Takin A Walk/Episode Thirty-Five with Radio Industry Legend Mark Chernoff

Buzz Knight:

On this episode of the Takin’ A Walk podcast, I’m here in New York City. It’s a beautiful day in Central Park to take a walk with a friend, a radio broadcast legend, Mark Chernoff. I worked for Mark at WNEW-FM when I was an on air personality. Mark’s career spans decades of work, including WXRK K-Rock in New York and the amazing sports radio brand WFAN in New York. Let’s go take a walk with Mark Chernoff.

Speaker 2:

Takin’ A Walk with Buzz Knight.

Buzz Knight:

Well, Mark, it’s so great to see you and to be taking a walk on this beautiful day in New York City in Central Park. I can’t imagine being anywhere else, doing anything else, and being with anyone else right now. Thank you for taking the time.

Mark Chernoff:

Well, it’s nice of you to say. We’ve known each other now going on close to 40 years.

Buzz Knight:

Oh my God.

Mark Chernoff:

But we’re not that old, so I don’t understand the match there, but anyway.

Buzz Knight:

Right. I dare say we’re boyish in our look.

Mark Chernoff:

Yes. Absolutely.

Buzz Knight:

You have a nice haircut too, by the way.

Mark Chernoff:

Thank you. Yes. I was very pleased to be able to go back to my “hair stylist” after a long layoff. So yes, that also made me very happy about the day today. True.

Buzz Knight:

Well, how do you stay so fit and young and vibrant?

Mark Chernoff:

Well, it’s nice of you to stay that, but many years ago, more than 30 now, I actually woke up one morning. My dad had died when he was 59 and he had had seven heart attacks from the age of 43 until he was 59. And I was very overweight. Not rotund, but carried a little too many pounds. And I woke up one morning and said, “Now I got to do something about this.” I’ve done little things, diets, not ate as much bad food as I used to eat, had kids and ran around with them and thought I was getting exercise. But my wife had convinced me, you really need to do aerobic exercising. So what I did was we live in a cul-de-sac so I kind of half jogged, half walked around the block. Did about 20 minutes worth and was exhausted even doing that.

Mark Chernoff:

But I also made the decision that said, hopefully I’ll build this up, but if I do it every day, I’ll never have an excuse about not to do it. So other than when I had some surgery once, I have not missed a day running. Whether it’s been outdoors or in near bad weather on the treadmill, I run every day. Used to run three and a half miles. I actually run five miles a day now.

Buzz Knight:

That’s great.

Mark Chernoff:

It’s a little slower pace, but I get five miles in an hour. It used to be three and a half miles in like 35 minutes. So it’s a little slower, but I figured that’s okay. The idea is just to be doing it. So I’m out there running every day. And at my heaviest, I’d say I weighed between 180 and 185 pounds. Now I’m about 133 pounds.

Buzz Knight:

You look great.

Mark Chernoff:

Well, thanks.

Buzz Knight:

You are a man though, of other traditions too. There’s a tradition that you still have kept to this day with your son. Tell our audience about this tremendous tradition of having a catch.

Mark Chernoff:

Well, youngest son Mike is the general manager of the now Cleveland Guardians. But ever since he was a little kid, he always … And I did too. We wanted to play baseball. The other kids liked baseball, but Mike always loved it. I still call him Mikey, by the way. And what we decided when he was a little kid, we’d play baseball. Even in the middle of the winter, we’d go clean off an asphalt walkway somewhere or some grass or find a field if there was no snow. And we’d play baseball. But when he went off to Princeton as a freshman, we said, what do you think we can do to keep up our tradition of playing baseball? So what we came up with was we would try to have a catch once a month. If we could do it more, great. Now, it was fairly easy me being in north Jersey and him being in Princeton.

Mark Chernoff:

We managed pretty well during college and we did it every month. We had our close call one Halloween day, October 31st when I drove down to Princeton and we hadn’t had a catch yet and all of a sudden it started snowing.

Buzz Knight:

Oh boy.

Mark Chernoff:

We managed. It took me four hours to drive what would’ve been an hour trip back home but we did it. We’ve had some occasions where he was here for arbitration meetings one year in New York. So we went out behind Grand Central Station at 4:30 in the morning. We were both sick. It was the only time he was going to be around during the month and I couldn’t get away. But we had our catch and there were all these truck drivers and people working. They said, “Who are these two crazy people out here having a catch in 10 degree weather?”

Mark Chernoff:

One time when Mike was flying in and he got delayed and it was the end of the month. And what were we going to do? It’s late at night. My wife said, “I know where there’s lights at a Whole Foods in Milburn, New Jersey.” So we went there. There was a lit parking lot. And at about 11:15 at night on the 31st of the month, we had a catch.

Buzz Knight:

Oh, that’s great. So I love it.

Mark Chernoff:

So we have managed. We’ve kept up the tradition even during the pandemic. Matter of fact, we had met a couple of times at a place called Snowshoe, Pennsylvania, halfway between here and Cleveland to have a catch in the early days. Now it’s been much better. We see the kids, they come out here a lot. My daughter-in-law’s from the area as well.

