A Media Titan Shares Stories of Mentors Who Impacted His Life

On this episode of Our American Stories, Citadel Communications President and former ABC Board of Governors Director Ray Cole shares the stories of the people who impacted him the most over his long career.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
And one of our favorite subjects to talk about are
leadership and mentorship and what they really mean, not just
the jingoistic use of these words, but real life mentors,
real life leaders, and what we learned from them. Up
next to story from Ray Cole, the president of Citadel

(00:32):
Communications and himself a leader and mentor. Ray is the
author of a new book called Hanging with Winners, and
today he shares with us the stories of the people
he considers to be his greatest mentors. Take it away, Ray.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
I've had two outstanding mentors in my life. Very blessed
in that respect.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Fact I had three. I was a junior in college.
My school was starting an internship program for the first
time in its history. Because I was working in my
dad's grocery store while still going to college, I didn't
sign up, and the chairman of the department pulled me
aside and he said, Ray, we're starting an internship program.

(01:14):
It's really important that we get our best students placed
in business across the community here in Sioux City.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
And I need you to do an internship. If you
can do this confidentially. I'm going to give you the
list of businesses, and I'll even let you pick which
business you get to go. Everybody else was going to
be given assignments that were rather arbitrarily given. And so
I took the list home and I looked it over.
And there were some great companies on that list in

(01:44):
the Susiti area, but the one that caught my attention
was KCAU TV, an ABC affiliate that I had grown
up watching. I liked the on air talent, the product
was terrific, and I went back the next day and
I said, you know what, you have a deal. I
passed this up. I can do an internship for ten
weeks at a TV station. I'll get three hours of

(02:06):
college credit, and you're going to pay me the minimum
wage at that station. And I can't remember what the
minimum wage was back then. Maybe it was two bucks
an hour. I don't it wasn't very much. I did
the ten week internship and at the end of that
ten weeks, the general manager of that station, a gentleman
by the name of Bill Turner, who passed on just

(02:28):
a year or so ago. He was very involved in
the broadcast industry. Very respected at the very time he
was serving as chairman of the Board of Governors of
the ABC Television network. He was not your typical small
market television GM. Bill Turner at the end of that
internship that junior year pulled me in and he said,

(02:50):
we really enjoyed having you here so much, so we're
going to offer you a full time job right now
that will be waiting for you one year from now
when you graduate from college. I was dumbfounded. I said, yes,
I would love to come back do another ten week
internship at the end of my senior year and then
move right into that full time job you're offering. And

(03:10):
that's what happened. And so for me to begin in
the business under his watchful eye was very meaningful, and
it was really really gratifying some thirty years later for
me to be elected to serve in that very same position.
I was elected to the ABC Board of Governors in
two thousand and four and I was elected chairman, and

(03:31):
I served in that capacity of the Board of Governors
from two thousand and six to two thousand and eight,
and then I remained on in a emeritis capacity chairman
emeritiths capacity, so I had a fifteen year run on
the board of ABC Television Network's affiliates, and that was
among the most gratifying aspects of my career to engage

(03:54):
network executives in news in sports, and that eventually became
ESPN as ABC Sports was morphed into ESPN, but news
and sports entertainment and then all of the business aspects
of the network affiliate partnership at a time that we
were seeing sweeping consequential changes on the horizon as it

(04:18):
related to digital television, and so that's how I started.
That's sort of where I wound up. Like a lot
of things in life, there were more zigs and zags
than there were straight lines. But it has been a
truly rewarding career that I value, and through all of
those experiences, I was able to forge a myriad of relationships.

(04:43):
The first mentor I had was the person that I
worked for during my internship in nineteen seventy six. His
name was Claire Giles, and he was the business manager
at that station and he signed the original license application
that was filed with the FCC when kcau TV. Previously

(05:04):
the call letters at the time he signed it on
were KVTV. That's how long he'd been in the business.
He signed the original license application in nineteen fifty three,
and he had a long history in radio powerhouse radio
station in Yanked in South Dakota called WNAX, and so
he had a great background in radio and then television broadcasting.

(05:26):
He was my first mentor, and then in nineteen eighty five,
mentor number three came along, a gentleman by the name
of Phil Lombardo, and Phil had a burning entrepreneurial spirit.
He had been running a publicly traded company called Corinthian Broadcasting,
which was a division of dun and Bradstreet and they

(05:47):
had big, pretty major market stations around the country from Indianapolis,
Sacramento to Tulsa to Houston and other markets. And he
wanted to go out and start his own company, and
that's just what he did. And KCAU and Siusidi Iowa
was the third station he acquired under his own banner,

(06:08):
which was Citadel Communications, and he became the mentor of
all mentors for me, and together we went out and
acquired more stations and we remained partners to this day.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
He's a great.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Friend, more than a mentor to not only me, but
to my family. And I wouldn't have achieved anywhere near
what I did without the guidance offered and provided by
all three of those mentors. I think the overriding advice
sort of transcends all three of those mentors. And that's
a philosophy of as a broadcaster, the need.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
To do good.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
In order to do well, you have to serve your
local community. You really have to do good in that
community if you're going to do well from a bottom
line profitability standpoint. And I think that is what they
deeply instilled into me. Is that philosophy, no doubt about it.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
And a great job by Monte Montgomery on the piece
You've got to do good to do well, the theme
we hear over and over again as it relates to entrepreneurship.
It's not theft doing well in business, its service. Ray
Cole's story about his mentors here on Our American Stories Folks,

(07:30):
if you love the great American stories we tell and
love America like we do, we're asking you to become
a part of the Our American Stories family. If you
agree that America is a good and great country, please
make a donation a monthly gift of seventeen dollars and
seventy six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters.
Go to our American Stories dot com now and go

(07:51):
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot com.