FEATURE:
Turning the Dial
IN THIS PHOTO: Claudia Winkleman/PHOTO CREDIT: Matt Monfredi
The Radio Queens I Admire
_________
THERE is a feature from last year…
IMAGE CREDIT: Freepik
that I want to reference in a bit. I think I wrote about this a couple of years ago or so, but I wanted to salute some of the amazing women making British radio what it is. Even though there is gender disparity when it comes to women being included on radio playlists, there are more female broadcasters being heard than in recent years. Once was the day when stations were dominated by men. That is still the case across some stations, yet I think that the dial has changed a fair bit – thought there is still some way to go. I will quote from the aforementioned 2022 feature in a second, before naming and saluting the amazing female broadcasters across the stations I listen to and love. Of course, women on all stations deserve respect and support. The reason for returning to this subject now is because I feel that the most engaging and best shows on the radio are helmed by women. From Lauren Laverne’s BBC Radio 6 Music breakfast show commanding 1.4 million listeners to BBC Radio 2’s Zoe Ball reigning as one of the legends and queens of the broadcasting world. there is a young generation emerging looking up to these airwave icons. I will go station to station across the BBC (BBC Radio 1 (and its sister stations), BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 6 Music, in addition to a selection of others. One thing that struck me about the You Magazine celebration from 2022 is that there is so much diversity on the airwaves. In terms of age, background and race, there is this representation that has not always been there. When I was growing up, there were very few women on the mainstream radio stations - let alone diversity in other areas. I have not got time to do a biography and big spiel on every amazing woman on all stations, but I will nod to them all and highlight their show page(s).
IN THIS PHOTO: Lauren Laverne/PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Eades
First, I want to come to that feature. Six amazing women across different stations came together to discuss their careers and celebrate the rise of women in radio. Those women were/are Lauren Laverne, Zoe Ball, Clara Amfo, Claudia Winkleman, Moira Stuart and Myleene Klass. I will highlight Moira Stewart, Lauren Laverne and Claudia Winkleman separately, but I want to source interview extracts from Zoe Ball, Mylene Klass and Clara Amfo:
“Not so long ago the biggest shows across the stations were almost all presented by men, but look across the schedules today and so many of the most popular DJs and presenters are women – and collectively, our hosts reach more than 20 million listeners.
Clara, 37, who presents on Radio 1, welcomes these changes and says they
are long overdue. ‘When I was first on commercial radio in 2012 I told my then boss that I would really love to host a certain show. It just so happened that the show before it was also presented by a woman, and the reason my boss gave for turning me down was that: “Listeners don’t like to hear two women back to back”. It was ridiculous!’
Clara, whose parents emigrated from Ghana, grew up in London and got her first taste of radio on a school trip to the Design Museum where Capital had set up a studio for kids to record a few links. ‘I had a go and thought, “I need to do this.”’
IN THIS PHOTO: Clara Amfo/PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Eades
She got her start as an intern on Kiss FM and found an early supporter and mentor in one of the women here today. ‘The first time I met Claudia was at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards,’ says Clara, embracing her friend. ‘I didn’t know anyone but I’ve always been a massive fan so I went up to her quite shyly and introduced myself. She was so nice and lovely that day, and has been my energy queen and life coach ever since.’
Claudia is as gloriously offbeat as ever at 50, making gentle fun not just of this love-in but of the age difference between its participants. ‘I’ve actually just breastfed Clara – I don’t know if that’s too much information for you. I’m just flagging it up.’
Nobody knows this more than Myleene Klass, 43, who suffered a devastating miscarriage while broadcasting at the Smooth Radio studios in Leicester Square a few years ago and says it was her close friend Lauren Laverne who came to the rescue. ‘I went to the loo while the music was playing and there was blood everywhere. I didn’t know what to do. I had one hour left of my show. I rang Lauren and she said: “Do one link, take a breath, come out and call me.”’
It must have been so traumatic. ‘Lauren got me through. I did the next link and called her. We counted the links. I would go out, sob and come back in, take a deep breath and speak. I don’t know what I would have done [without her].’
IN THIS PHOTO: Myleene Klass/PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Eades
Looking around at our shoot, Myleene is struck by the diversity in the room – one that is reflected on the airwaves. ‘You’ve got black girls here, white girls, I’m representing Southeast Asian girls. There’s such a mix. We’ve each had to elbow our way through and speak up, use our voices, literally, to get a place at this table. And here we are, representing so many. It’s extremely powerful,’ she says enthusiastically. ‘If I had to go back and explain this to my 15-year-old self, I don’t think she would ever believe it.’
Myleene has shows on both Smooth and Classic FM at the weekends, switching over from pop to classical music, but then that has always been her life. As a teenager in Norfolk she was classically trained before taking part in the reality series Popstars and being chosen for the band Hear’Say. That was when she met a zippy TV host called Zoe Ball.
