Detroit broadcasting legend, mentor Kernen dies at 82
Dick Kernen, a giant of Michigan broadcasting who boosted the careers of countless familiar on-air voices and faces, died of natural causes Friday at home in Dearborn, his family confirmed. He was 82.
Kernen, who started with WXYZ-AM in the ’50s and helped form WRIF-FM in the ’70s, was vice president of industry relations at the Specs Howard School of Media Arts in Southfield, where he had worked since 1972.
A 2003 Michigan Broadcasting Hall of
Fame inductee, Kernen was a guiding hand — both inside and outside Specs Howard — to some of the best-known names on the local airwaves in recent decades, having worked closely with the likes of Arthur Penhallow, Glenda Lewis, Carmen Harlan, Charlie Langton, Amy Andrews, Joe Wade Formicola and more.
“He was a mentor to so, so many personalities now all over the world, and certainly here in Detroit,” said Doug Podell, a longtime disc jockey and programmer now on the air at WLLZ-FM (106.7). “I don’t think there’s a person on the air here that didn’t have some sort of relationship with him.”
Tom Bender, who retired in 2016 as vice president of Greater Media, was a friend for more than 50 years. He said Kernen remained an important sounding board and source of counsel through his professional life.
“It’s a terrible loss for all of the people, including me, who owe a lot of their livelihood and careers to Dick’s mentorship,” Bender said. “I had a million questions about how radio worked, and he had a million answers. He was a great human being and a great student of the industry — your proverbial wise man.”
At Specs Howard, friends and colleagues said, Kernen was more than a trade-school executive, using personal connections to help graduates land jobs, particularly across the Midwest.
“Dick Kernen was the heart and soul of Specs Howard. That’s really who you dealt with when you were there,” said Podell. “He always took the time out to try and help these kids find jobs. He’d call Toledo, he’d call Peoria, wherever, whenever, however, to try to help.”
Kernen got his own foot in the radio door in the 1950s, working at Walled Lake Casino dancehall spinning records before landing a job with WXYZ-AM in 1956. He was with the station for 12 years, doing stints as music director and assistant program director during its Top 40 heyday.
Detroit, then the nation’s fifth-biggest media market, was crucial to the record industry, breaking hits ahead of the curve and developing audience-research innovations, Kernen recalled in a 2003 Free Press interview.
At WXYZ-AM, he said, “We’d be all over a song, and we would be looking at Billboard, and the thing would be like No. 55 (nationally), with no bullet. And we’re going ‘Where the hell is everybody on this thing?’ And by the time the thing finally broke into the Top 10, we were on to something else.’’
In 1968, Kernen was tapped by ABC Radio as program director at WXYZ-FM, where he battled WABX and WWWW for the ears of hip, young rock fans during a revolutionary period in the radio world.
“What we were basically in the business of doing — and I’m saying us, ‘ABX, W4 — was still trying to sort of figure who they were at the time. The idea was to out-hip each other,” Kernen said. “Who could be hipper? Who could get the sanction of (hippie luminary) John Sinclair?”
His on-air hires included Jerry Lubin, Dan Carlisle and Peter Werbe, and Kernen ventured to Howell to enlist the services of a young Penhallow, who would go on to one of the most storied careers in Detroit rock radio.
In 1971, Kernen led the station’s transformation into WRIF-FM, ceding the bohemian battle to WABX and aiming for a more commercial approach.
“Here’s a concept: Why don’t we try to find out what the people listening would like to hear, as opposed to what six nitwits want to hear,” he recalled of his thinking at the time. “So we began doing music research.”
By the time he left WRIF-FM in early 1972, it “was the beginning of underground progressive rock radio turning into album-oriented rock radio,” he said.
Kernen began with Specs Howard that year, working an assortment of jobs — instruction, admissions, student placement — before eventually being named to the vice president role he held for years.
“The thing he and Specs did was not only teach basic skills, but also impart to graduates a reality-based sense of what they were getting into,” said Bender. “He didn’t sugarcoat it. He would tell folks: This is what you’ve got to do, this is what you can expect to make. You’ve got to start from bottom of the barrel and move up from there.’”
While his career was largely behind the scenes, Kernen spent many years hosting a Sunday public-affairs program on W4 and WNIC-FM.
Kernen is survived by his wife of 56 years, Charlene Kernen; a son, Bob Kernen; a daughter, Chris Sehoyan; two brothers, a sister and five grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements are pending. Bob Kernen said he hopes to stage a memorial event for his father in the spring.
The family asks that donations be made to Hospice of Michigan.