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Morning drive-time radio is getting a new voice: Whoopi Goldberg.
Starting July 31, Goldberg will host Wake Up with Whoopi, Clear Channel Radio will announce today. It's a live weekday program aimed at women, to air on mostly adult contemporary stations nationwide.
"I'm not a shock jock. I'm not even a shock jockette. But I'm a different kind of voice in the morning," says Goldberg, 50, who has won an Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, Tony and two Golden Globes.
"She is a superstar, and it sends a strong message that radio isn't going away," says Adam Jacobson, an editor at industry publication Radio & Records. With satellite and iPod technologies luring radio's audience, a "legitimate star like Whoopi on the dial could be an enormous boom. Radio can be the home of the stars in the post-Howard Stern world."
Goldberg's program will broadcast 5 to 9 a.m. (tape delayed on the West Coast) from New York and will blend her comedy with daily topics, listener call-ins, guests and locally programmed music.
Clear Channel Radio hopes that Goldberg will be a welcome wake-up call to women. "She is genuinely connected to that audience of females," says Clear Channel president and CEO John Hogan. Goldberg offers an opportunity "to talk with real women in a real way in the morning."
Goldberg, mother of one and grandmother of two with no radio experience, says she knows "how hard it is to get going in the morning, to get the family in the car and get everyone moving and grooving."
Her voice will be "lighter" than the current crop of predominantly male morning DJs, she says. "I want to have fun."
Goldberg hints that there likely will be a sidekick on her show, but she is mum on the details. And she's not looking to cash in favors with her celebrity friends, either. "This is about me and (the listeners), and I don't want to promise what sounds like Hollywood Squares," where she was center square from 1998 to 2002.
Instead, expect banter on American Idol or Lost, she says. Or chatter on where to find the best hot dog in America. "Not just a good one," she says. But "Who has the best hot dog?"
And Goldberg is not completely giving up her Hollywood ties. Her producing credits continue to build, with last month's premiere of Nickelodeon's Just for Kicks, a live-action series about a girls' soccer team. And Goldberg says her guest-starring role as a former foster mother on NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent will be a recurring gig.
The radio show "will take my full focus, but I will continue to pursue movies if I want to make movies," Goldberg says. "I can take my career and eat it, too."
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