, WDVR was able to move from the

Germantown Germantown or German Town may refer to: Places Australia * Germantown, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region United States * Germantown, California, the former name of Artois, a census-designated place in Glenn County * Ger ...

Neighborhood of Philadelphia to the more centrally located

Bala Cynwyd Bala Cynwyd ( ) is a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania. It is located on the Philadelphia Main Line in Southeastern Pennsylvania, bordering the western edge of Philadelphia at U.S. Route 1 (City Avenue). It was originally two separa ...

. After this move Jerry Lee called a staff meeting, “I will do anything to double our sales in 1968, no matter how far out it is”. The station increased revenue from $339,000 in 1967 to $1,006,000 in 1968. Some of the sales strategies that came out of that initial meeting included installing new technology like the new automatic IBM typewriter to use as a conversation piece and a continental height bar that was accessed by a sliding door adjacent to his office. The continental height bar proved such a successful sales tool that a penthouse was rented a block away from the studios and an authentic Spanish wine cellar was installed, the penthouse also had moving floors. The penthouse proved to be an even more effective sales tool than the bar adjacent to Jerry's office and automatic typewriter but not as effective as the yacht that was purchased for sales meetings in 1972. AM dominated FM stations in ratings and in advertising. To change the perception of FM, Jerry decided to lease Cadillacs for every one of the sales reps. In late 1967 a deal with one of the top AM “Rep Firms” in the country (Petry Media Corp) was brokered and business with national advertising brands rose dramatically. In February 1968 the biggest money giveaway in the history of radio, to that point, was launched. The $101,000 giveaway contest (101 prizes worth $1000) that was promoted by the spokesperson for Avis on TV. It was the first time a professionally created TV commercial was ever made for a radio station. “Some time in the next few days, you will get the most important mailing of your life.” The audience for the station went up 35%”. Out of the box thinking that was both audacious and carefully researched became the hallmark of the station’s continued ratings growth. This led to Lee becoming owner of 49.99% of the station in 1969. In 1969 the

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

car featured in Goldfinger and Thunderball that had an ejection seat was purchased and for the next 42 years was central to the James Bond room of Jerry Lee’s house. Taking a picture inside this car was a major attraction for advertisers, political fundraisers and visiting dignitaries. One of Lee’s promotions in the mid-1980s focused on giving away 50,000 deluxe rosewood cabinet radios with 6-inch speakers to retailers in the region. The radios were manufactured so that they could only receive 101.1 FM. At the time it was relatively common to walk into a salon, barbershop, grocery store or other place of business and hear one of these radios playing 101.1 FM. As of 2024, it was anecdotally remarked that some of the original 50,000 radios are still in operation. When the

Telecommunications Act of 1996 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a United States federal law enacted by the 104th United States Congress on January 3, 1996, and signed into law on February 8, 1996, by President Bill Clinton. It primarily amended Chapter 5 of Title 47 of t ...

was signed into law Lee saw a broader industry move toward consolidation coming. He was noted to say, “I knew that everyone would scramble to bulk up and buy a lot of stations that would require a lot of financing—and the first thing they would cut is their marketing budget, which they did. So, I increased my advertising over a three-year period from $1 million to $3.5 million a year.” This positioning helped WBEB maintain a large ratings lead. Lee purchased the rest of the station's shares from Dave Kurtz's estate in 2005 and left the organization in 2018 with the sale to Entercom (now called

Audacy Audacy, previously known as Radio.com, is a free broadcast and Internet radio platform owned by the namesake company Audacy, Inc. (formerly known as Entercom). The Audacy platform functions as a music recommender system and is the national umbr ...

Productivity Initiatives

While a

National Association of Broadcasters The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a trade association and lobby group representing the interests of commercial and non-commercial over-the-air radio and television broadcasters in the United States. The NAB represents more than ...

(NAB) Board Member in the early 1980s, Jerry Lee became concerned that the United States was experiencing reduced levels of productivity. After initiating productivity initiatives like BICIAP (Broadcast Industry Council to Improve American Productivity) and working with people like

Howard K. Smith Howard Kingsbury Smith (May 12, 1914 – February 15, 2002) was an American journalist, radio reporter, television anchorman, political commentator, and film actor. He was one of the original members of the team of war correspondents known as th ...

and Don Ephlin (the UAW person at Ford), real change occurred.

Criminology

In 1996, Jerry Lee and his late partner David L. Kurtz founded the Lee Foundation. According to its website, the Jerry Lee Foundation is committed to solving social problems associated with poverty, especially in American inner cities which suffer from

concentrated poverty Concentrated poverty concerns the spatial distribution of socio-economic deprivation, specifically focusing on the density of poor populations. Within the United States, common usage of the term concentrated poverty is observed in the fields of po ...