Buzz Knight:

How special.

Mark Chernoff:

It really is. It’s just a lot of fun and I’m so glad. And the Guardians are coming to town pretty soon for a Yankees series so we will get our catch in this month that way.

Buzz Knight:

I’m sure you are very proud for good reason of what he’s accomplished.

Mark Chernoff:

Absolutely.

Buzz Knight:

We have a New York audience for the Takin’ A Walk podcast, but we have an audience all over the country, actually all over the world, which blows me away. So as somebody who so knows New York like the back of your hand, set the scene where we’re walking, why there’s a lot of noises in the background, what we’re seeing. And we, by the way, coincidentally stopped as we were talking about your son’s career, near a baseball field just by accident. But set the scene for those that don’t know Central Park.

Mark Chernoff:

Well, this is Central Park. For many years, it was the home of the Schaefer Music Festival and great acts would play here. There’s been great concerts here, whether it’s been Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Simon and Garfunkel together, Simon. I can’t even begin to tell you how many great acts on the great lawn have been out here. There’s the famous skating rink that’s out here. The New York City Marathon ends in Central Park. It’s just an amazing place to be. You think of New York City as just apartment buildings, businesses, stores, and then you come to this great park that goes from 59th Street to 125th Street. It cuts off the east side of Manhattan and the west side of Manhattan. There are some transverses for cars to drive through. But on a beautiful day like today, what more could you ask for than to be walking around in Central Park?

Mark Chernoff:

It’s just an absolutely amazing place. People walking their dogs, people riding their bikes, scooters, kids, families. You still have some people who take those buggy rides, horse and buggy rides around. I hope they take care of the horses properly, by the way. Just want to say that. But there’s just so many things to do. People just sitting around throwing frisbees. It’s better than almost anything you can do and it gets you out of the city, but you’re in the heart of the city. It’s amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Buzz Knight:

Every time I come, I just feel this great energy in Central Park. The spirit of the Takin’ A Walk podcast series is the enjoyment certainly of the person you’re connecting with, but also where you’re walking so I’m really glad we got to take the walk here. Many people do go well, what are those noises? They wonder. We’re really walking. We’re paused right now, but there’s a lot of noises in the background that are for real. And yes, we are walking in case somebody says why am I huffing. You’re not huffing because you’re in better shape than I am.

Mark Chernoff:

Well, you look in good shape

Buzz Knight:

Well, thank you. You’re very kind. So we first met at the great WNEW-FM.

Mark Chernoff:

Yes.

Buzz Knight:

The place where rock lives.

Mark Chernoff:

Lived.

Buzz Knight:

Lived. I’m sorry.

Mark Chernoff:

You know what, it’s a successful radio station today as a hot AC station.

Buzz Knight:

It is. And our dear friend Jim Ryan does a heck of a job.

Mark Chernoff:

I give kudos the Jim and it’s now one of the better radio stations in New York City, where for a while it had different formats, not a lot of success. I miss it as a rock station, but time changes and things change. But Jim does a very nice job and the station is very successful again.

Buzz Knight:

It sure is. It sure is. But that station, I know for me was special to have the opportunity to work there as a part-timer because I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, and I grew up listening to the station. So it was always a dream to have a chance to work there. But you, in your time growing up in New Jersey, obviously you knew the station as well, right?

Mark Chernoff:

Yes, it was my rock station. Back in the day, the two competitors were WPLJ when it was a rock station and NEW. My station was NEW. PLJ got formatted very early on Larry Berger who has passed on, but was the program director. Short playlist, sped up the records a little bit to make them sound like there was more going on. And it was limited. Great jocks.

Buzz Knight:

A great station.

Mark Chernoff:

Yes. Matter of fact, its ratings often were better than NEW’s but NEW did much better billing. Because they had much more depth to their music. They had personalities that cared about the music. PLJ had great jocks. I don’t want to minimize that. I wound up working with some of them at NEW later on. Hiring some and some were there when I got there. But NEW was just … When AOR came to New York, it started on WOR-FM 98.7. And Scott Muni, Roscoe, guy named Johnny Michaels, and there were others, did shows there. Murray the K was one of the original jocks on WOR-FM. But after, oh, I don’t even if know if it was a year or so, RKO, which owned the radio station said, “No, we don’t want this progressive rock. What we want is more of a top 40 approach.”

Mark Chernoff:

So they flipped and Bill Drake came in and formatted the station where the jocks could talk for seven seconds at a time, do a quick intro or outro and not much else. Do a weather report once in a while. They literally had seven seconds and that was it. Mic got shut off. And it did well as OR-FM as not a rock station, but Metromedia which owned the 102.7 signal for FM, they had a very important AM radio station, WNEW-AM, which was an old line. We’ll call it now what’s called adult contemporary. But they were known for having people like Frank Sinatra visit and Perry Como and Buddy Hackett and they had jocks like William B. Williams on the AM radio station. And Ted brown and I got-

Buzz Knight:

Steve Allen did midday for a while.

Mark Chernoff:

Steve Allen. I went to the same bathroom he did. And I was actually like, “Oh my God, Steve Allen next to me.”

