Failure of female radio

Carrie Lukas:

TO thunderous acclaim from the liberal intelligentsia, a team of feminist icons - including Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda - last year launched a women-run radio network. The mainstream media dutifully parroted press releases describing the launch as a "breakthrough" for women in the male-dominated world of talk radio.

The Boston Globe, for example, proclaimed that "GreenStone gives women an outlet." Business Week described the venture as "Talk Radio Minus The Testosterone."

Last Friday, GreenStone Media signed off for good. Why did this effort fail? After all, the programming carefully was designed by feminist experts to appeal to female tastes. According to Steinem, "women are more and more turned off by the hostility and argumentative nature of AM talk radio." Greenstone Media was supposed to capitalize on that by offering a different tenor, more "community" and greater respect for different points of views.

GreenStone offered the typical liberal fare - boasting of interviews with Ralph Nader and Alec Baldwin - but also included programming that was downright girly. Morning show segments included "Mean Mommy," with advice for mothers, and "What's up with Guys," providing insights into the elusive male brain.

Similar business plans certainly have succeeded elsewhere. Plenty of media outlets target women - from sappy dramas on Lifetime and Oxygen to family-centered morning shows and magazines - and draw large audiences and big advertising dollars. GreenStone Media sought to imitate those successes. Its Web site explained, "Talk That Women REALLY Want . . . Only Green- stone Media gives you a lineup of personality talk that best appeals to the demo advertisers want most - women 25-54." It seemed a good sales pitch; certainly advertisers welcome the chance to reach this coveted female audience on the radio.

GreenStone's problem was it couldn't attract an audience of either gender. The programming was picked up by only eight affiliates in small to mid-sized markets. Apparently, GreenStone's programming wasn't the talk that women really want.

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No doubt Laura Ingraham has a bigger audience that the whole network had. She succeeds for the same reason that most conservatives dominate talk radio. She defends conservatism and raises questions about liberalism in a way that is entertaining and interesting. Lets face it, liberalism whether male or female is boring.

The only way liberals can succeed in media is by being control freaks. They can get away with this in Hollywood where they can write the script and the audience can't talk back. When it comes to an interactive media like radio they are lost.

The only interactive media where they have any success is in their own fever swamps like the Daily Kos where they masturbate their minds with liberal political porn and insults.