‘My first lovely radio memories are of my dad,’ says Zoe, 51, whose father is former children’s TV presenter and national treasure Johnny Ball. ‘On a Saturday, he would listen to the football in the garage while doing DIY. Sundays, it would be all the big-band and jazz shows on Radio 2. And then there was Terry Wogan, who was hilarious and warm, like an uncle you’d never met.’
She has grown into one of the BBC’s most trusted and best-paid presenters, benefitting from the drive towards equality with a substantial pay rise when she took over the top-rated Radio 2 breakfast show from Chris Evans in 2019. ‘I think things are getting better for women. I don’t think we’re quite there yet. But I look at my daughter [Nelly, who at the age of 12 has been appearing as a DJ at festivals alongside her father Fatboy Slim] and I think: “OK – yeah, things are improving.”’
I ask her why she thinks women are flourishing on radio right now and she says, ‘There’s a softness to women. I think there’s that mothering, nurturing element. We’re good at listening.’
IN THIS PHOTO: Mary Anne Hobbs/PHOTO CREDIT: Marcus Hessenberg
There are not many regular features celebrating women in radio. Normally, when they are published, it is tied to a news stories or statistics showing a rise in listener figures relating to shows hosted by women. I mean there usually is a catalyst or occasion that leads to these features. Instead, why wait for this?! Since 2022, there has been a rise in the power and influence of women in radio. Broadcasters like Zoe Ball, Lauren Laverne and their sisters that featured in that You Magazine interview special have helped shift a narrative that for decades has been all about men. Rather than this being a subject about division, it is about inclusiveness and recognition. I adore men in radio and all the wonderful broadcasters we have – from Tony Blackburn and Shaun Keaveny through to Greg James and Ore Olukoga, there is a wealth of phenomenal talent through mainstream and independent radio. I want to make special mention of radio pioneer, Annie Nightingale. The first woman on BBC Radio 1, she is still at the station today. Someone who has opened doors and paved the way for so many other women. The new wave of exceptional and diverse talent that is on British radio is inspiring. Below is part of a BBC article relating to Annie Nightingale being interviewed by Professor David Hendy in 2018 for the Connected Histories of the BBC project:
“We tend to take particular notice of the women who come first. When Radio 1 decided that they needed a 'token woman', Nightingale was there, ready and eminently qualified. Her standing as the only female DJ continued for 12 years until Janice Long joined Radio 1 in 1982.
It was not until the 1990s and the 'girlification' of Radio 1 with the likes of Sara Cox, Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball, that Nightingale's exceptionality became her longevity and impact rather than her gender alone.
IN THIS PHOTO: The wonderful Annie Nightingale in 1970/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC
The radio itself is a reference point in her interviews and memories, beginning with the small white Bakelite wireless bought by her father, through which she listened to BBC children's serials, and later, Radio Luxembourg. Her intimate relationship with radio and with the audience was formed at this time:
"The breakaway moment came when my Dad who was always obsessed with tuning the radio in properly and you'd have it on a dial and it would say all these places like Prague and Hilversum which were kind of magic. They might have been on another planet. I didn't know where Hilversum was, or Prague, but these are places you could tune your radio in and it was like a mystery. I still feel that romance. I still feel when you're broadcasting, you don’t know where it’s going, and it could be reaching outer space somewhere and I am still in love with that, completely." - Annie Nightingale, interviewed by Professor David Hendy, London, 9 February 2018.
That small radio, says Nightingale, gave her the power to listen to her own music, independent of her parents. This seems to sum up that post war generation, the beneficiaries of their parent's generation, who were able to use those benefits to develop their own lives and styles. It also directly relates to the inclusive intimacy of her presentation style.
Listening to that radio, she felt that the pirate DJs she heard were talking just to her: "Once I had my own little radio, then I was in my own world, and it was just me and the radio. So anyone who was speaking out the radio was talking to me," she told Russell Davies in a BBC Radio 2 interview.
The experiences that Nightingale reiterates in her interviews and writing are the stories that matter. She has often talked about how she shifted from managing a band to presenting a pop music programme on television, about how she was initially locked out of the BBC, confronted by sexism in ways that she had not experienced as a print journalist.
She describes the independence of being an evening DJ compared with a daytime presenter tied to the playlist, and mastering the technical aspects of broadcasting. Each of these stories maps change, reminds us of who helped (and who didn’t) and demands that we remember the work of all the women who came first.
There is a long history to forgetting that women have ever stood on a stage, or driven a mixing desk before. When Nightingale talks about women, the radio and the popular music, she does so in ways that acknowledge the women who were in the industry, and the barriers that they faced.
In the interview Nightingale recalls her first attempt to get an on-air position soon after Radio 1 was launched. Despite her wealth of experience as a music journalist and TV presenter, she was rejected because of the assumption that DJs were "husband substitutes" speaking to housewives. This story is a useful insight into gendered assumptions behind who speaks, and who listens and for what purpose.
