Ruth Westheimer - Media Career

Media Career

In 1980, WYNY-FM was NBC Radio's New York City owned-and-operated station. The struggling Adult Contemporary station had recently gone through a makeover in an attempt to build an audience. Part of this rebuild was adding specialized talk shows to the evening and weekend hours. Maurice Tunick was recruited from New York's leading talk station, WOR, where he was talk show producer. As WYNY's Program Coordinator he was responsible for developing new talk shows.

Betty Elam was WYNY's Community Affairs Manager. Her job was to work closely with community groups and the station's public affairs programming. After attending a New York Market Radio (NYMRAD) convention at which Westheimer was a speaker, she was taken with Westheimer's passion, information, sense of humor, and personality and suggested that WYNY do something with her. She made two appearances as a guest on a taped Sunday morning public affairs program. WYNY's General Manager, Dan Griffin, then suggested that Tunick find a way to develop a public affairs show for her.

The show was assigned 15 minutes beginning at midnight on Sunday nights. Being a novice in radio, Westheimer thought it would be a good idea to have guests covering urology, neurology, gynecology, etc.—all areas which could have an effect on sex. While that would be important, Tunick thought a better show would be to not have guests at all but to directly answer listeners' questions. NBC was reluctant to allow live phone calls for a sex advice show, which was considered very risqué in the early 1980s, but Tunick suggested soliciting questions via mail. Westheimer could then control the questions and read them on the air with her answers. Typically each question began with, "I have a letter from a listener who asks..."

The show, Sexually Speaking, using the name "Dr. Ruth," was taped in an NBC Radio studio at 30 Rockefeller Center, NBC's radio and TV headquarters, on Thursday mornings at 11:00 a.m. for airing on Sunday nights at midnight. All NBC studios at "30 Rock" were accessible from other studios and many offices around the building. A couple of weeks into recording, it was reported that work was stopping in many places in the building on Thursdays at 11 as people were gathering to hear this "cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse", as The Wall Street Journal would later describe her.

After two months the show was expanded to an hour and went live, with Westheimer taking phone calls with a 7 second digital delay. Within a year "Dr. Ruth" had a larger audience on Sunday night at midnight on this struggling station than many New York stations had in morning drive-time. She became known for being candid and funny, but respectful, and for her tag phrase, "Get some."

As "Dr. Ruth", Westheimer became nationally known after several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the early 1980s. In less than two years, Dr. Ruth became a household name and was being heard on radio stations across the country.

Her pioneering TV show, also called Sexually Speaking, first aired in 1982 as a 15-minute taped show on Lifetime Cable. It has since increased in popularity and has been nationally syndicated, as has her radio show.

In recent years, Westheimer has made regular appearances on the PBS Television children's show Between the Lions as "Dr. Ruth Wordheimer" in a parody of her therapist role, in which she helps anxious readers and spellers overcome their fear of long words.

She also made a cameo on PBS's Dinosaur Train as an Archeopteryx.

She appeared as herself in episode 87 of Quantum Leap, the episode title being "Dr. Ruth".

Westheimer appeared on Tom Chapin's album This Pretty Planet, in the song "Two Kinds of Seagulls", in which she and Chapin sing of various animals that reproduce sexually. "It takes two to tingle," says the song.

As marketers took "sex sells" literally, Westheimer appeared in commercials for the Honda Prelude, circa 1993 ending with "My advice to you is, 'Get a Prelude.'"

Westheimer also worked as a spokeswoman for Clairol Herbal Essences shampoo and body wash, depicting a comical side to her work as a sex therapist. The commercials usually featured a woman imagining that she was using the shampoo on her hair, apparently receiving some sexual charge from it. When the woman snapped back to reality, Westheimer was standing next to her, stating that if the woman liked the shampoo, she should try the body wash as well.

In the January 2009 55th anniversary issue of Playboy, Westheimer appears as #13 in the list of the 55 most important people in sex from the past 55 years.