Buzz Knight:

But who was the overnight guy on WNEW-AM?

Mark Chernoff:

Well, for a long time it was Jazzbo.

Buzz Knight:

Yes. That’s who I mean. Loved him.

Mark Chernoff:

Who actually did TV in New York City in the ’50s. And actually for a while after Steve Allen was hosting the old Tonight Show … This is really before my time. I was just a baby. Really was. But I’m reading about it. Jazzbo hosted one of these short term between Steve Allen and before Jack Parr started. And Jack Parr predated, obviously Johnny Carson, who did the Tonight Show for 30 years. But Jazzbo did the overnights there for a long time. The milk man’s matinee.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah.

Mark Chernoff:

As they said.

Buzz Knight:

I remember you knew when he was in the building because certain aromas emerged nearby that are now legal that we never thought would be legal.

Mark Chernoff:

No. And I don’t think he was the only one either.

Buzz Knight:

No, I don’t think he was either. I don’t think he was either. But what a special building that was. I mean, when you first got the call for that job, can you remember your reaction?

Mark Chernoff:

Yes. And I have to actually … There’s a story that goes to this. This was back in 1985. I was working at WDHA, a rock station in north Jersey. And I heard that Jim DelBalzo who has also passed on.

Buzz Knight:

Your friend.

Mark Chernoff:

Was working at the time. I think he was at Polygram and not at … He eventually went over to Sony, Columbia, CBS. But he said, “You ought to apply for the music director job at NEW.” And I said, “Okay.” I applied for the job, had some interviews. Charlie Kendall was the program director. Scott was the operations manager. And that’s a whole story unto itself too, being interviewed by Scott where you don’t really even talk about music. You talk about baseball and ice cream and scratch my head. But it was great. Anyway, I thought all the interviews went well. I don’t hear anything. Weeks go by. Maybe a month, maybe five weeks. And Jim DelBalzo says, “What about NEW? They never hired a music director. You ought to check in and see what’s going on.” And there was another guy named Mark Didia who was up for the job. I think he was working at K-Rock at the time.

Buzz Knight:

He’s now in management for Red Light Management.

Mark Chernoff:

Oh, that’s funny. So I call and I get Charlie Kendall on the phone and he says, “So when are you starting?” I said, “When am I starting? Starting what?” “Well, I hired you as a music director.” I said, “Well, you never called to tell me you hired me.” “Oh, well, when can you start?” I said, “Well, I do the morning show at DHA. I’d like to at least notify them, but I’ll come in and do whatever training I need to do as soon as I can.” “Can you come in tomorrow?” I said, “Sure.” I told my people that I was going to be leaving. And they were all right with that. And I knew I’d be giving up my jock career hosting shows. I just had been doing the morning show at DHA, was the program director.

Buzz Knight:

Not completely though, because you were on the air a lot, but anyway. Right.

Mark Chernoff:

Yes. And that is another little story as well. So anyway, I wind up being the music director. First thing I get to the radio station and Charlie says, “We do format and we have these cards that are in the studio, but I want people to use the computer. But the computer,” he said, “is in the hallway.” I said, “Why is that?” He said, “They refuse to use the computer. You need to make them use the computer.” I said, “Oh boy. How am I going to do that?”

Buzz Knight:

Oh boy.

Mark Chernoff:

Well Charlie actually had a great idea. Andy Economos who ran RCS, which were the people that did their program, he went up there to Westchester, to Andy’s place at RCS, and Charlie and Andy came up with something called … We were using selector.

Buzz Knight:

DJ Select.

Mark Chernoff:

DJ Select. And he says, “Okay, we’re going to do this DJ select where the jocks will have some choices, but it’ll be sort of confined. Different songs will fit in different categories and if one doesn’t want to play, there’ll be some other choices that would fit at that time.” I said, “Well, that’s pretty good.” Well, I wound up explaining it to Scott and to the rest of the jocks. And it was Scott who actually really bought into it. “Oh. So I’m still be picking my own music.” “Absolutely fats. You’ll be picking your own music.” Well, once he bought in, it worked. And we kept an eye on the music, but it was also NEW and I was the music director. Charlie was the program director. So I had a fair amount of say, but Charlie was still the PD. But having grown up in New York, in Jersey mostly, but locally, I knew the station and there were just a bunch of songs that I said, “We should be playing that we’re not playing. The station has this wonderful rich history and we don’t want to miss out on that. And we want our jocks to still have at least a little bit of say.” They didn’t want the cards. The card was a cheating system, by the way, where’s it’s like, “Oh no, not another Tom Petty song. I don’t want to play that.”

Buzz Knight:

But as you know, ultimately the DJ Select had a cheating system as well. It just was a lesser cheating system.

Mark Chernoff:

It was less of a cheating system.

Buzz Knight:

I hate to break the news, but you knew that of course.

Mark Chernoff:

Yes. And I always took that into account, but at least the jocks felt like they had at least a little bit of input. And also I allowed the jocks to say to me, “Can I play such and such? I’ve got an idea.” Dennis Elsas, who did weekends, did beach parties on Saturdays and Sundays in the spring summer into the early fall. And he would always say, “Hey, am I okay playing …” Whatever. The Raspberries or whatever.

