The Visionary Behind 'The Voice'

From her glass-walled corner office overlooking the Arch and Old Cathedral, Karen Carroll decides what “The Voice of St. Louis” says and does as it prepares for its Diamond Jubilee this December. General manager of the country’s largest AM radio station, the ban-de-soleil blonde with the physique of a woman half her chronological years, is in her glory.

“I love it,” she says, “because I get to play visionary. I get to decide what it will look like and how we will make it work from both an entertainment, information, personnel, and revenue standpoint.”

     Carroll began her career in St. Louis radio more than 20 years ago, a single mother looking for a lucrative way to support her family. She started out on the commissioned sales side of the business and quickly moved into management. “There were very few women in management at the time,” she recalls, and fewer have achieved her level to this day. “There still aren’t many women general managers in the country.” Yet, early on, she says, “radio was one industry that was very good to women. It offered tremendous opportunity” for both professional growth and earnings.      “Today, there are more women on the air as well as more in marketing, consulting, and sales,” she says.

     By 1998, she was general manager of St. Louis’ then-largest radio group, American Radio Systems (operating stations KYKY-FM, KSD-FM, KEZK-FM, KFNS-AM and KLOU-FM) when CBS offered her the helm of KMOX-AM 1120, “The Voice of St. Louis.” She is only the fourth vice president and general manager to run the station since it first went on the air on Christmas Eve, 1925.

“This business has been really good to me, but probably even more than that, God has been very good to me,” Carroll says in a reflective moment. “I’ve been blessed with incredible family, good health” and perhaps, most importantly, the wisdom to recognize good fortune, even when it is occasionally buried in life’s debris.

     A native St. Louisan, Carroll married during her freshman year of college. “What I wanted to be was a really great mom,” she says of her highest aspiration as a young woman. Professionally, she thought about being a fashion designer, and at one point designed a line of smart, easy-wearing dresses for harried moms who still wanted to look put together. However, manufacturing and distribution difficulties terminated the venture. “I may still be a fashion designer one of these days,” she says, perhaps in partnership with her daughter, who is now a New York fashion publicist.

     Family — both her own and the KMOX family — are of tremendous importance to Carroll. So she regularly works 10 and 12 hour days, except for Sundays which are reserved for family time. Even her car reflects her estimation of family: the numbers on her personalized license plate are the years her son, Shawn, and daughter, Margot, were born.

     “My husband and I divorced when our son was 8, and in order to provide for him financially, I needed to be (employed) somewhere where I would be compensated based on how well I performed,” she explains. The meritocracy of radio sales fit the bill. Carroll, born August 23, 1947, recalls discovering the field quite by accident, through a friend who sold television airtime. Broadcast marketing, she says, “is a really small industry. Unless you know someone in it, you don’t really hear much about the business side.”

     While her predecessor Robert Hyland, GM for nearly four decades, was known for his antipathy towards television, Carroll finds KMOX to have more in common with the visual medium than with its own broadcast brothers.

     “KMOX is probably more like a television station than any other radio station because it’s diverse in its product,” she explains. “It’s a news station; it’s a talk entertainment station; it’s a sports station and an information station. We have the luxury of specialty programming; whereas, most radio stations are limited to one thing — country music or contemporary or rock.”

Working at KMOX these last two years has been quite unlike her previous radio jobs. “It’s not like being in radio at all because of (the station’s) diversity of programming, its reach in the market, and the importance it plays in the region. It’s very different than FM entertainment.” The move from FM to AM-1120 was akin to “making a career change for me,” she says.

     “KMOX is a clear channel AM station (of which) there are only 15 in the U.S.,” she explains. Clear channel stations “were created to notify the country of war, so at dusk, all the other AM stations around the country that might be near or on my frequency go dark (as in, off the air). KMOX overshadows them.”

     Despite current and impending changes in media technology and law, Carroll says KMOX will remain strongly competitive for one simple reason: There are no FM clear channel stations. All other area radio and television channels operate on much more regional signals. Thanks to its location in the center of the country, KMOX reaches 44 states at night, a range far surpassing any other broadcast station in America.

Even with KMOX’s extensive reach, she says her main concern when it comes to developing the product and covering the news is the St. Louis metro area. “Our main service area is our region,” she says emphatically. Over the years her career has taken her to many other cities, for conventions and client meetings and whatnot, but she remains a firm supporter of her home town. “I often get frustrated with people from St. Louis who (knock) the town. It has a tremendous amount to offer, and it’s getting even better. Now, if we could just convince our young people to stay here.”

     According to the station’s market research, its audience is about evenly divided between male and female listeners between the ages of 35 and 64. Carroll’s role touches on all aspects of the station’s success, from the big picture to the tiny details. “I get involved in everything from the positioning of the station down to the smallest break,” she admits. In the course of her days she meets with advertisers, community leaders, politicians pursuing publicity, charities seeking support, prospective employees, management, and on-air talent. Through it all she constantly keeps an ear open for new stories and new sources. “I’m very opinionated. I love to give ideas for stories on the air, but I always feed everything through my program managers,” she says. “I wouldn’t get on the air myself; we have incredibly talented people (who do that).”

