Remembering Charlie Warner

• We were saddened to learn of the passing of Charlie Warner, well respected longtime radio executive, management and sales trainer/consultant, author and former professor of broadcasting, who died June 8 at the age of 91.

Warner notably served as VP/GM of WNBC-AM/New York, WMAQ-AM & WKQX-FM/Chicago, WWSW-AM & WPEZ-FM/Pittsburgh, and CBS Radio Spot Sales.

Warner also created and ran the annual Management Seminar for News Executives that for a decade attracted approximately 30 news directors and news managers from television stations, cable and television networks, and radio stations and networks to the Journalism School. He also created and taught the first online/distance learning course for the Missouri Journalism School and served as the Leonard H. Goldenson Endowed Professor of Local Broadcasting at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.

Warner also taught graduate sales and management courses at The New School University in New York and was the author of two vital sales books: Media Selling, which has been used by over 70 universities worldwide and many broadcast, cable and digital sales organizations, and is considered to be the book on selling in the field, and a companion book, Media Sales Management.

Until his retirement in January 2002, Warner was a VP in AOL’s Interactive Marketing division. Bob Pittman, Chairman & CEO of iHeartMedia, Inc. (and former President/CEO of AOL Networks) said of Warner, “Charlie Warner was one of my first and most important mentors — and we have remained close ever since. He helped me think through sales issues at MTV Networks in the early ’80s and, in the late ’90s, he came into AOL to help us build the structure of our Interactive sales group — first as a consultant and then a member of the interactive sales management team. His experience and insight is valuable at every level in a sales organization, from the issues of the senior managers, all the way to training salespeople.”