Women and Talk Radio
Another part of my trip to Minneapolis/St. Paul last week was a guest appearance on two programs on FM 107 – a women-focused talk radio station that I wrote about a few years back. Back then, as now, I find the concept pretty cutting edge for such a male-dominated industry. Mind you, the programming is NOT all women/all the time. Rather, the schedule includes a wide variety of male and female hosts and topics.
Thursday afternoon I was a guest on the Lori and Julia show (that’s them in the picture) – a sort of “girlfriend chat” type show that is getting lots of buzz in that listening region. It was hard to keep up with their funny banter, but it was easy to see why lots of women enjoy listening to them during their afternoon drive-time.
Then, Saturday afternoon I was on the Cathie Hartnett show which was live from the new eq-life store I have been writing about lately. Hers is a more broad-topic show, so we talked about how there is so much opportunity for women to wield their influence as consumers these days.
Anyway…
Given what I now know about FM 107, (whose program director is an old college friend of mine – so there’s your full disclosure), I would say that they are developing quite a solid industry standard within the women/talk market space. If they can continue to do it successfully, and the signs are good, they’ll be the shining example for an otherwise pretty traditional and slow to evolve radio industry.
My suggestion to FM 107 as well as any other station trying to grow their female audience: Invite and encourage feedback and really, really get to know your listeners. They’ll tell you which shows to cancel and which to run more frequently. They’ll let you know which events are worth sponsoring and how much they want to interact with your web site. And so on.
As this Minneapolis/St. Paul station continues to develop, I’ll keep you posted. FM 107 will be one to “watch.”
