Girl Talk Makes the Radio Star

Broadcasting from the Eastside, Brooke and Monti break two commandments of commercial radio today:

1. sack local talent for syndicated hosts and
2. let men do all the talking.

Photography by Caleb Plowman | style by Marie-Caroline Moir

The Ladies Room radio show was conceived in November 2007, when Brooke Fox and Monti Carlo began recording audition showas in a Queen Anne apartment. Within three months, it had been picked up by Movin 92.5 (KQMV), which has its offices near Factoria Mall but broadcasts across the region, from Everett to Redmond to Tacoma. It would be the region’s first commercial morning show featuring only female hosts. Despite skepticism that a women’s radio show could make it in the mainstream, they’ve been doing their thing, their way, for over a year now.

A combination of talk and pop music, it’s not the kind of show I am normally drawn to — when I first tuned in advertisers were predominantly engagement ring stores, dieting programs and plastic surgeons — not the most progressive women/media combination. But first thing in the morning, I’m not ready for news. I need Toni, Mariah and Janet to wake up, and 92.5 provides. And the more I listened to The Ladies Room, the more I came to value these two savvy, funny women bringing personality to a commercial radio station that, for all intents and purposes, should have no personality at all.

Brooke, 28, loves the outdoors and has little patience for codependent men. Monti, 33, a stand-up comic, will make you snort out your coffee as she describes the gastrointestinal downsides of her new pregnancy. They discuss a range of subjects that almost anyone could find themselves volleying around a dinner party with friends: cheating husbands, nineteen-year-old female soldiers in Iraq, Sarah Jessica Parker’s mole, banned pictures of breast-feeding photos on Facebook. Except, when The Ladies Room does it, it keeps thousands of people listening.

It’s easy to write their show off as gossip or light entertainment. But I think these women exemplify two refreshing characteristics media audiences are starved for these days: they are unafraid to speak their minds — and in love with laughing at themselves. — Bond Huberman

How is it possible that the region’s first all-women morning show started in 2008?

Brooke Fox: I’ve always worked for stations where the target demographic is women. Yet, it’s always these old guys — and me — discussing what women want. Traditionally, women in radio have always been the giggle box — the girl co-host. She’s supposed to laugh at whatever the man says.

Monti Carlo: My first radio gig in Atlanta was working for a man who would ask me to get him coffee on the air. One day I was eating a banana and he said, [in a seductive voice] “Don’t eat that banana in front of me like that.” Men in radio are in the dark ages. You can’t get offended over anything. That’s why I started submitting proposals to station managers that said, “Fire your morning show host and replace him with an all-women show that will win the ratings.”

How did you meet?

M: At the time, Brooke was living with some craigslist people in Seattle, who, I immediately informed her, were drug dealers.

B: No, this is when I was staying at the crazy bed and breakfast for twenty dollars a night. My neighbors there were a Spanish-speaking couple, a kid going to dental school and a woman who wrote science fiction novels and also is a psychic.

M: As soon as we got the show, I bought her mace. She promptly took it to the airport and got it taken away.

B: Anyway, we got shot down all over the place when we started pitching the show. So Monti let me sleep on her couch.

M: I live in a 480-square-foot — palatial — apartment, right next to all the crackheads on lower Queen Anne.

B: She was working afternoons and I was working late nights at another station in town. And in the three-hour time lapse we had when we were in the same place at the same time, we would record quick shows in Monti’s living room.

Do you still plan the show in your living room?

M: Now we have a post-it board in our office. All our success is going to flow down from there.

B: Some parts are more planned than others.

You seem to argue a lot on air. Is that part of the plan?

M: Arguing with each other is much better than arguing with ten thousand people that you can’t see. We want to serve the audience by presenting every point of view possible. So it’s not just us on the soapbox going: “Hey, we’re bright! Listen to us!”

B: We come from such different places in the world. I grew up in a town of eight hundred people in Idaho, my parents are still married and have never moved in my life.

M: Whereas I had the picture-perfect, dysfunctional family and went to twenty-two different schools before I graduated high school. You know, bad things happen. But I think it’s awesome to be able to talk about them on air. My boss hates it. He’s like, “Stop talking about your pills!” But I get e-mails from people all the time that are so thankful I brought these issues up.

What advice did your mother always give you?

B: My mother liked the golden rule.

M: Mine always told me I was going to get cancer.

B: People tell me I’m going to get cancer too, because I smoke. But I quit two months and fourteen days ago.

M: I got married in Vegas and chain smoked in a janitor’s closet before the ceremony.

B: Why were you in the janitor’s closet? You can smoke anywhere in Vegas.

M: Because they hid me there so my husband wouldn’t see me — we got married in an old motel that had been converted into a marriage facility. And then they discovered they couldn’t find my husband.

B: Which was just foreshadowing what was to come.

If you could be in any music video, what would it be?

M: Probably Kanye West’s “Never Let Me Down” with J. Ivy.

