Digital Culture Studies

“Morning commute” radio in Chicago is a piss-poor assortment that sounds something like this: all-male crew spewing misogyny, all-male crew spewing misogyny, and Eric and Kathy, a male-female crew, spewing (slightly less) misogyny than the rest of their cohort. Never heard them? Let me summarize. Every day, their conversation goes like this: Eric says something awful about women, or makes fun of gay people,  or comments on Kathy’s breasts, or calls their traffic reporter a spinster, or talks about how he is a caveman who doesn’t understand his wife’s need to use hair conditioner (essentially, he is completely ripping off Tim Allen’s entire ’80s stand-up routine), and then Kathy squeals. That’s it. Their whole schtick.

I don’t know why I listen, except I keep hoping that one day, Eric will grunt out one of his misogynist conversation openers, and then the air will go dead for a moment, and then Kathy will say, very quietly, “Eric, stop being such an asshole.” It never happens, and reading this interview gives a pretty good indicator why.

Here is Kathy’s job, in a nutshell: used to have her own show, WTMX decides she needs a man on her show, brings one in, she does not get any choice in the matter, is not on the hiring committee, and met Eric once in passing in hallway before he was hired. He was immediately given top billing on her show (it’s Eric & Kathy, not Kathy & Eric), and in their two room office suite, his is the inner sanctum, while she is assigned a desk in the outer office, typically where support staff sit. Eric decides on a more audience-centred format, which he defines as asking the audience to call in on questions such as, “Guys, have you ever driven a ’sissy car’?” Wrap your heads around that one while I look for more quotes.

He outearns her immediately, and pulls in a salary of over a million dollars a year. Not surprising, since he has top billing, but think about it. A million dollars a year for offering his opinion on what makes a girl a skank, or complaining about how hard it is to be a man. Kathy  says very little on air, punctuating Eric’s rants with one word answers. In her own words, this is because , “… she doesn’t always know where Ferguson wants to take a segment and doesn’t want to get in the way.” On her own show, she doesn’t want to get in the way.

“It’s challenging,” she says. “I struggle with at times sharing too much of my information or my personal opinion because Eric wants the listener to do that. He obviously knows where he’s going. He knows what he’s saying and has everything prepared ahead of time. I’ve got to think on the fly and figure out what he’s doing.” Well, God forbid she get to voice her own opinion on her own show. After all, Eric doesn’t want her to have one.That’s what he makes the big bucks for, after all – to be the one that runs the show. Her show.

This is what she has to say about the money:

“When that first contract came up that there was a huge disparity, I came to terms with it. … We kind of made an agreement that, ‘OK, I’m going to spend less time here. You’re going to have to deal with all the client meetings, all the extra hours stuff, and I’m going have the freedom to be home with my family.’

“He does a tremendous amount more than I do for this show. So — God, my agent will kill me if I say this —– but it would be unfair for us to make the same amount of money and I know that. How can I be upset about that? He does more work and I have the luxury to be able to go home and be a mom.”

I am not knocking moms here, or her decision, but it is troubling that the whole ‘I have the luxury to go home and be a mom’ part didn’t happen until AFTER he was paid a LOT more money than she was. So it wasn’t part of her deal, to say she would take less money and step away from the decision-making to be home more. Instead, it was the panacea she offered herself to get over the hurt of being paid substantially less money. The client meetings, the stuff she is missing? That’s where decisions get made, so basically, not only did she get screwed out of the money, but gave up even more power to make herself feel better about the money.

Lets end on a lighter note, shall we? WTMX is apparently owned by the Church of Latter Day Saints. Suddenly it all makes sense.