She sees herself as a facilitator, greasing the wheels of both employees producing the news and entertainment and her listeners’ understanding of the day’s issues.     “Our mission as a station is to gather both sides of an issue and really give people the facts so they can make an educated decision. This is a great industry. It’s rewarding and satisfying and continually changing,” she says.

     As the station prepares to celebrate its 75^th anniversary at the end of the year, Carroll reflects on the changes that are taking place. She didn’t know Bob Hyland, the man whose name was synonymous with the station from 1955 to 1992, but she appreciates his role in creating the product he bequeathed, indirectly, to her. “Bob didn’t believe in fraternizing with competitors, so he wouldn’t have had a conversation with me had we met.”

     Quick to acknowledge that it was Hyland’s vision and labor that built “an incredible radio station,” she says “the competition is different now. There are many more places (for listeners) to get their news and information, so I think we have to be a lot better (at providing it).”

     The Internet, for example, is both competition and a resource for the news department. “We have the luxury of having a lot more information available to us from the Internet alone, so the number of topics and the depth to which we can discuss them is different because of technology. (Hyland) had a much larger staff in the newsroom, but they didn’t have the resources that we have.”

Even the editing devices have changed. The ability to get “great tape” immediately from an interview didn’t exist before, she says. “Now we can digitally edit something right there when we’re on the air.” In Hyland’s time, “they had to cut and splice tape. We’re not completely digital here, but it is our ultimate goal to move that way.”

     In addition to improvements in technology, the industry has changed structurally in recent years. “Since the early 90’s we’ve had two different changes in the rulings in radio which changed the dynamics of the whole industry,” notes Carroll. “We had a deregulation in 1990 and another in 1996 that effected the number of radio stations one company could own. It used to be one AM, one FM, then it became two of each. Now, under the Telecom Act, you can own up to eight.”

     As a result, a mere five corporations own St. Louis’ 30 radio stations. “The kind of money (those entities) have to invest in personnel, talent, and equipment is much greater because the market means more to them,” she notes. “I have found it to be a very exciting time.”

     One of Carroll’s projects this year is overseeing the construction of a new broadcast tower. The current tower in Pontoon Beach, Illnois, “has a little rust on it,” she smiles. Other projects involve a women’s speakers program and an expanded website. “Our company has a policy right now that says you cannot stream your (on air) audio, but we can archive major events like our women leadership series.” She is planning to reuse that information along with other new ventures, such as a establishing a panel of e-experts, to build a web extension of KMOX. “The point is to over serve your existing customers and listeners and give them more information than the limited time on the air allows,” she says. The Internet gives us a chance to interact with our audience. And I like paving the way. I like trying to figure out what’s next and what the opportunities are. I find it exhilarating.”

In 1999 she was named one of the St. Louis Business Journal’s “25 Most Influential Businesswomen” and the Press Club recognized her earlier this year as one of its Media Persons of the Year.

     Be it professional or personal, change is integral to Carroll’s life. Two years ago, shortly after being wooed and won by KMOX, she married an industry peer, Brian Jones, who gave up his job in Canadian radio to join her in St. Louis. The year 1998 seems to have been a very good year for her, as vintages go.

Her son, a real estate developer, lives close by, and the two of them and her husband play golf together every Sunday. “They tolerate me. They’re really good, and I’ve only been playing for about 18 months. One day I hope to have a place near the water and play a lot more golf.” After walking 18 holes, Carroll likes to do something she’s good at: cooking. Family and stray friends are treated to a post golf gourmet meal prepared by her hands. “I usually make a new recipe every Sunday,” she says. “Last week, my son said he’d like to try a smoked turkey, and what did I find in the next day’s New York Times but a smoked turkey recipe.”

Throughout her career, she has tried to achieve a balance between her personal and professional lives. In the midst of it all, somehow she finds time to serve on the boards of the St. Louis Art Fair, Laumeier Sculpture Park, the Urban League, the Boy Scouts, and nine other groups, in addition to her involvement with breast cancer awareness and cancer research programs.

She is CEO and founder of Outreach-St. Louis, a charitable foundation servicing more than 80 local charities. “Outreach is an extension of the radio station (created) to educate the community about charitable organizations’ need for funding and volunteers.”

In 1997, the program raised $200,000 for Our Little Haven children’s home. “I felt like we weren’t making a difference (with a scattered approach to public service announcements), so we decided to put all of our effort behind one charity at Christmas, and the rest of the time sort of limit the focus to the charities most in need of funding. We raised enough money to buy a second house for Our Little Haven.”

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