Examining women's radio silence

Boston Globe ^ | 6/4/2003 | Mark Jurkowitz

[nickcarraway]

When their bosses at WRKO-AM dropped ''Daytime Divas'' Doreen Vigue and Darlene McCarthy late last month, McCarthy recalls that the hosts had been told simply: ''This is a business decision.''

The move -- which at least for now has ended McCarthy's five-year talk career and dissolved her 2 1/2-year partnership with Vigue -- puts one more conservative male, Pat Whitley, in front of the microphone. And it leaves a grand total of one local woman handling a mainstream-issues talk show on a major Boston station: Margery Eagan, who is half of a WTKK-FM male/female team whose hours were slashed to make room for the radio career of Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly. And it provides further evidence that being a woman is bad for business in the sweaty, angry, conservative world of talk radio.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Female voices do not carry well via the radio waves. Note most male hosts have voices in the lower register. On television one can see the media babes and tend to over look the voices.

[countrydummy]

countrydummy slaps enfield with a large trout!

[7 x 77]

Dr Laura was dropped from WLS AM 890 (Chicago) last year because the station management wanted more shows covering current events.

Where did you find this out? I did a fairly deep google search for an explanation once and failed.

Was that the real reason, or could it be something like the fear of the homosexual crowd.

How were her Chicago ratings, and how do they compare with what replaced her. I can't believe the minor-league pair of Byrne and Marvin could draw as big a crowd. Maybe they cost less.

[Kuksool]

Dr Laura's time slot on WLS was replaced by Jay Marvin (liberal) and Ellen Burns (moderate pubbie). I guess the Boston Globe only counts Ellen Burns as a GOP talk show host, but not as a women talk radio host.

[Cowboy Bob]

Why is it, then, that women -- who fill newspaper newsrooms, work as television anchors and reporters, and often have successful careers as commentators and columnists -- don't seem to have the ''talent'' for talk radio?

The answer is simple...open market vs a controlled market

There are thousands of radio stations in this country, creating enormous competition. If a broadcaster lacks ability, the listener can switch to one of dozens of other stations in the area.

Television and newspapers are much more limited in number. Most cities have one newspaper and three television stations. These media outlets are liberal, and probably also subject to Federal Affirmative Action and Diversity laws. Women are put in positions not because they are qualified, but simply because there is a quota to fill.

[RickGee]

Currently, WTKK carries one female syndicated talk host, the Washington-based Laura Ingraham, who is part of a parade of blond conservative pundits who gained fame during Bill Clinton's presidency.
So the author brings up Laura's name (probably woman #2 on radio) just to dismiss her as a blond conservative pundit. As though none of the men got shows started by talking about Bill Clinton, etc. They could also be called "pundits." So that leaves us with the "blond" word, which is almost sexist in itself.

[Kuksool]

Last March in 2002, Jay Marvin use to carry the 7pm - 9pm time slot. Ellen Burns was on 9pm - 11pm. Then Dr Laura was on for 1 hour, before Art bell came on.

I remember one Friday in March, Ellen Burns had Sean Hannity on. She explained the WLS schedule. Due to 9-11-01, the station wished to have more shows discussing current events.

[nickcarraway]

Dr. Laura actually seems to talk about such issues fairly frequently.

[Kuksool]

I'm just going by with what Ellen Burns said. If there was a secret motive for WLS to dump Dr Laura, I don't know.

WLS does like to do an awful lot of schedule rearranging. At the start of 2003, WLS dumped a bunch of weekend radio hosts, in favor of re-runs of shows played during the weekdays. Also, the station dropped Coast to Coast AM for a delayed broadcast of Larry Elder. In May, WLS-AM dropped Larry Elder to bring back Coast to Coast AM. Thus Chicago is stuck with a talk radio station that can't mind up its mind about programming.

[rabidralph]

willows=winnows

[Gabz]

I've read the article and through the thread before I am now putting fingers to keyboard. I am also donning my asbestos suit because some people are not going to like what I have to say.

I am not and have never been some screaming women's libber who thinks I can do anything a man can do or better, but I do believe in equal pay and opportunity for equal work. A job in radio is something that can be done on an equal level by either a man or a woman.

The blame for the dirth of women in talk radio can be laid sqaurely at the feet of men both in and out of the business.

When I first started working in radio I caught what I considered the assignment of my dreams, covering the legislature in the Capitol. I found out it was given to me because I was new and young and female and maybe I could get away with screwing up. Also because it most likely involved working at night.

When after a couple of months I hadn't screwed up and eveyone from the Governor on down was calling the news room and asking for me, I was reassigned - to cover city and county night meetings. The news director and the afternoon drive anchor had a problem with me getting credit for doing a good job. And also, the news director didn't think I needed to be out socializing around town when he and the other anchor were home with their families.

The fit really hit the shan when I started getting more calls from the news wires and the network we were an affiliate of than the 2 of them combined. I then got pulled from doing work on the weekend 30 minute program we ran.

A new news director sent me right back to the Capitol and I was once again a very happy camper - until I ran into a problem with the sales manager of one of the 2 stations. He'd been on the sales staff to get this one outfit to advertise and for years that business refused. The owner of the business finally got fed up with the sales staff continually hounding him for business that he told the rep he wouldn't advertise on any station with a female doing the news. Within side of a week I was pulled off the air because I was "costing the station money."

The owner of the business, who I knew, was devastated that his flip comment was taken out of context and caused me problems. He just didn't like the sales manager and so wouldn't do business with the station -it was as simple as that. But that didn't help my job.

Like it or not - sexist attitudes is the one and only reason there are so few women in talk radio. We're not welcome.