Buzz Knight:

That’s right.

Mark Chernoff:

And I almost always said yes, because I wanted people to feel good about the radio station, good about the music they were playing. And you know what it led to after I became the PD? The highest ratings the station ever had. It was really exciting. Now, Charlie did really well and it’s not like I did that much better, but still to see the highest rating that the station had was very exciting for me. And I felt really good about doing that.

Buzz Knight:

Well, I’m indebted to Charlie for certainly giving me the shot there. I remember we briefly touched on the name thing with me, so we might as well just briefly address it. I remember going for the interview with Charlie and working as Buzz Knight five days a week in Connecticut. And I said to Charlie when he hired me, I said, “Well, what name do I use?” And-

Mark Chernoff:

Said, “What’s your name?”

Buzz Knight:

I said, “Well, Bob Kocak.” And he goes, “Well, your mother seems to have no problem with your name so why don’t you use your real name?” So that was how that came about. And the rest is history there, but-

Mark Chernoff:

And how do I refer to you to this day?

Buzz Knight:

Exactly. You’re one of a short list of people who will still call and say, “Hey, what’s up Bob?” Now, Dennis Elsas, who I still speak with, takes it one step further because he created Bob Killer Kocak. So when I call Dennis, Dennis will still say, “Hey Killer, what’s up?” So names stick. Somehow. But a glorious station, a glorious time, amazing promotions. Give me your best Scott Muni story that typifies what a grand persona Mr. Muni was. Fats was.

Mark Chernoff:

Sometimes he would just tell stories about when he was growing up and he spent an awful lot of time in New Orleans and it was that he met Fats Domino. And Fats Domino called everybody fats. And he became Fats and he called everybody Fats. And there was a time I always wondered if he actually knew my name. Even though we worked together and went to lunch. Scott and I, except for Tuesdays, when he recorded promos for ABC sports, we went to lunch basically every day of the week to one or two places. And during football season, there was a scoop in the delegate nearby. Randy W. was on 41st and Third. And Scott liked to play the sheets for the games. Well, before gambling was legalized. So especially on Fridays, we always had to eat at one of those places.

Buzz Knight:

Of course.

Mark Chernoff:

So there was that. But Scott loved ice cream and every once in a while in the summer he’d get on the air and he’d say, “Fats today. I just want to see who’s going to bring us ice cream and what they’re going to bring.” So he’d make some kind of … He’d be on in those days at two. And first time he did a break right after he played the first couple of Beatles tracks that he did every day in honor of John Lennon, “I want to know who wants to bring up some ice cream today.” We’d get so much ice cream that I remember we did get something from Baskin Robin once called creme dement with lemon marshmallows. That was the best. But we’d sit there …

Mark Chernoff:

And then the other great Scott Muni story is we’d go to the Hard Rock in Rocktober. Now, I was the only program director probably who also had to double his Scott’s board op. It was no big secret, I mean, Scott had some drinking issues and he went to Betty Ford in the summer of ’86 and came back and he was fine. He really was. He stopped drinking. This was before I became the PD. And Charlie said even before that, “Scott really needs a board op. And he likes you.” So I was the music director, then the program director, trying to operate as that and also be Scott’s board op. But Scott and I had a great time. We had things from England on Fridays and I’d say, “Let’s do British biscuits for two hours today.”

Mark Chernoff:

And we just had a blast doing that stuff. And it was really just truly amazing learning all the stuff I learned from him, getting to spend the time with him. He was a real character. And he would tell stories that I really can’t tell about some of the record guys he hung out with and about the people he knew and he and John Lennon had their last child. Tiffany was Scott’s last kid. And obviously John and Yoko had Sean and they were at the same hospital at the same time. And the two of them Scott would tell stories about. “Oh yeah, the two of us smoking in the hallway waiting for the birth of our kids.” Because in those days they didn’t let the men in. So the kids were born, I think on the same day or within a few hours. I don’t know the timing of the day.

Mark Chernoff:

But after John was assassinated, the way Scott remembered him was every day when he signed on, in those days he was doing two to five, it was always started the show with a couple of either Beatles tracks or John solo tracks. And I give Q104, the rock station in New York, a lot of credit. Maria Millito does the midday show. And Scott went for the last year that he was working because NEW had changed by then. He was over at Q104. And they still to this day remember Scott and play a couple of Beatles tracks. They do at noon every day.

Buzz Knight:

I love that. So how did you end up a K-Rock? WXRK.

Mark Chernoff:

In 1989, late ’88, NEW was sold. NEW had been sold sort of internally. They were owned by Metromedia and Carl Brazell, who was the president of radio, executive VP bought the company from John Kluge. But apparently Carl didn’t have a ton of money. And about a year later he realized he didn’t have enough money to make a go of it so he sold the company to Bob Silverman and had Carl Hirsch running the radio for him.

