As John Christopher, Charles Porter was a popular announcer with Brisbane radio station 4BH, from its inception in 1932, until he left to start a school for radio announcing and acting in 1935. He wrote numerous radio plays (nearly one hundred half-hour pieces by 1935) as well as being a drama producer, continuity and publicity writer for the station.
In 1937 Brisbane's Sunday Mail columnist L. Fitzhenry said of Porter's career as a playwright to that time:
[He ] is rapidly proving himself one of the most striking of a small group of experimental dramatists who have lately had works accepted and presented by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. His Play Without a Name excited special interest when produced bv Dion Wheeler from 4QG a few months ago ('News About Radio,' p. 28).
Two years later he was being described as one of Australia's most internationally famous script-writers:
One of Australia's most successful playwrights is Charles Porter, of Brisbane, who has explored radio fields far and wide. He has sold plays to such stations as Statsradlofonlen (Denmark) and Polskie Radio (Poland). The New Zealand National Broadcasting Service has produced The Footsteps After, Go Back, Napoleon, and The Outer Darkness. The South African Broadcasting Corporation produced Prelude to Death, The Footsteps After, Play Without a Name, Secret Places, Fire Below, and others. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation also has taken some of these. A high compliment to Mr. Porter was the 'staging' of his radio play, Play Without a Name, by the Circle Theatre, London ('Australian Playwrights,' p.7).
Porter was a prolific freelance journalist and children's fairy story writer, with many of his works being published in Teleradio magazine throughout the early years of the 1930s. He also contributed a regular column, 'Microphone Murmurs', for this journal, as 'The Radio Rambler,' and wrote dogerrel as 'The 4BH Tame Poet'.
After his radio career, Porter became a politician. He was a State Liberal member of the Queensland Parliament and served for many years as the Liberal Party's General Secretary (Queensland Division).
