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TONY KAHN: PRODUCER | WRITER | STORYTELLER

Tony Kahn has written, produced, narrated and hosted more than fifty radio and television programs and series for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), National Public Radio (NPR), Nickelodeon, A&E Cable, Monitor Radio, CBS Cable, and Boston television stations WGBH and WCVB.  He was also the producer and narrator of the NPR docu-drama series “Blacklisted,” which chronicled the Hollywood blacklisting of his screenwriter father, Gordon Kahn, during the McCarthy era.

Tony Kahn was for many years both the co-host of PRI’s international news program “The World” and host of “Tony Kahn’s Journal.”  In addition to his work with “The World,” Kahn is a regular panelist on NPR’s weekly witty word game show, “Says You,” and has been a regular commentator for Public Radio International’s Marketplace,  American Public Media’s “The Savvy Traveler, and NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

Kahn’s broadcast work has received numerous awards, including twelve New England Emmys for writing, producing and directing, the Grand Award of the New York Film and Television Festival, three Gabriel Awards, the Robert Bennet Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Reporting, a Web Nomination for Best Personal Website, a Cable Ace Nomination, and a National Emmy Nomination for Best Writing.

FULL DISCLOSURE:

I lost the National Emmy…

… to Charles Kuralt, CBS’ legendary man-on-the road reporter, which was still an honor, though…

… if I’d known he was going to win, I could have saved on the tuxedo rental.

Kahn’s documentaries and videos have been screened at film festivals throughout the US and are part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Broadcasting and he has been profiled on a number of websites and magazines, including Current, the Public Media Newspaper, and Inspicio, the Literary, Performing and Visual Arts Magazine of Miami.

FULL DISCLOSURE:

While mentioning the jobs I’ve held, I should also mention the jobs from which I was fired.

1) The first was ZOOM, a pioneer children’s show produced at WGBH-TV, where I was hired as the show’s first writer. Six months into the job, the Executive Producer told WGBH’s General Manager I didn’t know how to write and gave me two weeks notice…

…When I ran into the Executive Producer thirty years later at a reunion, I thanked him for freeing me from the show, where I had been well and truly stuck. He had no memory whatsoever of what I was talking about... 

2) The second show was “The World” which cast me out of the main anchor chair at the end of my contract for not being “hard-nosed” enough to be a “hard news” reporter.  They kept me on as a substitute anchor and producer of “Tony Kahn’s Journal,” which suited me much better.

FULL DISCLOSURE:

Some very kind people are under the impression I received the prestigious Peabody Award…

…for exceptional programs and advances in broadcasting…

…I would like to apologize for not rushing to point out their mistake…

…The Peabody Award Committee has never shown any interest in my work. Maybe they didn’t like “Blacklisted” or never heard it. Same goes for “Morning Stories,” which introduced public radio and TV to podcasting. What did they think podcasting was, chopped liver?…

…The other award I would have loved to get and didn’t was the Columbia Dupont Award for broadcast journalism.

Prior to his work in broadcasting, Kahn was a Russian scholar and translator of four books of translations of Russian poetry and fiction for Doubleday publishers and Knopf and is the author of a graphic novel, “Walloped!” and a play, “Hound and Fox.”

He graduated Magna cum laude from Harvard University and holds a Master’s Degree in Slavic Studies from Columbia University.

FULL DISCLOSURE:

I dropped out of academia and Columbia’s PhD program…

…and went looking for my first job in the media…

…without ever informing anyone in the Columbia University Slavic Department I was leaving…

…True, it was the spring of 1968 and the campus was being torn apart by a student revolt, riots, and daily police clubbing and arrests, but I owe my former colleagues at Columbia a sincere apology for my lack of consideration.

This behavior probably had nothing to do with my not getting a Columbia Dupont nomination, but still . . .