by Mary Lash
"PMS
is real. We're trying to live a 48-hour existence in a 24-hour day.
Nobody is doing this working mom thing perfectly," says Debbie Nigro
'79 in a gravelly, animated voice that suggests why she has dubbed herself
the "living cartoon" of the '90s woman.
Such observations are part of the reason some half million people tune in to her talk show, The Working Mom on the Run (A.K.A. "What the Heck Happened to My Life?"). To provide fun as well as substance, Nigro performs a medley at double-time -- of "news you may have missed while you were doing eight million other things," infobytes, and humor -- all of which, along with the requisite commercials, punctuate a call-in discussion on a controversial topic. The effect is simultaneously energizing and calming, like a visit with your loving but outrageous sister. Into the bargain, for the two or three hours that they share with Nigro on Saturday morning, listeners can also do the dishes, sift through the pile of junk mail, turn around at least three loads of laundry, and change the baby as many times as it takes. "Radio at the speed of life," says Nigro, who breezily likens her program to "Cliff Notes to life for crazed parents."
One of the very few self-syndicated programs that have been successful, The Working Mom on the Run is written, produced, and marketed by Nigro's own company, Sweet Talk Productions. It is aired live from New York City on some 150 stations, while two-minute features by Nigro -- humorously rendered snippets of information such as a warning that grapefruit juice enhances the effects of caffeine and some prescription drugs -- are broadcast on more than 260 stations.
Nigro manages all this through a combination of consummate professionalism and canny observation of trends. For the last two years she has won commendation awards from the Foundation of American Women in Radio and Television. Her show, one award announcement reads, "effectively portrays the changing roles and concerns of women." And this year Talkers magazine named it the best weekend talk show of 1996 and called Nigro one of the 100 most important radio talk show hosts in the United States, putting her in the company of Howard Stern, Mario Cuomo, and G. Gordon Liddy.
The list of past guests on Nigro's program includes both celebrities and experts on a vast range of topics -- from Vanessa Williams and Sinbad to "Dr. Ruth" Westheimer and Robert Reich, with the likes of George Lucas, Joycelyn Elders, Robert Wagner, and Christine Todd Whitman in between. Nigro and her guests offer advice on the universe of questions that working parents may face: close-to-home topics, such as child discipline, strategies for finding a job, and ways of coping with domestic violence, as well as broader societal issues, such as the appeal of cigarette advertising to underage smokers.
Nigro's rise to prominence over the past few years has been meteoric. She has been featured on the covers of Working Mother and Child magazines and released an exercise video for the overbooked, The Any Time Any Where Workout. Her 1995 book brought her an even higher profile. The Working Mom on the Run Manual humorously serves up entertaining information, often in the abbreviated form of "DEBtips" and "DEBservations," on the many aspects of a working mother's life. It includes chapters on "Girl Stuff" (which "gets put way back on the back burner once you become that bread-winning household executive called Mom"); mothering (drink raspberry leaf tea for a healthier pregnancy and a faster delivery); and "Taking Care of Business" (a section that includes pointers for returning to the workforce, working at home, and starting a business). And of special interest to any alum who ever had a mother, the book offers a hilarious story about Nigro's campus visit to Ithaca College, her "first choice and final destination."
Nigro seems to be a woman who has it all -- talent, success, beauty -- but this was neither always so nor obviously bound to happen. The ups and downs of her life make for a timelessly satisfying -- if slightly fantastic -- rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches tale.
By her own report, launching her career wasn't easy: "I remember very clearly graduating from IC, going back to my mother's house, and sitting on the edge of the bed looking out the window, as if I had lost my marbles." What saved her at that time, she says, was "to take a job that wasn't exactly what I had in mind," working in public relations. In the years to follow, however, she forged a successful career in broadcasting as radio personality, news reporter, and news director, with additional stints as television host, writer, and producer. By 1985 she was hosting her own morning-drive-time talk show in New York City. Then Howard Stern's show was shifted to run opposite hers, and Nigro's show was canceled. In 1987 her career lay in ruins.
Broke and divorced, Nigro was forced to move back into her mother's house. At this low point, living with her own daughter in the pink and purple bedroom of her childhood, Nigro searched for inspiration. "I was falling off the edge," she told the Chicago Tribune. "I didn't know what I'd do and then I thought, 'What do I love to do and what do I do best?' Radio was my true love, so why not host a talk show? What would I talk about? I'm a woman who's struggling to raise a child, have a career, and lead a balanced life. I knew I wasn't alone."
Not at all. In 1992 at least 75 percent of mothers of young children were employed outside the home, but radio had not yet succeeded in attracting this market. Enter Nigro. With Jeffrey Troncone, her business partner and "perpetual fiancé," she conceived and produced pilot episodes of The Working Mom on the Run. After persuading two stations to broadcast the program, she began to sell advertising. In the stroke that was to secure the success of her show, she convinced Avon Products to invest $3,000 in exchange for bargain ad rates and the lead sponsorship. Today Avon continues as lead sponsor, with a six-digit annual contract. Additional sponsors include 7-Eleven, Procter and Gamble, General Mills, Folgers, and CBS. A 1995 issue of Advertising Age touts Nigro's show as one of three that "provide females in greater numbers" to potential advertisers.
It is clearly a woman's perspective that Nigro speaks from, and she sometimes delivers digs that only women are likely to appreciate. (After summarizing an army study of women's physical strength, she trumpeted, "Now let's see the study where they find men who can do the work of women. Well? We're waiting!") However, her wide-ranging discussions, her willingness to hear out opposing views, and her personal charm appeal to a diverse audience, at least a third of whom are men. "Men are crucial to our lives," she says. "I love the difference between women and men as much as I hate it."
Nigro says that she intends her show to be informative as well as entertaining. She continually urges her audience to think about the broader picture beyond their personal list of things to do. Although she says that she addresses "what people talk about 95 percent of the time" -- money, children, weight gain -- she also gives a forum to important issues that may have escaped their attention. She has done shows on day care center nightmares, the nature of professional athletes' influence on children, and the possibility that talk radio itself may have a negative effect on American culture -- all seasoned with her irreverent humor.
Wisecracks and all, Nigro takes her responsibility as a media power seriously and sustains an extraordinarily active role on the air. "I feel obligated to do something meaningful with my media time," she says. "I try to really be an inspiration and to do what I can for people." Within the course of a recent show, for example, she had one caller's missing granddaughter traced and helped another find legal support for obtaining visitation rights. Another show raised money for the families of Oklahoma City bombing victims.
On the horizon this fall are one-minute television features, to be broadcast on morning news shows across the country. Also coming are a line of clothing and a comic strip that will appear in Working Mother and Living Fit magazines as well as in newspapers. Her second book, due in 1997, is tentatively titled From the Waist Down: Who Needs This Aggravation?
Nigro confronts her future with the desperate energy and boundless anxiety common to denizens of the fast lane. "In order to keep driving forward you have to keep changing," she says, "and change is risky. Risk is stomach-acid stuff." Quickly, she proffers advice disguised as self-deprecation: "I can handle everything so much better when I exercise. . . . Now if I could just keep my face out of the refrigerator."
Turning serious for a moment, she continues, "I want to give women
who haven't had the exposure to being strong the chance to be all they
can -- for themselves and for those they love." Nigro pauses, as if
hesitant, for once, to overstate her case, then concludes firmly, "I'm
fighting the fight that women are fighting to control their destinies."