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Talk Radio is not a female friendly career path.
The conventional wisdom in the industry is that men listen to talk, women listen to music.
Ten years Liz Dolan set out to prove the pundits wrong. When radio executives would say to her that women don't listen to talk, her response was that women aren't interested in what men are screaming and yelling about.
She did prove the men wrong. She and her Satellite Sisters became the leading female talk show in radio. First with a syndication through Public Radio International and most lately with ABC Radio.
But despite that fact, despite the fact that The Satellite Sisters was a profitable program, despite the fact that advertisers were willing to pay a premium to reach their target audience,The Satellite Sisters and ABC Radio are in the process of ending their five year relationship.
That particular detail really gets Liz Dolan mad. They were successful and yet the network didn't see their value.
Their last daily show was aired on Friday, November 9th. Their Saturday program will run through January 5th. The same week ABC Radio announced it was changing its direction and would no longer be seeking radio programming for women, the network leaked it was planning to hire Don Imus.
As of this weekend, The Satellite Sisters do not have a new distributor for their radio program. They do however, have a website and podcasts. They also have a very neglected blog that Liz Dolan promise will be getting some major attention this week.
The Satellite Sisters are the latest in a growing number of women casualties on terrestrial radio.
In August,GreenStone Media, a network backed by Gloria Steinem, Rosie O'Donnell, Billie Jean King and Jane Fonda closed their doors.
Writing about their last day on; their community blog, Maureen Langan wrote,
Yesterday, when we took your calls and emails - Ken and Peggy and Jeff and Cindy and Misty and Joe, from Greenville and Albany and Indiana and New Jersey, I realized you got what were were about - just giving you some information and some fun every morning. No agenda. No screaming. No forcing our points of view on you. Just our take on current events. And laughs. Lots of laughs.
Not everyone shares the view that women are finding it tough on radio. Lisa De Pasquale has a very different take writing about the Demise of GreenStone Media,
The media insisted that GreenStone was finally giving women a voice and the content they’ve been craving.
Women already control content on TV, magazines and books, so I suppose it’s only natural that they try to fit talk radio in their overstuffed handbag. The notion that women don’t have a voice in today’s media is totally bizarre. I can’t even watch a NFL game without seeing a feature story about a linebacker that reads Goodnight, Moon to preschoolers in his spare time. Yet, the media went on and on about GreenStone breaking the barrier of talk radio and bringing a new concept to talk radio.
The Satellite Sisters would beg to disagree. They,like GreenStone took a very different approach to talk radio.In creating their program, Liz and her real life sisters, Julie, Sheila, Monica and Lian talked about things women talk about.
Liz described the on -air conversation like a conversation you would have with a group of girlfriends over dinner.
"We'd talk about the war in Iraq and also what you should wear to your ex-boyfriend's wedding."
What differentiated them was they were not just about politics or advice---you can find a couple of female broadcasters in the political arena: Laura Ingraham, and Stephanie Miller.
And, of course,there are women in the advice genre like is Dr. Laura, and Dr. Joy Browne but compared to the number of men with syndicated shows the number of women who have programs is embarrassingly small.
With the departure of The Satellite Sisters there is just one station in the U. S. that caters to programs about women's lives. That's FM1071.com in my hometown of Minneapolis. You can stream it live.The Satellite Sisters aired on that station until last Friday.
Their program was on from 11-1 p.m. every day. It was during the hours that I was often in my car and I often listened to their program. They reminded me of BlogHer but on radio: smart, funny, opinionated and passionate about their causes like Radio Al Mahababa.
