MIWs Release PD Gender Study Results

The Most Influential Women in Radio group released its Program Director Gender Analysis Summary for 2003. It shows that opportunities for women to program radio stations of any format are hard to find, according to the MIW Composition Analysis Study based on updated information provided to them by MStreet Publications.
“While industry estimates say that approximately 53 percent of all radio station formats are skewed to female listeners, the analysis shows that in 2003, women were programming only 10.5 percent of all 10,634 stations listed in the MStreet database,” commented Joan Gerberding, former president of Nassau Media Partners and spokesperson for the MIW group. “I suppose this could be considered good news though, since the percentage is up a half of one point since 2002.”
Among the 112 groups that own 12 or more stations, the ratio is even lower: women program just 9.1 percent of these 4602 stations. There were 291 female PDs working for groups with 12 or more stations – 9.6 percent of 3030 PDs, compared to 270, or 9.7 percent of 2776 in 2002.
77 women – a quarter of all women PDs in these groups – work for Clear Channel. This is the same number of women PDs for Clear Channel as in 2002, but it represents a higher percentage (9.6 percent, compared to 9.0 percent in 2002) because the total number of PDs at Clear Channel has shrunk by 21 over the last year. At 9.6 percent Clear Channel’s percentage of women is equal to the overall average for groups with 12 or more stations.
Of the next four largest groups (100 or more stations), only Entercom exceeds the average, with 11.1 percent women PDs; Infinity (9.3 percent) and Cumulus (9.5 percent) are close to the average, while Citadel lists only 7.1 percent.
The average for the ten groups with 50-99 stations is only 7.2 percent women PDs, well below the total average. Four groups – ABC, Saga, Univision, and Entravision – exceed the average with between 10 percent and 12.5 percent, but four other groups – Salem, Cox, Regent and Waitt – had 4.1 percent or fewer women PDs. The 13 groups with 30-49 stations averaged 8.9 percent women PDs, the same as last year.
“We have found that smaller groups may represent better opportunity for women programmers,” continued Gerberding. “The 28 groups with 20-29 stations averaged 12.3 percent women PDs, while the 56 groups with 12-19 stations averaged 10.7 percent, both higher than the average.
Thirty-three groups with 12 or more stations (totaling 577 stations) have no female PDs.
The complete MIW Gender Analysis summaries for GMs, GSMs and PDs are posted at www.RadioMIW.com.