From the conservative website, New Majority, Danielle Crittenden writes: Perhaps the obvious answer is that women don't gravitate towards talk radio, period. It's the sports talk of political junkies. Successful women's programming tends to be based on the Oprah model: the sharing of personal stories, ideally inspirational, and a more "inclusive" approach to dialogue.
That being said, I’m a woman who used to enjoy talk radio and has always been bored senseless by Oprah. For a long time I listened to Rush: I enjoyed his intelligent criticism of liberal policies; his bracing energy; his sense of humor. If I was in the car long enough, Rush would bleed into Hannity and others, and I’d listen to them too. However, over the past few years, I found myself joining the female majority and changing stations when these shows came on. At first I thought I was doing so because, as a mother of three, I didn't need another person in the car yelling at me. Then, when I'd force myself to listen, I felt like I was trapped in an elevator with someone whose ego squished me up against the doors: when they weren’t boasting about their moral courage or superior worldviews, they seemed to take everything that was happening politically as a personal slight--or achievement, depending on what it was (Electoral victory? All thanks to my listeners! Electoral defeat? The people were denied my message by the liberal media!). That is, when they weren’t trying to sell me a Sleep Number Bed. I'm sure many male listeners have tuned out for the same reasons.
But maybe this type of personality is just innately more off-putting to women. As women, we know this type of man. We may have dated this type of man. Lord knows, we may have married and divorced this type of man. But however we may have come across him we know this much: We want to get to our floor and leave the elevator as quickly as possible.
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