One of the most successful program directors in the country wanted to be a lawyer. Fortunately for radio, he may have dressed more like The Dude from The Big Lebowski.
“I’m not a suit and tie guy,” Ken Charles said. “I’d have been the most unhappy lawyer in the business.”
There’s no question he could have held his own arguing cases. The only problem was Charles liked a different kind of argument.
“The wife of my first general manager was Jo Johnson,” Charles explained.
“She told me I loved to argue no matter what the subject. I said that wasn’t true, so we argued about that for a while.”
Charles currently serves as VP of News for Audacy and Brand Manager of KNX-AM/FM Los Angeles (1070/97.1)
Not for much longer, but more on that later.
He went to Florida State University and knew his grades weren’t going to get him into Harvard. “I figured if I could get a 4.0 GPA, I could get into any law school I wanted.”
As it so often does, radio reared its head and it was love at first sight. Law went the way of disco.
“I started at WPLP in Tampa as a board operator,” Charles said. “As it happens, a friend of mine who lived across the hall in the dorms was a commercial production guy for the station. They didn’t want to hire me at first because I was studying political sciences.”
Opportunity knocked at the expense of a lot of other people.
“The station fired one of their news people and a lot of the technical staff said if they didn’t hire that person back they’d go on strike,” Charles explained. “The station did them one better and fired them all.”
They were so desperate to fill roles they hired Charles. “What are the odds that a person who would be instrumental in my 30 year career in radio happened to live across the hall?”
Apparently, they are pretty good.
He didn’t waste a lot of time getting to work. His first press conference was with former Vice President Walter Mondale. There were national news people and reporters he respected in attendance.
“Mondale looked at me and said, ‘He looks like an exciting young reporter,’ and motioned me to ask a question. I wasn’t expecting to be called on. I asked him a question about nuclear submarines. The only reason I asked that was because I was working with that subject for my masters degree. I’m sure everybody in the press corp thought it was a stupid question.”
Charles said he has no idea what Mondale said in response. “He could have sung the national anthem for all I know. Here was a former vice president calling on a political science dork.”
He was born in Edison, New Jersey and had no qualms referring to himself as a radio dork.
“I always listened to WABC on the AM dial,” Charles said. “I listened to Jean Shepherd and his spoken word show on WOR. A lot of stories in his books and other things made it on the air, stories like A Christmas Story. I also listened to Marv Albert calling the Rangers games.”
Like every 10 year-old in New Jersey, Charles wanted to play for the Yankees.
“I couldn’t hit a curveball and was better at football.”
News can be overwhelming, Charles said. “Think about it–since January of 2020 when Kobe Bryant died, it has been non-stop since. We’ve had the Pandemic, George Floyd, the protests, January 6th, forest fires. We just have to keep taking it and it’s not going to stop.”
“If you look at news from the 1950s and 60s, the agenda was set at the station. The news department determined what the news was going to be. You buttoned up your shirt, put on your tie and delivered the news. Now, instead of dictating to the audience, we’re trying to listen to what they think is news, what matters to them.
Charles said there will always be news where part of your audience just doesn’t care about what is happening.
“For instance, fires here are a very interesting story. A fire in northern LA county has no effect on people living in Orange County. That’s an example where our commitment to the community overwhelms the need to tell stories that affect the most listeners possible.”
Charles said news departments need to be in touch with audiences.
“We live in the community too. We have families, kids in school. In all those ways we keep in touch with people that live around us. As news people, we have to determine what they want. One of the things I preach is think with your heart, not with your head. We are people and we need to understand the emotional component, what our friends care about.”
“Sometimes you feel the right stories, sometimes you don’t. If I’m going to make a mistake, it’s going to be by doing too much on a story. You’re never going to get an email because you did too much. You will get a negative response if you do too little and the audience will look for that additional coverage someplace else.”
There are also exceptions to that philosophy. Sports can be one of them.
