Driving Alone : KBIG-FM’s Sylvia Aimerito is finding success as a host in the male-dominated 6 to 10 a.m. time slot.

When she was a child growing up in Lakewood and later Long Beach, her father used to get up at 3 a.m. for work. He was a milkman.

Now Sylvia Aimerito of KBIG-FM (104.3)--one of only a few women currently working as solo host of a morning-drive radio show in the Southland--hears her alarm at the crack of 2:30 a.m. After toying with the snooze button, she is out of bed within 20 minutes so that she can be at the adult-contemporary music station a half hour before showtime at 5 a.m.

“I guess it’s in the genes,” she says, laughing.

For reasons not altogether clear, morning drive tends to be mostly a man’s game: Mark & Brian on KLOS-FM (95.5), Bill Handel on KFI-AM (640), Ken Minyard and Peter Tilden on KABC-AM (790), Kevin & Bean on KROQ-FM (106.7), Big Boy on KPWR-FM (105.9), Shawn Parr on KZLA-FM (93.9), Rick Dees on KIIS-FM (102.7) and, of course, Howard Stern on KLSX-FM (97.1). The women working the 6-10 a.m. shift tend to be in supporting roles or co-hosts--most notably Kim Avidon, who has been partnered with Mark Wallengren at KOST-FM (103.5) since 1985.

Even Spanish radio follows the pattern. The top four stations in the market have male hosts in morning drive.

Asked why she thinks there are so few women in morning drive, Aimerito replies, “I don’t know. . . . Maybe the powers that be think that listeners aren’t ready for it, but I’m guessing [at] their assumption. Because there are some excellent strong women in every walk of life, and radio is one of them. I’m lucky enough to be in the position of doing it.”

Others include Stephanie Edwards on show-tunes station KGIL-AM (1260), and Nancy Donnellan, monikered “The Fabulous Sports Babe,” who has a piece of morning-drive action with her 9-11 a.m. talk shift at all-sports KXTA-AM (1150).

The ever-perky Aimerito has been flying solo for the past 14 months; for nearly nine years before that, the program was called the “Bill and Sylvia Morning Show.” Actually, there were two Bills: For the first five years, it was Bill Maier, with whom she worked at KFI before it became a talk station; they got the KBIG job as a team. After he went back to school to get a doctorate in psychology, she was partnered with Bill Reitler, who left last year.

In March, Paul Freeman came on to do news and rotate weather reports with Aimerito. Briefly, the station considered adding other people and renamed the show, “Sylvia Aimerito and Co.” That didn’t take but they kept the name.

At KBIG’s new studio in Glendale, with a sweeping view of the San Gabriel Mountains, Aimerito stands alone--literally. Meet her just before 8 a.m., and she’s on her feet at the microphone and music board. She claims that doing the job standing up gives her more focus.

“I run the board,” she says later over breakfast at a diner down the street. “I make sure the music is playing and the commercials are playing. There are morning-show people who have their producers do all of that, who are taking care of making sure that everything gets on the air. But I like to do it because I feel I’m pushing the momentum. You have a sense of the rhythm of the show,” she adds. “You feel like you’re driving the bus.”

In the most recent Arbitron ratings, KBIG ranked 16th overall in morning drive--tied with Spanish-language talk station KTNQ-AM (1020) among listeners 12 and older. But Aimerito points out that in its target demographic of women between the ages of 25 and 54, KBIG is second among English-language stations with 4.1% of the audience, trailing only Mark and Kim on adult-contemporary rival KOST, who drew 4.9%.

Aimerito, who is of Italian heritage and who worked at seven Los Angeles stations before landing at KBIG, relishes her single-host position. “It’s easier to make decisions, to give [the show] a point. The producer, Fred Hartmann, and I work together on a lot of things. He’s excellent. We’ll have a knock-down, drag-out, and then compromise and figure out what works best.”

Aimerito’s show features charity promotions and a regular segment called “Loving Acts of Kindness,” in which listeners tell of a good deed or express some need, and receive gifts like a dinner out, a refrigerator or a hearing aid. And she inserts mini-comments on the news. One recent morning, when Freeman noted during a report on show-business news that sportscaster Marv Albert, who pleaded guilty to assault and battery, would be appearing on “20/20” with Barbara Walters and that listeners could tune in, Aimerito said firmly: “No, I won’t.”

But on this morning, there’s also a goof. Promoting the new movie “Bean,” Aimerito hit a button, and out came a voice clip of John Travolta from “Mad City.” “Gee, Mr. Bean sounds a whole lot like John Travolta,” Aimerito interrupted, then went on to explain the Travolta scene. “This is live radio,” Freeman joshed.

“On the fly,” Aimerito added, maintaining a lighthearted mood. Later she concedes: “I should have double-checked” the tape that was in the board.

Still, it’s Aimerito’s ability to keep cool and to laugh at herself that probably accounts for her longevity. Ask her about her college education, and she says she had “bits and pieces of college [at Cal State Long Beach and Cerritos], but I spent more time in Student Union than I did in class and stuff.”

When a visitor wonders what personality she brings to the mike, she at first seems confused. It’s her own, of course. “I know I have a consistency on the air--and the consistency is me,” Aimerito says. “Because the important element of radio is to be as real as you possibly can--unless your shtick is shtick.

“You can relate better to listeners,” she continues, “if you are yourself, if you have the same type of quirks or ideas that they have and you say them, as opposed to trying to hold back [to] think of a funny line. What’s fun is when listeners [tell me], ‘That’s exactly what I would have said.’ ”

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Briefly, Brandwynne: Listeners to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” on KCRW-FM (89.9) and KPCC-FM (89.3) might have been startled in recent weeks to hear the familiar voice of Marcia Brandwynne as co-host. In the 1980s, she was a TV anchor at KTTV-TV Channel 11, and before that at KNXT-TV (now KCBS) Channel 2. In both chairs, she established a reputation as a thinking person’s anchor.

As for NPR, her position there lasts only another two weeks while she fills in for Noah Adams, who’s writing a book. “There’s really no job here, unfortunately,” she said recently from Washington.

Her most recent job in TV was at KPIX in San Francisco, where she lasted a year as a noon anchor. “That was a horror,” she allowed.

Then Brandwynne--who, in a varied career, has co-developed a sitcom with Norman Lear for NBC, was an executive with Carol Burnett’s production company and produced “Carol & Company” for CBS, and reported and produced feature pieces for NBC’s “Dateline”--will be coming home to Los Angeles.

To do what? “I wish I knew,” she said. “I want to live and I want to work [there]. I’m happy to do radio if someone will hire me.”