Mark Chernoff:

They had their own ways that they wanted to run the radio station. One by one, they relieved themselves of all of the managers that were at the radio station. And even though we were coming off, as I say, the highest ratings the station ever had, they brought in a guy named Pete Coughlin to be the general manager. He came down from Rochester and he thought everybody at Rochester was better than all the people who were working in New York. We all disagreed. And I certainly wasn’t happy. And at first I was there for a while, but when they didn’t want to give me an extension of my contract for more than 90 days, I knew something was up. So I wound up knowing that when they asked for … They wanted me to have a meeting with a guy named Doug Brown at 6:00 or 7:00 at night. That’s not a good sign.

Buzz Knight:

Not a good sign.

Mark Chernoff:

So I decided I’d better think about maybe there’s a better place to be because I don’t know what’s going to happen. I wound up calling Tom Chiusano who was the general manager of K-Rock. And I called Tom and I’d met him a couple times, but he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t really have anything. But did you ever meet Mel Karmazin?” I said, “Met him at once at some function, but I don’t really know him.” But Mel had run NEW for years, went over to Infinity in 1981 to turn that into a much bigger company. So I had lunch with Mel. Actually it was really like brunch at the Plaza Hotel. Nervous, sweating. I probably lost 10 pounds at that meeting. It was an interesting meeting and Mel said, “My managers, they all pick their own people.”

Mark Chernoff:

I said, “Oh, okay.” But, “New York’s nothing. We might have something in Washington DC.” I said, “Huh. Okay. Thank you.” He said, “If you’re interested, call my assistant Terry.” Well, as I started to think about this thing at NEW really wasn’t going to work out I called Terry and she set something up with me for a phone call with Ken Stevens who was running WJFK in Washington. We had a great phone call and Ken said, “Why don’t you come down?” So I went down that weekend, really fell in love with the radio station. I thought this would be a great place, but I got to convince my wife now if this is going to happen to go to Washington. Because she’s a teacher, my kids are young and they’re in school, same school as she was teaching. But I said let’s consider this.

Mark Chernoff:

So she allowed me to follow up and I get a call from Ken on Tuesday of that week, before I was having this meeting with Doug Brown, and he said, “We got to make a decision. You’re going to take the job or not?” I said, “I’m taking it, but do me a favor. Don’t announce it until 9:00 tonight.” “Why is that?” I said, “Well, I’m having this meeting and I think they don’t want me here anymore, but I’d rather just not quit and just see what kind of severance or whatever I can get because I’m not happy.” Which he did. And I wind up … They say, “We don’t really want you, unless you want to do things this way, that way. You’re not really going to be in charge, but you’ll have this.” I said, “No, thank you.”

Mark Chernoff:

So I called Ken, I said, “You’re good.” So Ken gets into radio and records and I’m taking this job at WJFK. Not leaving NEW or getting let go, which essentially I was. Let’s face the facts here. So at least it looked good in the trades. I was at JFK for a little less than three months and I get a call into Ken’s office. Ken says, “I have good news and bad news.” And I said, “I can’t take any bad news. I convinced my wife we’re going to move to Washington. We put a down payment on a house in Restin.” We were about to sell our house in Jersey. He says, “Well, I’ll tell you the good news first.” I said, “Okay.” He says, “They want you in New York at K-Rock.” “Oh, what’s the bad news?” He said, “I know you’re going to take it and leave here.”

Mark Chernoff:

Because we hadn’t fully, obviously moved down yet. We had put the down payment on a house. We hadn’t quite sold our house. So I wound up 90 days to the day at K-Rock and now was working with Howard and some great jocks. Meg Griffin and Tony Pig and Jimmy Fink and Marc Copolla. Maria was there. We made some changes along the way, including me hiring Flo and Eddie, the turtles in afternoon drive for a few years, which was a lot of fun. But that’s an elongated story of how I wound up at K-Rock.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah. When you were telling it, I had forgotten the JFK part and then when you said it, I was like, oh yeah, that’s right. But that’s how we … So I had left NEW. I would come back. You would let me come back and do some shows when I came back for Thanksgiving. Mark would call and say, “Hey, you coming back home for Thanksgiving?” “Yeah.” “You want to do a show and pay for your plane ticket?” “Sure.” So that happened for a few years. So we had definitely stayed connected.

Mark Chernoff:

What was one of the great things about you and also Ray White is that not only did we have this great full-time staff, but at that point I had you, I had Ray, I had Pete Fornatele and Dennis Elsas. I mean, I had all stars working on the weekend. That’s how great a radio station we had and how we were live a local 24/7. It was just the time of my life in rock.

Buzz Knight:

It was spectacular.

Mark Chernoff:

Absolutely.

Buzz Knight:

But then we reconnected again, because then I would join working for Infinity and for Mel Karmazin, which I’m so grateful for that time when I moved to Boston. Unforgettable era. And we reconnected, which was great as well. It was really you and Tim Sabian, who I had the connection with. And if I had a neurotic question about what my general manager was doing to me, I would call you guys. You guys were my therapists basically to get me out of hot water with who I was dealing with. I’ll leave his name out for reasons that … Well, I don’t want to destroy the podcast and mention his name.

