Women on the Radio

All-American Woman DJ Terri does her thing leading 

The Morning Show at the radio station where I work.

                I have a lot of respect for women.  My mom did most of the raising of my brother, sister and me.  While my dad was busy with his work my mom was the one who directed my young world:  She drove me to Boy Scout meetings, she took me and my buddies fishing and she even tried to teach me how to dribble a basketball until she threw up her hands in frustration, turned and went back into the house yelling, “You’re thinking about it too much!”

                So you see I have no problem with women in positions of power, management and work.  It has always seemed perfectly natural and expected to me.

                Apparently not so with some of my fellow human beings.

                Some time ago I was leaving a business and getting back into the radio station van.  A woman who looked to be about my mom’s age was hobbling into the business with the help of a cane.

                “Excuse me,” she said.  “Do you work for that radio station?  Are you a disc jockey?”

                “Yes ma’am I do and that’s what I do there,” I said.

                “I just wanted you to know that I don’t think women belong on the radio,” she said.

                I can’t make this stuff up, I wouldn’t dare.

                “Ahhhhh,” I pondered what to say as I stood there.  Then the words came, “Yes ma’am, your opinion is duly noted.”

                “A woman DJ just sounds strange to me,” she added.

                “Yes ma’am, I’ll tell the boss.” I said.  What else could I say?

                In the early days of radio women may have been singers, commercial and radio theater voices but they weren’t disc jockeys.

                I actually don’t know exactly when “The Early Days” ended.

                The Great and Powerful Wikipedia says a Minneapolis radio station had the first full-time woman DJ in the mid-60’s.

                I was well into my radio career before I first heard this.  I was amazed.  I thought women had always been on the air.  Who the hell thought they shouldn’t be DJs?

                There’s some hard evidence that radio was a male dominated profession way back when at the station where I work. 

                The station was built around 1964 in Clovis, New Mexico by the record producer Norman Petty, the fellow who had a hand in the Rock ‘n’ Roll success of Buddy Holly and some others many years ago.

                The station has a shower in the Men’s Room.

See it?  See the shower stall in the Men's Room?

                The story goes that in building the station Petty believed the DJs would like a shower after their shift, much as the musicians in his recording studio did after a session.

                There is no shower in the Women’s Room.

                In 1964 radio world women announcers were unheard of, or at least very rare.  But I reckon Norman Petty wasn’t going to have a female announcer at his radio station.  They could work in the office, I suppose, but on the air?  Nope.

Obviously that’s all changed now.

Again, I wonder who made up the rule long-ago that there shouldn’t be women DJs.  It was probably in the same meeting where they made up the rule “DO NOT PLAY MORE THAN TWO FEMALE LEAD VOCAL SONGS BACK-TO-BACK.”

                For the record, women on the air are just fine with me...always have been.

Long ago when I was a single guy I was listening to a powerful border-blaster radio station from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.  There was a woman disc jockey on the air speaking in smooth, conversational, soulful Spanish, enunciating every word.

I didn’t understand a word she was saying but I wanted to drive south, take her out to lunch, maybe even buy her a house.

-30-