. The Foundation's special concerns are elementary education and crime. Its major strategy is to support research to find out what works, what doesn't work, and what may be promising to prevent crime and improve education. Its major projects have been established at the Universities of

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

(England). In 1997, the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice invited Jerry Lee to serve as Chair of the Advisory Board of its multi-million dollar “Preventing Crime” program, which extended the work of its landmark 1997 Report to the US Congress on Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising. The program made several Congressional Presentations, and in 2000 launched the annual Jerry Lee Symposium on Crime and Justice Research, originally at the US Capitol and for over 14 years held on Capitol Hill for an audience of policy-makers and practitioners. The Jerry Lee Foundation enlisted other donors to support the Maryland Criminology Department in making term appointments of two research assistant professors ( David Wilson and Spencer Lee), and of David Farrington as a research professor. Their work helped to lead to the founding in 2001 of the international Campbell Collaboration, of which Jerry Lee was one of three original incorporators and David Farrington was the first chair of the Coordinating Committee on Crime and Justice. The mission of the Campbell Collaboration is to provide decision makers around the world with sound evidence in implementing and evaluating policies in the areas of education, crime prevention and social services, derived from systematic reviews of research on specific policies, treatments and programs. In 1999, the Jerry Lee Foundation, with the assistance of the Broadcast Industry Council and National Broadcast Association for Community Affairs, established an award of $2,500 to annually recognize outstanding community service programs, or programs, news series or public service campaigns promoting or examining the demonstrated effectiveness of local crime prevention programs. Also in 1999, he was elected to the Board of the Philadelphia Police Foundation and was elected chairman of the advisory board of the

Fels Institute of Government The Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania is a graduate school of public policy and public management. Founded in 1937 by Samuel Simeon Fels of the Fels Naptha Soap Company, the Fel Institute prepares its students for pub ...

at the

. In 2000, Jerry Lee founded the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the

with a multimillion-dollar gift. Dean Samuel H. Preston appointed

Lawrence W. Sherman Lawrence W. Sherman (born October 25, 1949) is an American experimental criminologist and police educator who is the founder of evidence-based policing. Sherman's use of randomized controlled experiments to study deterrence and crime prevention ...

, the Greenfield Professor of Human Relations, as the first director of the Lee Center, and later as the founding chair of

Department of Criminology, the first and still only department of criminology in the

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

. The Jerry Lee Center's goal is to foster collaboration among outstanding criminologists from around the world to further the discipline as a multi-disciplinary science in research, education and public service. The Jerry Lee Foundation supported this center with an initial gift of $5 million. The Jerry Lee Foundation also endowed two Jerry Lee assistant professorships in Criminology at Penn, to which such distinguished criminologists as John MacDonald and Charles Loeffler were appointed. The two assistant professorships were later consolidated as the Jerry Lee Chair in Criminology. Dr.

Anthony Braga Anthony Allan Braga (born 1969) is an American criminologist and the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. Braga is also the Director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He previous ...

, an award-winning experimental criminologist, was appointed the first Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology at Pennsylvania University. In 2001, Jerry Lee and Lawrence Sherman, in conjunction with Stockholm University Professor

Jerzy Sarnecki Jerzy Sarnecki (; born 7 July 1947) is a Swedish and Polish professor in criminology at Stockholm University in Sweden. Sarnecki was born in 1947 in Warsaw, Poland. His family is Jewish. During the 1968 Polish political crisis, his father was fire ...

, created an annual prize in criminology that recognized the contributions the field makes to the reduction of human suffering. As president of both the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

and International Societies of Criminology in 2001–2, Sherman was able to muster global civil society support for the idea.

organized a meeting to discuss the idea with the State Secretary for the Swedish Ministry of Justice, Dan Eliasson, and the Minister of Justice,

Thomas Bodstrom Thomas may refer to: People * List of people with given name Thomas * Thomas (name) * Thomas (surname) * Saint Thomas (disambiguation) * Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, and Doctor of the Church * Thomas the Ap ...

. The Ministry then agreed to support the creation of an annual Criminology Symposium, organized by the Swedish National Council on Crime Prevention, if a civil society association could raise funds to provide 1,000,000 Swedish Kronor in Prize money for a ten-year period, including support from a Swedish source. The Söderberg Foundations agreed to join in the plan, as well as the Hitachi Mirai Foundation and the Japanese Correctional Association. At the 14th World Congress of Criminology in Philadelphia in 2005, funded by the Jerry Lee Foundation, Justice Minister Bodstrom announced the creation of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology and the awarding of the first Prizes scheduled for 2006. The Prize has been awarded annually since then in the same hall as the Nobel Prize Banquet, the main room of the

Stockholm City Hall Stockholm City Hall ( sv, Stockholms stadshus, ''Stadshuset'' locally) is the seat of Stockholm Municipality in Stockholm, Sweden. It stands on the eastern tip of Kungsholmen island, next to Riddarfjärden's northern shore and facing the islands ...