Mark Chernoff:

That was at WZLX.

Buzz Knight:

WZLX. Still a great station. But I’ll leave the general manager’s name out just for the fun of it. You amazed me at that station because that was another in a long line of managing personalities, but in particular managing the biggest personality at that time and probably even to some degree to this day in Howard Stern. How did you keep your cool?

Mark Chernoff:

Howard was great to work with. And what I learned was here’s a guy who was great at what he did. So I would just say, “What do you need me to do that I can be helpful with?” So there were things like the John Debella funeral and he said, “I’d like you to produce that from the radio end.” I said, “Great.” And I would be a foil on the air whenever he wanted me to be. There’s the famous story of how he donated some money to what … The term is called World Hunger Year. The organization that Harry Chapin and Bill Ayres had started. It’s now called WhyHunger. Where Howard said, “Well, I’ll give you a nice donation and Robin and Fred will also make a nice donation, but I need you to do a couple things.” What were those things? Well, I had a mustache at the time, if you remember.

Buzz Knight:

Yes.

Mark Chernoff:

He said, “Well, I need you to shave your mustache.” I said, “Oh, okay.” “No, no, no. I don’t mean the whole thing.” And I’m Jewish. “You have to walk around with a Hitler mustache for a day.” Oh boy. “Well, okay, fine. I can do that.” “No. Well, I got one other thing.”

Buzz Knight:

Oh boy.

Mark Chernoff:

“What would that be?” And I don’t mind telling this story because he tells it. “Well, you’re going to have to expose yourself to me.” “You mean?” “Yep. Pull those pants down in the bathroom. But I’ll give you a check for 10 grand. And the other guys will too.” Said, huh. Well Tom Chiusano said, “You’re nuts. You can’t be doing this.” And Bill Ayres at WhyHunger, “You can’t be doing this.” “No. You guys need the money. I’m going to do it.” Well, I remember going into a stall and it was the funniest thing. And Howard’s like … Before I even had to pull my pants like, “Oh, I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Well, we did it. I got the money. I got rid of the Hitler mustache that night and I never grew the mustache back by the way after that night.

Mark Chernoff:

My kids didn’t recognize me for a while. But Howard was just so not good, but great. The most amazing storyteller. He could run 15 minute commercial stop sets and people would be afraid to leave because he might do some live spots in between. And what I learned from him is with great jocks you can break the format. You don’t have to do … In the old days, depending on which system of ratings we were using, when you did breaks, how many minutes you ran, watching your quarter, all this other stuff, it didn’t apply to Howard at all. And one other quick story that does relate to Howard. Mel Karmazin, who ran infinity. I went in one once to say, “Mel, I really need some promotional money for the classic rock. Howard’s great and we get some turnover, but we need to still build it more and I’d like to do promotions.” He said, “Okay, I’ll give you a million dollars.” I said, “Really?” He says, “Yeah. You’ve got to replace Howard Stern and promise me the same ratings.” I said, “Nevermind.”

Buzz Knight:

Oh, I have flashbacks to many of the wonderful Mel meetings when you were telling that story. Wow. So then we go into this other great part of your life. Let’s call it the sports radio part of your life. Which is a remarkable chapter at WFAN. A great brand. Great people through the years. And you were always a great sports fan so this was a logical fit. But my sense was you also had the mindset to sort of think, “Okay, I like music. I like rock and roll music. We can put a rock and roll attitude to a sports station and make it interesting and mass appeal.” Right? I mean, it was really-

Mark Chernoff:

Absolutely. All my bumpers.

Buzz Knight:

It was merging all that.

Mark Chernoff:

Yes. But in order to take that job in 1992, shortly after Mel had bought the station or was in the process of buying it, Joel Hollander, who was going to be the new general manager, he’d been running sales, we had a lunch and he said, “How would you like to come over?” And I said, “No, I like doing select during the music. No thanks. But thank you for asking me.” He bugged me a lot for the better part of a year and one day Mel, and I don’t know if it’s the managers meeting, said, “I think it really would be a good idea if you did FAN.” “Okay.” I think that was the convincer. I did it.

Buzz Knight:

He had a way to convince. Didn’t he?

Mark Chernoff:

Yes. And 28 and a half years at FAN so obviously things worked out.

Buzz Knight:

I would say they worked out. You had another stable of interesting people to manage for many years led by the late Don Imus. What was that like, you managing him?

Mark Chernoff:

Also amazing easy to work with. The first day we met, “You were working for Stern.” I said, “Well, yeah, he’s great. He’s over there. Now I’m working for you.” I didn’t stay with you, I said working for you. Because again, my attitude was with superstars I wanted them to accept not that I’m coming in here telling them what to do. Although Imus through the years was great at listening to things. As long as we didn’t do it in front of anybody else where I’d say this bit sucked today or something like that, if I did it just with him, he was great. He’d make changes. But we got into talking about running. And he was a runner, believe it or not. And I was just a few years into running and we got to talking about running and we really hit it off.

