How I Got Here: David Kline

David Kline, EVP, Charter and President, Spectrum Reach

It’s been quite a 46-year career for Kline, but it’s a chapter that’ll come to a close once he enters retirement in May. Still, he plans on keeping his hand in the game by serving on boards, and after an initial feeling of nervousness, Kline is embracing retirement and looking forward to the opportunities he’ll now have.

Kline’s beginnings came in 1980 as a door-to-door salesman for Warner-Amex Cable Communications. After learning the pay TV business he made the switch to Showtime as an affiliate representative, before jumping to the regional sports networks business in the early 1990s. Kline worked as SVP/GM of Sportschannel Ohio (now known as FanDuel Sports Network Ohio). In 1997, he became President/COO of Cablevision Media Sales Corp., a role he’d hold for 15 years before a brief stop at Visible World as President/COO and then Ensequence as COO. Kline joined Spectrum Reach in 2015, proving to ultimately be the last stop on his career journey.

The TV advertising landscape has gone through ups and downs throughout Kline’s career, but the biggest change, in his view, is how far technology has come and the ways it’s democratized advertising. Kline added that the shift in digital has enabled marketers to have more freedom to find the right audiences they want.

“Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, if you had a TV show on a broadcast network, you could brand yourself with one spot. Sixty percent of the country tuned in to see ‘M*A*S*H,’” Kline told CFX. “But what’s happened is, over time, the audiences splintered, and the technology has made it much easier to try and reach those people at the right time, with the right message and be able to allow them to transact.”

The new waves of technology played into how Kline stayed motivated to remain in the same industry for more than four decades. He said always being willing to find, try and get involved with every new thing or trend goes a long way with keeping the spark alive, and in an ever-changing advertising business, that’ll certainly continue.

Among Kline’s fondest memories include the people he’s met along the way. In that group are former AMC Networks chief Josh Sapan, former Charter CEO Tom Rutledge and current CEO Chris Winfrey as well as Rich DiGeronimo, Charter’s President, Product and Technology. But among career-defining memories is being one of the first groups to obtain all of the TV rights in Cincinnati for the Reds. “At that time, most regional sports networks, all they did was they buy the cable network rights. Well, I had an opportunity to buy all the television rights—so cable and broadcast,” he said. “I didn’t even know what I didn’t know at the time, but I know at Cablevision, if you had a good idea and you could back it up, they would fund it.”

On Kline’s to-do list once retired includes getting his tennis game back (he said he was a 5.0-rated player in his college days at Ohio State). He’ll get in some golf, nonprofit work, traveling and family time as well, quipping that he’ll remain almost as busy as now.

“It seems like yesterday I was knocking on doors and dreaming of being a cable executive. And if you can dream it, you can do it in this industry. It sounds trite, but it’s true,” Kline said. – Noah Ziegler