Donna Halper (2001) is one of the few radio historians to track the lives of the early female pioneers: Eunice Randall, Emilie Sturtevant, Marie Zimmerman, Eleanor Poehler, and Halloween Martin. Randall made her radio debut in 1918 and became one of the nation's first female announcers. Sturtevant was one of Boston's first radio programmers in the 1920s. Zimmerman and Poehler were two of the first female radio station managers. The first woman to command Chicago morning radio in the 1920s was Halloween Martin, long before programmers realized the importance of that time slot.

Soap and Sisterhood

By the 1940s, female talk show hosts became popular role models for their female listeners, who sought advice on children, relationships, and detergents, as well as a bit of celebrity gossip and companionship. Television, ironically, seemed to supply an abundant pool of female hosts to the radio networks. While many female listeners tuned to Mary Margaret McBride and Kate Smith, others enjoyed the popular soap operas. The success of female radio personalities was often evaluated in terms of their ability to move merchandise.

By 1954, as the industry's reliance on the radio networks declined, female disc jockeys (although merely a handful across the nation) began to redefine their role in radio. Martha Jean "The Queen" Steinberg was one of the first women in the nation to make the leap from being hostess of a homemaker show to being a rhythm-and-blues disc jockey on Memphis' legendary WDIA-AM. Also across Memphis airwaves, WHER-AM became the first all-girl radio station in the U.S. in 1955. Many of the disc jockeys remained at the station through 1972. WHER was the brainchild of station owner and record producer Sam Phillips. Apart from these exceptions, however, radio disc jockeys were predominantly white and male. With the emergence of rock and roll, these men attempted to out-shock their competitors in the quest for the most listeners, and in the process, they gained power and control over music selection and programming. Women faded behind the scenes for the next decade.

Sexpot Radio

In the mid-1960s, New York's WNEW-FM created "Sexpot Radio," an all-female lineup of disc jockeys. From this experiment, which lasted only 18 months, Alison Steele became known as the "Nightbird." Her legendary sultry voice captivated night audiences as she read poetic and Biblical verses in between music and interviews with rock stars. Steele, who died in 1995, was a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the first woman to receive Billboard Magazine's FM Personality of the Year award in 1976. Unlike Steele, many women entered radio in the 1970s as part-time reporters and weekend announcers-after women's groups pressured the Federal Communications Commission (FCC} to revise its affirmative action policies. With free-form FM radio giving way to increasingly segmented formatting, women were often defined, not by their individuality, but within the context of a male-dominated morning show.

Before the turn of the decade, another radio station would once again provide new opportunities for women. Like WHER, it had a female staff and male owner. Connecticut's WOMN-AM debuted in January 1979. It aired several news stories about women and played numerous female artists throughout the day. The short-lived effort paved the way for less stereotypical advertisements and created a demand for more female artists by radio stations across the nation.

Strong Talk in the 1980s

Music-oriented stations decreased their news and public service commitments and increased the number of songs played per hour. Still, there were signs that "chick" talk would become a valuable commodity in the industry in the years ahead. By the late 1970s, Sally Jessy Raphael had established herself as a popular radio talk show host, broadcasting her advice on love, family, and relationships to a late-night audience at a time when talk radio began to boom. Concurrently, television talk shows began to arrract large female audiences away from radio. With every station playing the same songs, personality once again became an integral part of the program-ming mix.

Strong female personalities, such as Washington, D.C.'s Robin Breedon, soared in their ratings, past their white male competitors. With a decade of television broadcast experience and a degree from Howard University, Breedon became the number-one Arbitron-ranked morning personality in D.C. She proved that many listeners were seeking personalities with compassion and community commitment. The Washington Post referred to her as the "Queen of Radio." During her ten-year radio stint, she won seven Emmy nominations and two American Women in Radio and Television National Awards; then-Mayor Sharon Prarr-Kelly even proclaimed a day named in her honor. Breedon left radio in 1998.

By 1988 Howard Stern was on his way to becoming a national icon. Robin Quivers, Stern's articulate sidekick, became a dominant part of what was becoming known as "shock radio." As early as the 1980s, many women entered radio as sidekicks who typically read the morning headlines and provided a laugh track for male-dominated morning shows. In some cases, these women also became the targets of sexist jokes told by male hosts.

The Rise of the Shockette Jock

The real revolution was happening in Rhode Island. Carolyn Fox, Providence's number-one afternoon personality, spouted her liberal views on everything from sex to politics-before Howard Stern even gained national prominence. Fox paved the way for a number of women, such as San Francisco's Darian O'Toole, Austin's Sara Trexler, Denver's Caroline Corley, and Detroit's Kelly Walker, who became the new shock jocks of the 1990s. Many of these women began their careers as sidekicks or night personalities. Trexler, who began her career in 1986, was selected as Billboard Magazine's Small Market Local Air Personality of the Year in 1999. Emulating their male predecessors, many of these shock jockertes featured rhe same type of locker-room humor, but from a female perspective.

Karin Begin (a.k.a. Darian O'Toole) has been billed as America's First Shockette. Although Carolyn Fox is her predecessor by more than a decade, the press and the radio industry has portrayed Begin as an American trailblazer for female radio broadcasters. Begin was born and raised in Nova Scotia and worked at a number of small Canadian markets before landing in the United States.

The turning point in her radio career came when she met Program Director Shawn Kelly, a big Howard Stern fan, who encouraged Begin to seek opportunities in the United States. Some of her early gigs included on-air stints in New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Sacramento. In San Francisco, she would become known as Darian O'Toole-the "Caustic Canadian Swamp Witch." Her morning show skyrocketed to number one in San Francisco, climbing from 23rd to 1st place in the market in only three years. She left San Francisco's KBIG in 1997 to take her show to New York. In September 1999 she returned to San Francisco ro work at KSAN.

Alternate Models for Female Personalities

The ability ro move merchandise, whether soap or soda, will always remain an essential part of commercial radio, for obvious reasons. With every product sold on radio, early female broadcasters knew that their bargaining power would increase tenfold. Some commercial gimmicks to market the female experience, such as the rise and fall of "Sexpot Radio" or the all-women radio station WOMN, have quickly failed within the past 40 years. On the other hand, the Seattle-based syndicated nighttime personality Delilah, a 25-year veteran, is taking a new spin on an old formula-a mix of advice and inspiration to a predominantly female audience, with listeners calling in to her show from more than 200 affiliates around the nation. Reminiscent of Casey Kasem's long-distance dedications, but a bit more personal, she is very much like Mary Margaret McBride in her desire to chat about love, family, and relationships. In October 1998, she announced her pregnancy and promised to share her experience with her listeners. Many American listeners seem comforted by female radio personalities who symbolize traditional family values. Dr. Laura Schlessinger, a controversial conservative talk show host in the 1990s, starts her weekday show by saying "I'm my kid's mom." In the final analysis, there has never been one personality style that has worked for all female broadcasters; rather, the means of success has been their ability to connect to the listeners-both men and women-in some unique way.