In 1977 journalist Mileva Ross found that although the majority of radio listeners in the UK were women, it was generally believed that women preferred men on the air, and that at Radio 1 and 2, "the old sexist way of keeping women as the silent sex, to be talked to but not heard, has gone virtually unchallenged".
Whereas Nightingale knew that women listeners wanted to hear women, and - as her own career showed - not all women stayed at home. She reminds us that it is not that women didn't ask to be allowed behind the mixing desk or mic - they were actively "locked out".
Nightingale's experience of being asked by Vicki Wickam, producer of ITV pop music programme Ready Steady Go! to present a new sister programme called That's for Me has important resonances. She recalls being an accidental careerist, and offers examples of women offering chances to other women, when the doors were shut elsewhere”.
The incredible women are not only compelling and giving opportunity and influence to young female broadcasters and those hoping to get into the industry. They are inspiring hopeful broadcasters of all genders. One big reason why I wanted to spotlight some incredible women – though I realise I sadly will omit some – is because the pandemic meant that radio was an essential outlet and friend.
IN THIS PHOTO: Sian Eleri
Across BBC Radio, there are so many amazing women whose shows are essential listening. On BBC Radio 1, there is - among others but not all - Radio 1's Future Soul with Victoria Jane, Radio 1's Power Down Playlist with Sian Eleri, Radio 1 Anthems with Nat O’Leary, BBC Introducing on Radio 1 with Gemma Bradley, and Radio 1's Future Artists with Arielle Free. BBC Radio 1 Dance has the iconic Annie Nightingale. A shout-out to Radio 1X’s and 1Xtra Breakfast with Nadia Jae. Fee Mak provides good vibes and incredible tunes. Among the wonderful and must-hear shows on BBC Radio helmed by women is The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show, Sara Cox, Radio 2 Unwinds with Angela Griffin, and Claudia Winkleman. BBC Radio 3’s This Classical Life is hosted by Jess Gillam. Naga Munchetty brings news and big name interviews from the U.K. on her Radio 5 show. I want to nod to Moira Stewart Meets… on Classic FM. Her Sunday night show features interviews from the worlds of culture, politics, sport and entertainment. Ending with BBC Radio 6 Music and there is Emily Pilbeam, who has been sitting in for Chris Hawkins recently, but she deserves her own slot on the station. She hosts BBC Music Introducing in West Yorkshire. I will talk more about Lauren Laverne and her hugely popular breakfast show (she is also the host of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs). Mary Anne Hobbs is a broadcast icon, as is Jamz Supernova. Sophie K, Sarah Champion, and Leona Graham are among the amazing women on Absolute Radio. Simone Marie, Gracie Convert, Georgie Rodgers and Anna Prior are among the queens of Soho Radio (alongside the wonderful Iraina Mancini. Rio Fredrika, Lauren Layfield and Kemi Rodgers are incredible Capital broadcasters. Myleene Klass on Smooth Radio is a Saturday afternoon essential stop! She is a wonderful broadcaster, as is Emma Bunton on Heart. A final shout-out to Asian Network’s Noreen Khan and Nikita Kanda.
IN THIS PHOTO: Fee Mak/PHOTO CREDIT: BBC
That is merely a selection of wonderful female voices across the BBC and other radio stations/networks across the U.K. I am going to end with a bit about some of my radio heroines in a future feature, and how things are changing in radio. If recent nonsense articles like this from, The Guardian claims BBC Radio 6 Music has lost its way somehow, I would disagree vehemently! It is the passion and commitment from the broadcaster on the station that make it such a lifeline and haven. Incredible women on the station like Lauren Laverne and Deb Grant have been a source of strength, comfort and inspiration. Not to exclude men, but I think it is the women of radio that are changing the game and at the front of the most immersive, powerful, inclusive and memorable shows. That may be bias or subjective - though I know I am not alone. At the very least, I wanted to follow up on that 2022 article I started with to show how much richness there is on British radio! There is not quite true equality across stations in terms of gender, yet the phenomenal shows and voices show women are defining and reshaping radio. I know that this will continue strong. Many radio stations do need to create a better gender balance when it comes to their roster. Some amazing radio queens and pioneers are gamechangers that are inspiring so many people – not only those wanting to get into radio, but their listeners too. I know there are incredible voices I am missing, so feel free to list those (not deliberately) omitted. Despite the fact there has been a big advance in the number of female solo voices on U.K. radio, there are still very few female duos; many radio stations have disproportionately more male broadcasters. The innovators and incredible women creating radio gold and blazing that trail. The industry still needs to do more to ensure there is greater gender balance across most major radio stations. I think that this will happen…
IN THIS PHOTO: Zoe Ball/PHOTO CREDIT: Matthew Eades
VERY soon.