Mark Chernoff:

The next day he comes in with all this equipment. Things to wear wires and this’ll protect you when you’re under wires and here’s a watch. And so we really hit it right off and really worked together. When we started syndicating the show within a year, we started going to our affiliates and I’d make all these road trips, which were hysterical. We had Rob Bartlett with us and Charles McCord and Larry Kenny and Bernard. And they were a riot. I didn’t have to say anything, just listening to this group. And after a while, Imus got sick of flying commercially. So he was like, “I’m going to get myself a plane.” So he joined up with whatever the company was and … The Net Jets. And we would fly private and we’d sometimes say, “When are we leaving?” He said, “When I get to the F-ing plane.” “Okay.”

Buzz Knight:

Okay.

Mark Chernoff:

He’d kind of give us a time. We’d sit and wait. But it was great. We’d leave from Teterboro airport. And most of us were in Jersey. So it’s nice. You park your car, you get on the plane. It was back before all the security. And there we went. We went to all these cities from Bangor, Maine to Portland, Oregon, to Denver. I saw most of the country. We went down to Little Rock when Mike Huckabee was the Lieutenant Governor and he said, “I’m going to become the governor pretty soon. Governor’s going to be gone.” So we couldn’t tell the story on the air, but getting to meet John Kerry, John McCain, George H.W. Bush. Here’s a George H.W. story. He actually would come to the radio station occasionally when he was in New York to be on with Imus. So I meet him and we walk inside and he says, “I have one question for you about somebody.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “I really want to meet Sid Rosenberg.” And I’m thinking, this is the former president of the United States. Vice president for eight years, president, ran the CIA and all he wants to do is meet Sid Rosenberg. Okay. Well, it was a Warner Wolf day that day doing sports so he didn’t get to meet. He eventually did at some other function.

Buzz Knight:

Priceless.

Mark Chernoff:

Yes.

Buzz Knight:

But my sense is you loved sports radio immediately. But my sense also was one of the centerpiece for you, Mark, with the talent there and talent that you’ve managed elsewhere is talent always knew that you had their back.

Mark Chernoff:

Yeah. I have to agree with you. I cared. Wherever I worked, the talent was important. When being a middle manager, as we both have been in our career, you’re trying to balance what they want upstairs and what you’ve got to do downstairs. But I felt very protective of the talent and really wanted them to be successful. And I didn’t want them to have to do things that weren’t right. And I think they knew that. And I tried not to over-manage. I’m sure there’s some people who say, “Oh, I over-managed them.” And sometimes with newer staff … I don’t even want to say younger because we hire people of all ages and stuff like that. But you sometimes did need to teach people the format and how to be on the air and stuff like that.

Mark Chernoff:

For many years, Eric Spitz was my assistant PD and eventually he left to go to Westwood One and I begged him to come back when I really needed somebody else to handle some of the time because I had all these other responsibilities. Well, he came up with something called the POKE theory. Passion opinion, knowledge entertainment. And that kind of capsulized how we felt about the talent. So we always made sure if the talent had those four qualities, they were going to be superstars. Whether it was Imus, whether it was Mike and Chris, Joe Beningo. You name the talent. As we’ve moved on, Boomer, Craig Carton. These people. Evan Roberts. If they had all those four qualities, we knew they were going to be successful. Some had some of the qualities, but you wanted even your weekend people to be that way and feel that way. Steve Summers. Some people didn’t like maybe what they said or they thought they were off the wall. And in many ways they were. But that was the thing about FAN. Every show was different, but every show knew how to hit the hot topics.

Buzz Knight:

So what do you think of the face of radio now? In general. Not just sports radio. All faces of radio as you look at it now.

Mark Chernoff:

Well, one thing I’ve been sad about for years is the lack of localism. I fully believe … Now, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place, I’ll just put to the side, that there can be networks. Because some stations really can’t afford to do late night programming, weekend programming. So there does need to be some type of syndicated. We always had the CBS sports radio for the last more than a decade for that. But it’s so important to develop local talent. And at FAN, we were always able to say live and local 24/7. And so many stations, even music stations are missing that. Many stations have morning shows and nothing else. They’re syndicated. All right, fine. They play 12 songs in a row or two hours in a row. And it’s commercial free. But we’re not developing talent the way we need to develop talent.

Mark Chernoff:

And it’s really been a pity because sometimes it’s really hard to find talent out there. You have to look in other places aside from radio. Now, radio isn’t what radio was anyway. Now you have mobile, you have computers, you have smart speakers. You have people doing podcasts. So there are other ways to develop people. But we’ve really missed out on … There’s so much syndication that I think stations give up too easily. Even the music stations, they need to be more inventive in their hiring of people, of jocks to bring you entertainment, not just play the same songs. There are places to do that. There are juke boxes. What I like about HD radio is that that’s a good place where you can put some of those music formats on and maybe you don’t have to have the jocks there, but not enough people are listening to those stations that they need to be on the regular part of the dial.

Buzz Knight:

Unfortunately, people aren’t using that as a resource to expand, to grow talent. This is the AM problem as well because AM is feeding unfortunately from the same lack of a talent pool as well.

