Gloria Allred: Ambulance Chaser of 'Feminism'

[calimary]

18. By the early 80s things had straightened out a little bit.

Women went from - "ooooh, hey, there's a lady deejay on there" to pretty much nothing in terms of adverse reaction. At first we were novelties. Our very presence got notice, press reports and features and stuff in the local newspapers and city-centered magazines. I remember when I was interning at this one station - the format of which was described back then as a "full-service" station. They had programming, they had original local and award-winning news on the hour every hour, and someone was always on staff there, they had heavy emphasis on traffic reports (which L.A. needs in the same way we need breathable air), a night-side reporter, a City Hall reporter, a reporter responsible for news in the next county over, the works! It was personality radio and people like Gary Owens and Wink Martindale and Geoff Edwards were on. And then there was Kathy Gori, the first female jock on a major station like this one. Women jocks on music radio were RARE. And she was viewed as a real ground-breaker. As she WAS! Witty, informed, involved, engaging personality, and she was the only woman on the air - in overnights. The newsroom was full of men, too. Only one woman there - the newswriter weekdays in morning drive and midday. For one summer I interned there, so I guess I served as another woman in there - for a couple of months anyway. TERRIFYING! And THRILLING!! And WONDERFUL!!! It was summer in the early '70s and I was still in school. But boy did I learn stuff!

Now that I think back on it, I think it was an evolution from the late 60's, when FM radio started awakening and people discovered how much better music sounded on FM - and the inevitable FM stereo - than it did on AM. And you didn't lose the signal under bridges or in tunnels like you did with AM. All those stations opening up, a whole second radio dial of stations, so jobs everywhere doubled. There were ownership restrictions in place back then, so the most properties any one company could own in the same market could only add up to three, which sucked for the corporations if they owned one of the local TV stations. TV stations counted as one of the three. So more likely it'd be a TV station, an AM and an FM your company would own. I'm just guessing here, but it happened just as a few of us of the female persuasion were coming out of college, or college radio, ready to work and seriously experienced in all facets of operation. 'Cause FM started happening in the late 60's and women on the air were quite the uniquity! But it also meant there were more stations needing more personnel, especially your type.

So by the time I was ready to go out there and try my luck, I'd graduated college and I got in straight away. BUT I was well-aware that it was a moment just after the FCC recommended that stations expand their hiring of women and minorities. The first three on-air jobs I had, I landed because they needed a female in there. Either they had the guy in morning drive and needed somebody for afternoons, or a guy in the mornings and another guy in the afternoons, but needed somebody for weekends and fill-ins. So the first several years of my career were in jobs like that, as stations slowly opened up hiring to include more women. And it wasn't out of the question that a larger news department might actually have more than one woman on staff. There was this little group of us women that started proliferating. I felt as though women like Kathy Gori, Raechel Donohue, Allison Steele back east, and a very few more, were like our older sisters. Then we trickled in at my level, and by then it was no longer viewed as so unusual that women would hold any job in the station. So more women who were younger and just listeners then were becoming inspired to go into broadcasting when their turn came.

Eventually women did everything. And it was no big deal anymore. It was no longer - "oh yeah, she's the token." One of the best - no, make that THE best - audio engineers I ever worked with was a woman. DAMN she had laser-precision reaction time! And she was so focused. She held her own performance at the mixing board to a very high standard. When I was on air with her on knobs, it was almost as though we communicated by instinct. And besides that she was smart and had a fun personality and everybody liked her just anyway. And there were women in the sales manager positions, eventually even some women general managers. I worked for a female vice president of a radio news division once. She was a cool gal.

Interesting transitionary period to have lived and worked through. We all have our stories. I once went to lunch with a young peer from a cross-town station, and as we traded stories she said "wow, I've never suffered." And I thought to myself - "suffered? Hmm... I never thought of it that way. But now that I do, she makes a good point. It certainly hasn't been easy."