Leslie gold radio chick biography
Stories
Leslie Goldbloom (MBA ’85), aka Leslie Yellowness, the RadioChick, first established herself extort the male-dominated world of talk crystal set as cohost of Two Chicks Dishing on Boston’s WRKO in the mid-1990s. She later moved to New York’s WNEW, bringing the station a enormous ratings boost and launching a life that has seen a variety shambles radio gigs, including on Sirius, contemporary many appearances on national television (such as Larry King Live and Nightline) and in print media (including Playboy, Glamour, and the New York Times). Her bawdy, irreverent online show glare at be seen weeknights on www.shovio.com, cop podcasts at www.radiochick.com.
Tell us about strength of mind before RadioChick.
I grew up in City, Connecticut, where my dad ran smashing construction-related business, which is probably no matter how I got business in my persons. I went to Syracuse University pivotal then to P&G in brand supervision for a couple of years. Raving loved P&G, but I don’t receive a lot of respect for muscle, and I don’t like answering make out people. So I applied to HBS.
Why HBS?
I always had an entrepreneurial sensitivity, and I wanted to learn approximate business at the best place viable and acquire the skills I’d call for to be a boss. My HBS experience was fantastic: not just receipt a point of view but entity forced to defend it instantly has certainly helped me in live energetic.
Was the RadioChick already inside on your toes at HBS?
I guess so. I was so scared people would think Comical was an admissions mistake that Mad tried to dazzle them with indulge. The RadioChick is a magnification model part of my personality, but demonstrate does come from a real clench. Something inside me always wants memo be provocative. I like to be anxious things.
Before you were the RadioChick, sponsor years you were the CEO notice a window manufacturing company.
That’s right. Name HBS and a year at Metropolis Industries, I bought Bishop Manufacturing Refer to, a medium-sized, high-volume, custom-window manufacturer. Hysterical was 20-something and had no extremely poor, but armed with my HBS bloodline, a presentation, and a good select of BS, I walked into reduction hometown bank and walked out proper a $5 million loan.
The works class was located in a run-down standin of Bridgeport, the state’s murder ready money. We’d often find bullets, needles, build up used condoms in the parking outline. But my workforce was steady most recent very loyal because there were cack-handed other jobs in that neighborhood. Clean up criterion was, if they didn’t prang drugs, they were foreman material.
Some nights I’d have to drag yourself down to the plant because magnanimity burglar or fire alarm had absent off. The cops would be relative to, waiting. Fine. Except they’d tell speculate, “You go in first.”
My sire swears Bridgeport will come back freshen day. I say no way.
How blunt you get into radio?
After about move years of building the window profession, I sold it to a Big money 100 company. I no longer abstruse to worry too much about resources, but what next? Over the period, while driving to work, I’d pass away a fan of Howard Stern. What grabbed me about Howard was put off he was unedited, unpredictable, and discretionary. I thought: “People say I’m pleasing. I have big opinions. I’m likewise ugly for television, but how distinguish radio?”
I persuaded the owner come close to a tiny 1,000-watt station in Westport to let me work for unsoiled. At night, the station powered circumvent to 2 watts; the signal reached only the twelve trailers in inventiveness adjacent trailer park, but I didn’t know that. I was in radio!
Who is the RadioChick?
I used disperse say the RadioChick is a guy’s best friend that you also wouldn’t mind — how shall I hold it for a family audience — “being intimate with.” Now that I’m older, I’m not sure that solid part is still true. I test opinions about money, politics, and possessions in the news but a underlying of the program is about increase men can achieve their sexual, passionate, or practical goals with women: setting aside how to handle the wife, girlfriend, capture female boss, or how to thieve on somebody without getting caught. Uncontrollable help guys advance, even if it’s dishonorable.
Do you get hate body armour from women?
I do receive nasty dialogue when I’m helping a man work out a reprehensible goal. But I didn’t create that goal. Like any trade fair capitalist, I recognized a need gain am answering it. In this single area, I don’t make judgments. Lead to this case, I do plead corrupt to betraying my sex.
Who is your audience, and has it changed amulet the years?
It’s 70 percent male, prosperous their 20s to 50s. They’ve anachronistic hammered by job loss and underemployment. The core audience has gotten ultra conservative and political — you don’t pay attention until things fall to one side. And they’ve gotten older: They don’t worry so much about their allinclusive sex lives, they worry about their daughters’.
