Extending the Family Brand

Just as there are two types of families, sad and happy ones, there are two types of radio talk shows, strident and chatty ones. The Satellite Sisters belong in the latter category in both instances. Five sisters (Julie, 46, Liz, 44, Sheila, 43, Monica, 42, and Lian, 36), or half the entire Dolan family, they can be heard cheerfully chewing the fat every week on public radio.

They dip into such topics as credit card debt, cardiac health and the hazards of transporting a gravy boat to a foreign clime. Their talk is not polemical, deep or even outrageously funny. It's just comfy, lively chat, the kind you'd expect from sisters whose lives are quite different--a single career woman, a divorce, a wife who has followed her husband to Thailand and dials into the conversation via a satellite uplink (hence the name)--and yet who share an effortless, chip-proof familiarity. Perhaps because there are so many women, and quite a few men, who can identify with at least one of them, Satellite Sisters has become a surprise hit, currently airing in 70 markets, up from 19 in 2000.

Now the Dolan sisters--who seem to want to supplant the McCourt brothers in ubiquity--have released a book, Satellite Sisters' UnCommon Senses (Riverhead; 370 pages; $24.95). It posits, through a series of anecdotes told by each sister, that when you grow up in a large family, you develop an extra set of senses that help you both stand out from and connect to your kin. This, at least, is the conceit. But the underlying mantra of the book and the radio show is the same: talk is good. Even seemingly insignificant banter, such as the discussion about the aforementioned gravy boat, is really a way of coping with big life changes, such as Julie's move to Bangkok. "Everyone uses conversation with people to help them make big decisions," says Liz, a former marketing honcho at Nike, who came up with the idea for the show. "I'd always wondered why there wasn't more on the radio that sounded like the way people really talk." This is reality radio, and it's much more intimate and personal than its brash TV sibling.

But does it work in book form? The Dolans believe that the most underexplored love story is the bond between siblings. And their book certainly communicates plenty of affection amid the joys and indignities of life in a large family. But without the interaction of the radio show, it comes off as stilted and slight. Good radio inhabits the background; we can do something else while listening. But good books demand all our attention. This one doesn't hold it.