“A good example of this would be when I first took my position in Los Angeles,” Charles explained. “We were all Dodgers all the time, top to bottom, 24/7. The Dodgers had made the NLCS and went to their first World Series in a while. We blew it. We covered it like television. We led with it at the top and bottom of our newscasts. We had reporters all over. But the numbers for our coverage were just not there. We shouldn’t do what television does. They can get that extended information from so many other places.”
Charles went on to say they overwhelmed their audience with Dodgers, and didn’t deliver the promise of a broad range of local news and traffic.
Each market is different.
Charles said some are better sports markets than others. “In my position, you have to learn the expectations your audience has for that topic. If it’s the biggest local news story of the day”
Charles said road traffic can be difficult in any city, not just Los Angeles, but it’s still important. “There’s a lot of debate if we should do traffic as much and as often as we do. After all, you can get it on your dashboard in your car, on Waze, Google. But people respond to traffic. We have empathy because we live here too. It’s not just the older demographic, the 30 year-olds like it too. Reporting on traffic keeps us connected.”
“Tell me a fact I’ll learn. Tell me a truth I’ll believe. Tell me a story that will live in my heart forever”
Charles said that’s his mantra, and he shares it with his team. He tries to live that mantra.
“I saw that when Ed and Steve Sabol were doing an interview with Bryant Gumbel in 2001 on Real Sports,” Charles said. “That was one of those lightning-bolt moments for me. I told our imaging guy at the time to tell us a story that will live in our hearts forever.”
Charles said he strives to bring home a great story every day.
“Ukraine is a good example of a story that affects real people,” Charles said. “At the beginning of the war we provided in-depth coverage with Ukrainian citizens still living in the country. They told us what they were feeling, seeing, what was going on. There were reporters and experts telling us what was going on, but we had people who were living what was happening. I hope other stations try to do that. I think some days you’re more successful with that than others.”
Charles explained in his mind, radio is the best training ground there is. He said if you want to be a TV person later in a career, you could make that transition. There are skills in radio that you’ll learn and are useful in many other areas. “You learn how to prepare stories, cut tape,” Charles said. “The same skills you’re going to use in TV. We’ve done a terrible job being an evangelist for radio. You can perfect your craft. That’s what I impart to kids. Everyone wants to be the next Robin Roberts, but they’re not willing to put in all of the work. You’ll get more coaching. There’s more opportunity to work, even if you make a mistake.”
He’s seen a few of his former employees go on to greatness.
“Aaron Katersky, was a radio junkie,” Charles said. “He is one of the most talented kids I know. He was a student at Newhouse and worked at WSYR. Aaron was older than his year, more talented than his experience. He worked for me. I left Syracuse and he left radio to do personal things. I hired him as a reporter in Housten. I embedded him at ABC to cover the Iraq war. ABC noticed him, snagged him, and he’s been with the network ever since. Every time I hear him I feel like a proud father.”
A shock to most, Charles is leaving KNX on July 22.
“It feels like the right time,” Charles said. “I’ve spent the past seven years here, longer than I’ve been anywhere since elementary school. I’m proud to be part of this heritage station. Proud of the people I work with. It’s just time. I’m an east coast boy. All my wife’s family is in New York. I’ve only seen my family once since I’ve been out here. Life is too short. I’m not retiring. I’ve got more chapters to write so I’m not done yet. I don’t want to end up dead at my desk some day. I’m not going to give up something I love.”
He said he thinks everybody should quit their job, even if it’s just for a little while. You get tons of attention.
“I can’t believe the outpouring of love I’ve received since I announced it,” Charles said. “I never would have known how much of an impact people think I’ve had. There was an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where a guy watched his own wake. When I decided to make the move I posted on Facebook and LinkedIn. I’ve heard from hundreds of people. Some I haven’t heard from in 20 years. I’m going to miss all that when I’m dead.”
Charles said his departure is bittersweet. It’s hard to leave the people he’d worked with so long. “It’s really cool to hear from all of them.”
Whichever way the future takes Charles, like The Dude, I have the feeling he’ll abide.