Mark Chernoff:

And it’s even certainly worse because AM mostly, not exclusively, has spoken word. And there are very few stations, especially when you get outside of the major markets, that are not doing syndicated programming 15, 18 hours a day. It’s sad. And I’m not saying some of the hosts, whether you like their opinions or not, whether it’s right wing politics, liberal politics or news talk, whatever, but it’s not localized. It’s not localized. I give WNYC in New York City a lot of credit, although they use some of the NPR programming, they have a lot of local programming, local talk shows. Which are great because you’re hearing about New York. There’s so many markets where you’re just hearing about the national issues. And yes, there’s a time and a place for that, but we’re not developing local talent and they’re not on in the daytime. They’re not given the chance. So unless you stumble on somebody or every once in a while, somebody takes a chance, we’re not where we need to be. And what you said about AM radio, it’s sad what’s happened to AM radio.

Buzz Knight:

Well, it is and it breaks my heart when you see am stations feel it’s a better business decision to turn themselves off rather than keep programming on.

Mark Chernoff:

Yeah. Some of them do. They just shut down and that’s it.

Buzz Knight:

It’s a regular thing.

Mark Chernoff:

And listen, in New York, there are two successful stations that my old company, now Audacy, has with WINS and WCBS. But with so many fewer people experiencing anything on AM radio, it would be nice, it would be very nice, if there was a home on FM for them. Not my company. I don’t get to make those choices, but Audacy has put some of the news stations like in Chicago, WBBM now has an FM signal. KCBS has an FM signal in San Francisco. LA now has KNX with an FM signal. So at some point maybe they’ll do the same in New York. I don’t know. It’s not my domain. But I think enough people still think of FM as radio, but kids today, they don’t even know what AM radio is.

Mark Chernoff:

A lot of people don’t even know what radio is. I did a sales call last spring at the station and there were 35, 40 people. And I said, “How many of you have a traditional radio?” Maybe two or three people raised their hand. Listen on mobile. I listen on smart speaker. No radio. I have 10 radios. And I’m not … I have 10 radios in my house, whatever room you go into. I still, when I run, I wear a little Sony Walkman because I want to listen to the radio and I want to be able to flip the radio stations. I don’t want to use a smart speaker in my house that’s also listening to me.

Buzz Knight:

Right.

Mark Chernoff:

I got tired of shutting it off all the time except when I was absolutely using it and calling out a radio station. I see why people want to use it and it’s part of what the world is now, but I’m just, I’ve always been a radio file. Even as a kid, I would listen to anything and everything. Whether I liked the format or not. I just wanted to hear what stations were doing back in the day. Whether it was a WABC or WNBC or. That’s how I found these rock stations. And I listened to the college stations and I even listened to stations like WBAI, sort of an independent off the wall radio station, which signed on and off and it felt like it.

Buzz Knight:

Pacifica.

Mark Chernoff:

Pacifica, right.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah. So Mark, as two guys who love where the business has taken us and continues to take us, but also see what’s going on in the landscape, if there’s someone listening to this who is interested in the business and obviously trying to determine a career, give him one piece of advice.

Mark Chernoff:

Be passionate about what you want to do and give yourself every opportunity. When I got into radio, I had told you that I was gone to graduate school. I got an MBA and I worked for a short time as an accountant. I hated it. I finally got a job at a little radio station in the Northwest corner of New Jersey called WNNJ part-time then full-time after working in college radio. I wasn’t making any money. Really. I got $116.25 cents a week. But it’s what I wanted to do. And after I met my wife or my future wife, and I said, “Honey, you going to be okay with this? Can I have at least like five years to see if anything will develop?” She said, “It’s what you love. This is what you should do. I don’t want to have an unhappy husband who’s an accountant who hates it.” I will say this. I still do my own taxes.

Buzz Knight:

Love it. Well, Mark-

Mark Chernoff:

But again, if you’re passionate, people can do … Listen to themselves. That’s one of the other things I’ve always given as advice to hosts or potential hosts. Not just me listening to your tape, listen to your own show. Listen. Tell me what you think. If you’re cringing, then you know it’s not good. So you know the things. I’m happy to work with people. And to this day, people can get in touch with me if they like, and I’ll critique tapes. I want to see more people get involved. I don’t want radio to lose everything. I don’t want that to happen.

Mark Chernoff:

So whether young, old, whatever. Radio is ageless. Because anybody who’s got talent and is passionate about it and figures out a good way to deliver it. You can have a voice like Chris Russo, you say, “Oh, what a voice.” But he’s one of the most successful people ever in sports radio. Never mind just his Mike and the Mad Dog, but even solo. So it’s not the voice in that way. It’s what are you doing and how are you doing it? I hope that’s helpful.

Buzz Knight:

Oh, well, thank you for all the joy you’ve given me that you continue to give me. This walk has been glorious. Thank you what you’ve given during your career. And I welcome you to take your next chapter and be bold and do whatever you want to do because you’ve earned it.

Mark Chernoff:

Thank you. And spend a lot of time with the grandkids.

Buzz Knight:

There you go. Thanks for taking a walk Mark.

Mark Chernoff:

Thanks Bob.

Speaker 2:

Takin’ A Walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.