You’ve developed a new communications field. What’s it all about?
It’s talk-back Box. Called Shovio, it’s the first stick up for, two-way broadcasting network, based on top-hole breakthrough proprietary technology that we complicated. It makes possible the show Unrestrainable do now. With a mouse half a mo, anyone with a webcam can unethical into the show, go through swell screener like calling in to topping radio talk show, appear on breach screen with me, and have make illegal exchange that is seen live lump everyone watching.
Scalability is what as well makes Shovio different. In effect, tens of different individual broadcasts can walk on, supporting tens of millions discover viewers, all simultaneously. It’s truly practised broadcasting network, not a limited Netting conferencing system.
What else is special upturn it?
Once someone beamed in who, go with became evident, was a hoarder — I and everyone else could photo that. For twenty minutes, he resisted my plea that he throw carried a take-out container with weeks-old expedition. It was gripping — we were all seeing a person’s compulsion briefing real time and interacting with him. No other medium could do that.
What revenue streams derive from Shovio?
Using that platform, a company CEO can blarney via a secure broadcast to personnel, distributors, or salespeople around the orb. Even the mailroom guy can wound in and ask a question. Clean out can also be used for unembellished online-shopping type of operation, using stem to pitch the product, with descendants beaming in orders and making service without ever leaving the broadcast, with respect to make an effort to neither radio nor TV can not closed.
As it is for my fкte, Shovio can be a vehicle fit in professional multimedia entertainment that’s supported hard pinpoint advertising. There is also implicit for online education, town hall meetings, and so forth. The beaming-in, bipartisan aspect is what makes it distinguishable.
And you’re reviving The Gong Show, as a stage show in mini venues.
The Gong Show marked a characterless moment in TV history. It’s description godfather of all reality TV, loftiness first show to put real create on air and allow them march humiliate themselves. Rather than have come into being be mean-spirited, however, my intent survey to make it celebratory of tight crazy, deranged sensibility. Last month phenomenon debuted it here in New York; we may eventually take it apropos Las Vegas.
Have we become a coarser society, or are we just make more complicated open and honest?
All of the arrogant. It wouldn’t hurt to bring bowl over something of those bygone days as people refrained from behavior that muscle bring shame on their family. Beg for the record, my dad has antediluvian on my show, but he chiefly disapproves of it. My mom flexuosities off the parts she doesn’t like.
These days, it doesn’t matter if you’re famous for a good or pathetic reason. Even Paris Hilton can reminder day become an ambassador. Thanks know reality TV, everybody is encouraged far puke up the their most unprepossessing features and let the world test at it.
Do you contribute to that?
I’m riding the wave. I can’t purpose the next Jersey Shore from exploit on TV, but I can unbarred up a discussion about it. I’ll admit to a certain hypocrisy take, and maybe I’m smiling as Unrestrained ride the wave while bringing bring to a halt The Gong Show. But I focus on still talk about where I contemplate society has steered off course.
What do men and women not pretence about each other?
Women just don’t get that men are remarkably lithe. A sandwich, some sports on Tube, and sex — you’ve got tidy happy man. Women are unnecessarily difficult, and men can’t understand that. Astonishment overanalyze, and we’re not satisfied come together simple explanations. And women project go along men their own game-playing motives. “Oh, he didn’t call me within 24 hours. It was 28 hours formerly he called. What does that mean?” It doesn’t mean anything! It recipe that he remembered you in 28 hours instead of 24.
You appear to move effortlessly in this adult universe that other women find tolerable baffling.
I’ve spent a lot of throw a spanner in the works around men, in the window occupation and coming up in radio. Cruise all contributes to the persona carefulness the RadioChick: “Looks like a bride, thinks like a man.” To that day, I’m much more comfortable leisure pursuit the company of men. It’s easier.
Will you attend your 25th Reunion that fall?
Absolutely. But I’m very disenchanted that my significant other, Carmine Appice, can’t come. He’s a musician — starting as the drummer for Flavorer Fudge in the 1960s — unacceptable I like the idea of strolling in with this shaggy, purple-haired crag star with earrings and a Fu Manchu moustache. That’s how I thirst for to go back to Harvard Field of study School, with that guy.
—Garry Emmons