October 2008
Well-spoken broads
By Megan Malugani
The four Broad Talkers—Breanna Bly, Joy Midtovne, Undrea Draney-Woolley, and Karen Kennedy—gab about their kids (teenagers are “a plague on their parents’ lives,” according to one Broad Talker), their husbands (one of whom is referred to as “Big Shooter”), their weaknesses (gooey desserts, for starters), and, oh yeah, the keys to happiness (still up for debate).
It’s the stuff women everywhere love to dish about (and men, too, it would seem, as the Broad Talk ladies get more calls during their show from male listeners than females). The only thing that sets the Broad Talkers apart from any group of close-knit gal pals is that the ladies do their chatting live on-air with KROC’s Tracy McCray (on 1340 AM) from 10 to 11 a.m. the first and third Thursdays of every month. That means they wear headsets, raise their hands when they want to talk so they don’t interrupt one another, avoid inarticulate “ums,” and are heard by thousands of listeners.
“Sometimes things come out you wish you could take back,” says Karen, who once called Breanna a “big, dumb, fake blonde” on air after Breanna let slip that Karen’s husband weighed less than Karen after his gastric bypass surgery. “I had to come back and apologize and say it was me who weighed more than my husband,” Breanna says.
The ladies have different philosophies about dishing their family dirt in public. Undrea has “learned to be careful not to say certain things my kids will hold against me,” while Joy takes a different tack: “Stories are going to be told and lives may be ruined, but I could get rich out of this.”
Some members of the Broad Talk quartet have been friends for more than 20 years; others have known each other for only eight years. “We’re as different as can be,” notes Undrea. There’s the Nice Broad (Karen, who is also the comic relief), the Statistics Broad (Undrea), the Tough as Nails Broad (Joy), and the Say it Like it is Broad (Breanna). The “wizard behind the purple curtain,” the ladies say, is Tracy.
The four friends decided to take their shtick to radio about two and a half years ago, after Breanna watched “Live with Regis and Kelly” one morning. Regis was fantasizing about becoming a convenience store owner, and Kelly said “Are you serious? We get paid a heckuva lot of money to just talk!” A bell rang for Breanna, who says she was “sick of hearing from ‘child experts’ with PhDs but no children.” “I thought, ‘we can do that. We just have to figure out how to be heard,’” she says.
Breanna, chair of Rochester School Board, knew McCray from interviews about school issues, so she called KROC. The next thing the ladies knew, they were sitting around a microphone making a demo tape, in which they discussed current events and tabloid news, as well as parenting and family issues (kind of like “The View,” Breanna says). More than two years later, the goal of the ladies is to support and inspire each other and their listeners, whether they’re discussing infertility, multi-ethnic family issues, sickness, loss, or community happenings. “We want people to know they’re not alone, that they’re normal. People come up to us when they find out we’re Broad Talk ladies and say ‘I’ve been through that,’” Karen says.
Although Broad Talk has a few detractors (“Whenever they get a criticism they always say ‘I wish we could take her out to lunch,’” Tracy says), the program has generally been a huge hit with advertisers and listeners. “Advertisers love them,” Tracy says. “They want to have their ads aired specifically during Broad Talk.” Listeners—especially of the male persuasion—call the show to respond to the ladies’ theories about guys, to comment on Karen’s casseroles, and to ask advice on everything from getting a spot out to talking to their wives.
The popularity of the show has exceeded the Broad Talkers’ expectations, they say, and the experience has been more rewarding than they could have imagined. “The real purpose of this was that we had such a wonderful thing with our friends, just sitting around and talking, that we wanted to allow listeners to have a cup of coffee with us,” Breanna says. “It’s been a great adventure.”