. In 2010, the Söderberg Foundations offered a generous challenge grant to create a permanent endowment for the Stockholm Prize, which was matched by the Swedish Ministry of Justice under the leadership of Justice Minister

Beatrice Ask Eva Carin Beatrice Ask (born 20 April 1956) is a Swedish politician and a member of the Moderate Party. She has served as Governor of Södermanland County since 1 January 2020. Ask served as member of the Swedish Riksdag for Stockholm Municipa ...

. In June 2012,

Queen Silvia of Sweden Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mothe ...

witnessed the signing of the documents creating the permanent Stockholm Prize Foundation by the founders and co-founders, attesting to Jerry Lee's role as the original donor to the Prize. In most years the Prize has been presented to the winners by Queen Silvia of Sweden or another member of the Swedish Royal Family. The Prize winner selection by an international, independent Jury is sponsored by the University of Stockholm. In 2007, the Jerry Lee Foundation pledged £1,000,000 to create the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology at the University of Cambridge. The mission of the centre, the first of its kind at any university, is to promote the use and development of experimental criminology with operational partners who wish to test new interventions. Experimental criminology consists principally of randomized controlled field trials to develop and test theoretically coherent ideas about reducing harm from crime. Its long-term objective is to accumulate an integrated body of evidence about both the prevention and causation of crime. The centre has also supported Jerry Lee Scholars (all Cambridge PhD students in criminology), such as Dr. Renee Mitchell, the founding President of the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing, and post-doctoral Jerry Lee Fellows, including Professor Barak Ariel . The Director of Research at the Cambridge Jerry Lee Centre, Professor

, is known for his success in mobilizing serving police officers to design and carry out their own experiments across the UK and in other countries. The Director of the Cambridge Lee Centre, Dr. Heather Strang, is highly cited for the 12 randomized experiments in restorative justice that she led in Australia and the UK.

Awards and honors

* 1987 President

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

– President's Private Sector Initiative Award (on behalf of The Broadcast Productivity Council) * 1989 President

George H.W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; p ...

– President's Private Sector Initiative Award from * 1997

Radio Ink ''Radio Ink'' is a radio broadcasting industry trade magazine owned by Streamline Publishing. ''Radio Ink'' serves the management community of the radio industry in the United States and in 43 countries worldwide. The focus of the bi-weekly ...

– Broadcaster of the Year * 1997 Broadcast Foundation of America – Leadership Award * 1997

Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia is a state-chartered, federally recognized, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, devoted to collecting information about and promoting cultural work related to broadcasting and communications in Philadelphia, Pe ...

– Person of the Year * 1997

– Hall of Fame * 1999 PAB (

Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters The Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, commonly referred to as PAB, represents radio and television broadcasters across the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is affiliated with the National Association of Broadcasters The National Asso ...

) – Broadcaster of the Year * 2001 PAB (

) – Hall of Fame * 2003

Academy of Experimental Criminology The Academy of Experimental Criminology (abbreviated AEC) is a learned society founded in 1998 in order to recognize scholars who have made influential researchers in the field of experimental criminology. It does so by electing fellows annually, a ...

– Honorary Fellow * 2003 Caring Institute, Washington, DC – National Caring Award * 2003 Caring Institute, Washington, DC – Hall of Fame for Caring Americans Inductee * 2004 Broadcasting + Cable – Hall of Fame * 2006 NAB (

) & BEA (

Broadcast Education Association The Broadcast Education Association (BEA) is an international academic organization originating and operating mainly out of the United States. The BEA is devoted to multimedia research and teaching, and retains the historical purpose to prepare col ...

) – Malcolm Beville Award for Research * 2007 NAB (

) – National Radio Award * 2008 King

Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf (Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus; born 30 April 1946) is King of Sweden. He ascended the throne on the death of his grandfather, Gustaf VI Adolf, on 15 September 1973. He is the youngest child and only son of Prince Gustaf Adolf, D ...

– Knight of the Polar Star in recognition of his role in establishing the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. * 2008

Library of American Broadcasting The Library of American Broadcasting (LAB) – a Washington, D.C. institution since 1972 – began life as the Broadcast Pioneers Library in space donated by the National Association of Broadcasters. The collection was thought up by William S. He ...

– Giant of Broadcasting * 2008

– Radio Executive of the Year * 2011

– Lifetime Leadership Award * 2017 PAB (

) – Gold Medal Award * 2010 Medal of Victory Award from the Wellness Community of Philadelphia for supporting their work with cancer patients.

Leadership Roles

* 1970 PAB (Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters) – Board of Directors * 1970 NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) – Board of Directors *

Salvation Army Salvation (from Latin: ''salvatio'', from ''salva'', 'safe, saved') is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, ''salvation'' generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its c ...

- National Board of Directors * PAB (Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters) – Director Emeritus * 2003 American Academy of Political and Social Science – Board of Directors * RAEL (Research Committee for the Radio Advertising Effectiveness Lab) Committee – Chairman * BICIAP (Broadcast Industry Council to Improve American Productivity) – Founder *

– President

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lee, Jerry Criminology educators People from Sharon, Pennsylvania 1936 births American DJs Living people