One day I found myself in a video editing suite with four radio execs as we watched and commented on the editing of a TV commercial for their female-targeted radio station. At one point a spirited debate broke out over whether to include or delete a specific image from the spot. The arguments for and against boiled down to variations on two statements, which were:
Women don’t like that.
Yes they do.
The problem with that was that every participant in the debate was a man. 5 guys in a room, each fairly certain that he knew what women like and wanted. According to my wife, that’s like 5 women in a room arguing about jockstraps. It just doesn’t produce an effective outcome.
But that is the way most female-targeted radio stations are managed, programmed, and presented: most of the air staff are guys, who report to another guy (the Program Director), who reports to another guy (the GM), who reports to (usually) yet another guy. Jockstraps all the way, and usually an outcome that is less than optimal. Sometimes the differences are large and obvious – think back to Top 40's big snarly aggressive male station voices of the recent past – and at other times a bit more subtle.
But unlike most men, most women are very sensitive to nuance. For example, among the Alan Burns and Associates clients the best Valentine’s Day-related promotion was to be heard on a station programmed by a woman. The theme was “romance,” a word which isn’t likely to be found on a male-dominated radio station.
If you’re a guy programming a station whose audience is a female majority (such as Top 40, AC, or variations thereon) or a roughly 50-50 gender split, make sure that you solicit input from the female members of your team. If you don’t have female members of your team, get some.
If you are a GM of such a station and are searching for a Program Director, consider strongly hiring/promoting a woman for the job. There are great ones out there like Michelle Williams in Raleigh, Mary Ellen Kachinske in Chicago, and Nikki Nite in Austin showing how well women can do in that job, yet nationally women make up only about 11% of the PD population. That suggests that there are some unrecognized but great prospects out there.
If you have a station whose audience is 50% or more female, make sure your programming and promotion - and copywriting, especially - has a sufficient dose of estrogen involved.
As always, your comments are welcome: alan@burnsradio.com.