As to the comments about voices - I am occasionally still mistaken as a man when I answer the phone - I have a very low range voice and also have the ability of controlling it at will.

[Katya]

"Was that the real reason, or could it be something like the fear of the homosexual crowd.

I think Doc Laura has a limited shelf life. You can listen for only so long without feeling a bit like and audio-voyeurist. It's not that I quibble with her take on things...it's just that the people who call into her show are such losers.

[50sDad]

A Parable for my Liberal Friends

With the recent FCC hallaballoo, many of my Liberal friends are going bug-eyed at the prospect of an old law called "the Fairness Doctrine." A billion years ago when I was in college, there was actually a law that said if a broadcaster had an hour in favor of some issue, they had to field an hour against that issue. Now you would imagine that this would mean that for every hour of Dan Rather, we would by law have to have an hour against abortion, or an hour praising America, or an hour on Capitalism, but sadly, even under that law, this wasn't done. The news was then, up until Fox News, almost exclusively Liberal. The New Chant among Liberals is that Talk Radio (or "Hate Radio" as they call it) is so far to the Right, that the broadcasters should be forced to carry an hour of liberal gibberish for every well-thought-out hour of Conservative talk. Submitted for your approval, you liberal pinheads:

One day, Starbucks' hit on a flavor that everyone liked. Carmel Mocha Frappe became the coffee. America couldn't get enough of it. Starbucks became the coffee shop, and before long, new Starbucks were opening in every day at such a rate that before long, Starbucks were opening inside other Starbucks. The company was making a JILLION dollars a second, 24/7.

Because they were Rotten Old White Guys who Oppress the Masses, this money was not good enough. Starbucks thought, "hey, let's strike out in a bold new direction." Of course, this brought about their new flavor: Cat Crap.

Well, no body wanted it. It was horrible. It tasted like, well…cat crap.

For some reason, though, it went over well with one class of people…Liberal Lawyers on the DNC. "Hey," they said cheerily in a court suit filed the next day, "It doesn't matter that nobody like Cat Crap. It is horribly unfair that simply because no body actually likes it, that nobody wants to buy it, that it tastes like, well…cat crap.it is unfair that this valuable thing be allowed to disappear. So we are petitioning the (Liberal, Clinton-appointed) legal system to immediately force every coffee shop in America to sell one cup of Cat Crap for every cup of Carmel Mocha Frappe. We realize that nobody will buy it, and that no one will want to produce it if there is no market for it, but darn it, it is simply so UNFAIR that this valuable treat disappear."

You know what happened, don't you? Starbucks was legally forced to pour a cup of Cat Crap for every cup of any other flavored coffee they sold. And former Mafia hitmen, paid by the ACLU sat in every Starbucks to forcibly make anyone who resisted drink it. Berfore long, Starbuck was out of business because no one would get near them. With no one drinking coffee,. All-night delivery truck drivers crashed, people died, lawsuits were filed, and before long, well, even with the tax cut, the economy melted down. Today, nobody has a job. But we do have, cups and cups of Cat Crap. UMMM, good! And it's all George Bush's fault!

The moral? Talk radio is like a good cup of coffee; stimulating and refreshing. And Liberal talk show hosts? Well, they are all in small markets with minute audiences for a reason. Yep, they are like a steaming hot cup of Cat Crap.

[rabidralph]

Interesting, but why did you post this to me?

[ggekko]

"As usual, the libs don't get it..."

As usual a politically correct commentator can't take his reality-distortion glasses off long enough to see the truth.

The truth is that talk radio is a LIVE medium which places peculiar demands on talk radio hosts. Since Liberalism is an idealogy based upon emotion rather than reason Liberal hosts tend to get demolished in this format. Not unreasonably they shy away from it.

Liberals proliferate in television becuase it is controlled medium that allows them to frame a politcally correct message often in abeyance of facts. This same phenomena is also seen in the elite print media.

Contrary to what the article tried to insinuate talk radio is about as close as possible to a pure competive market place as exists in the media markplace. That Rush's verbal pyrotechnics and satire and Sean Hannity's ability to explode weak arguments and non-sequiturs is more entertaining than an Oprah-esque feel-a-thon is the verdict of the marketplace. Obviously the author of this post we prefer a return to the era of the fairness doctrine when mediocrity reigned in talk radio.

[50sDad]

Was posting to the forum, not to you.

[Tribune7]

Rollye James has a popular late night show in Philly, and Blanquita Quallum (sp) was hot for a while.

How could it the article have ignored them? Could it be these girls are anti-lefty? Naaah.

[bart99]

"How can an article on women in talk radio have one parenthetical mention of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who is in the top five?

Or Laura Ingraham?

Both their shows are carried in my city."

---

Must be the name laura *L*

Actually, both are on in my city - D.C. - and I do listen to Ingraham when I have a chance - she's late night. But she's good - if you agree with her conservative position, of course.

There's a national lady talk show host on right now at 12:30 PM....... but it's a sex-advice show. Do they count?

[Calvin Locke]

On television one can see the media babes and tend to over look the voices.

What are you talking about? I accidently recorded The View and was appalled that it could be popular.

Then, this last Friday, I came across Susan Estrich guest hosting. Thank God Coulter was there, but she was being
snotty not talking about her forth coming book. (I must have missed the point of her being on.)

Oh yeah, and BO had Barbara Walters on earlier. Another prima donna with less than pleasing vocal qualities.

I've occasionally tuned in to Ingraham, but she conflicts with my attempt at liberal listening (Harry Shearer's Le Show, and JP Lightning's RNI) on Sunday nights.

Then of course, there is content and presentation....

[Gabz]

Female voices do not carry well via the radio waves.

And you know this how???? via your personal opinion????