Phil Charley has passed away, aged 89, after a 65 year career in broadcasting. He had an agressive lung cancer.

We will pass on funeral details once they are known.

The former AFTRS lecturer, commercial radio announcer, manager and international trainer passed away in his Gladesville nursing home today. His final hours were spent with his family and friends as jazz was played and poetry read.

Phil was awarded an Order of Australia Media in 2002 for “for services to broadcasting in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, and through education and training, particularly the development of technical and practical skills and professional attitudes and disciplines.”

He was an accomplished jazz musician and was one of the founders of the Wangaratta Jazz Festival while working at 3NE. He also worked at 2QN Deniliquin.

Phil was much loved by a generation of radio broadcasters trained at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and Macleay College.

His friend and colleague Keith Jackson has written a heart felt tribute to Phil’s life and career in his PNG blog:
 

At a broadcast management training program we ran at Manila in the Philippines, he was known by everyone as ‘Friendly Phil’. The nomenclature stuck. The participants at the next workshop, up in the hills at Baguio City, had already heard about this charming, clarinet-playing Australian.

Phil had managed radio stations in Queensland and NSW before he headed for Papua New Guinea with his wife Marie in 1970.

He and I had been recruited at the same time, me from the ABC in Port Moresby, Phil from commercial radio in Deniliquin NSW. And it was as assistant managers we were posted respectively to Radio Eastern Highlands and Radio Rabaul.

Within a year, we were both managing stations: Phil set up the new Radio Madang and I was sent to Kieta to run Radio Bougainville. We talked frequently on the radio-telephone, comparing notes and swapping information…
 

In 1973, with independence rushing at us, Phil and I worked together in the policy and planning unit of the new PNG National Broadcasting Commission. One of our many projects was to introduce commercial broadcasting, which Phil had carriage of…

Returning to Australia in 1979, he worked in a managerial role for 2CH in Sydney before taking up his training role at the Film, Radio and TV School. It was a job that suited him to a tee.

When he was awarded the Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2002, the citation read “for services to broadcasting in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, and through education and training, particularly the development of technical and practical skills and professional attitudes and disciplines”.

It could have added “…and for winning friends for Australia wherever he trod”.

During our Australian period, Phil and I continued to collaborate on many projects. We managed broadcast training programs in Indonesia, the Philippines and Fiji.

Along with Martin Hadlow, we helped kick start Radio New Dawn in Bougainville in the period following the disastrous civil war.

We worked together on a pot boiler of a broadcasting management book called Manage by the Moment in which a bottle of good wine was expended on each page we wrote.

Phil’s life was accompanied by love, laughter and jazz – and exceptional works.

Many people who read this will have known Phil Charley. On behalf of us all, no matter where in the world we may be, I convey condolences to Marie and the kids – Philip, Steve, Peter and Gina – and the entire lovely and talented extended Charley family.