B: Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything for Love.” I would be the dead girl in the water.

M: I think you’ve been single long enough. I think you should date.

I would think having your own radio show would make dating easier.

B: You know, when people meet us, they always think we’re going to weigh three hundred pounds — like radio wasn’t a choice, but a fallback because I’m not pretty enough to be on TV.

M: I went to broadcasting school because I wanted to be on MTV. But TV blew! Blew! I mean, they give you the lines and you have to read without making your eyes move.

B: And you have to do your hair, shower and put makeup on . . .

M: I am a big believer that, the less you shower, the more chance the earth has to survive.

B: That is not why you don’t shower.

M: It is so true. You only need to shower once a week, tops. I wear lots of deodorant. And then I put on Egyptian Oil — it’s like a floral scented musk. Then I add lotion and I feel preserved like a mummy and ready to face my day.

B: Uh, aside from not having to bathe, I love radio because there’s no other medium out there that is so responsive. Our listeners can text, they can call, they can go to our Web site to leave comments. I think it’s such a cool way to give people a voice and a means to express themselves. We try to have as many people on the air as possible. It makes a big difference in people’s lives.

Brooke and Monti | photographed in a real ladies room at the Seven Seas Chinese restaurant in Lake City

What advice did your mother always give you?

Brooke: My mother liked the golden rule.

Monti: Mine always told me I was going to get cancer.

Why did you want a morning show?

B: You get talk time; it’s an actual show based on personality.

M: Otherwise you’re basically saying “Hey, this is Monti,” and “Movin 92.5,” between songs. I did that for a year and a half on Afternoon Drive and couldn’t do it anymore. I was literally going to quit when I met Brooke.

B: That’s just the way radio is going everywhere. Taking out talk time in any time slots outside of morning.

M: Clear Channel fired “Booker” — he had the number one show in Philly and they fired him for more music in the morning. You know, you have to develop talent because that’s what makes your station different, but at the same time, you also have to be careful — because people tune out fast. You think, “People will listen to me babble for thirty seconds.” No. It’s more like five. So now radio stations are all freaking out and telling their hosts: “Don’t say anything!”

B: We get yelled at a little for talking too much. Apparently any transition is bad, because every time you transition — even from song to song — people are gone.

M: Somehow we convinced our boss, Maynard, to hire us — and I don’t even know how. At first, he tried to convince me not to work with Brooke because our voices sound too much alike. And so many people working in radio believe that all-women radio shows don’t work. I got so sick of hearing: “Women are going to hate you.”

B: One of my favorites was hearing from the consultants and radio professionals we worked with while developing our show that we weren’t enough like “normal women” because we didn’t grocery shop.

M: That was directed at me because I’m the older one and I’m supposed to grocery shop and have babies — and talk about having babies.

So they’re convinced that a more progressive listener — like a KEXP listener — is not going to cross over to you?

M: The only people who listen to KEXP and us are friends of ours. Or we have had sex with them.

What do you think is going to help the show survive?

M: I think this generation coming up is done with the bu**sh** and doesn’t want to deal with a fake person talking to them — after they’ve had fake advertising in their face all morning long. Fake everything all over the place.

Do you envision the audience as mostly women?

B: I think we probably tend to speak more to women, but in my personal life I have just as many guy friends as I do girlfriends. Granted, I may have dated most of them . . .

M: I don’t have any friends. I have a dog and a husband. The visual that I have when we do the show is being at a small house party with close friends around two in the morning, when everyone’s in the kitchen and they’re all a little bit buzzed and they’re all talking craziness, but they’re relaxed.

I’ve seen your show compared to The View. How do you feel about that?

B: I like the idea of The View. I just hate how they talk over each other. They’re always mad at each other.

M: Drama for ratings’ sake.

B: Right. And I think they really play into the stereotype that women can’t get along. I don’t dig it.

M: I like that they talked about a lot of political issues when it was election time. But I think it’s really hard to relate to them. They have this weird thing where they hock bed linens. I don’t want to watch Whoopi Goldberg talk for ten minutes about her linens.

B: I have mixed feelings about their political coverage. I know that they said a lot of things that were just false.

M: Well, if you’re going to get your political savvy from The View, you deserve to not know what’s going on.

Speaking of news, what do you think about the recession we’re heading into?

M: I’ve been prepared for this moment for many years now. I have survival supplies in my car — including dried food that looks like a brick. I also have two copies of an emergency survival handbook — the military issue — one in the car and one in the closet at home, along with a tent that I don’t know how to make happen.

B: You know, even with all of those supplies, Monti would be one of the last people I would go to for help in an emergency.

M: I consider myself a safety-freakin’-hero.

Special thanks to Michael Roth of Shawn Statton Salon at 2201 4th Avenue, Suite 101, Seven Seas Chinese Restaurant at 8914 Lake City Way NE and Sugartown Vintage at 2421 NW Market St.