Air America Radio Finally Succumbs

After hanging in there for almost 6 years, Air America Radio has finally bitten the dust. The right wing--already thrilled with Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race and (inexplicably) the Supreme Court decision on corporations--is doing a happy dance. But if you listen to them, all you hear is that liberals can't compete on radio, because nobody wants to listen to them. They'll say that they failed in a fair marketplace. Which isn't really what happened.

AAR always had behind the scenes troubles. They were heady with ideas, but they weren't really radio people. They didn't suss out what they were doing before they began doing it, and nearly failed on more than one occasion. Talent wasn't really the problem. They started up with Lizz Winstead, Rachel Maddow, Al Franken, Mike Malloy, Randi Rhodes, Marc Maron, and several others. But they made a lot of bad decisions, and the marketplace was stacked against them.

There are many other better-equipped blog sites that can explain the intricacies of radio, and why this wasn't exactly a fair fight. Suffice it to say that the stations that aired AAR were mostly smaller, low-wattage outfits who couldn't compete with the conservatives in signal strength. Whether or not they could compete if all things were equal really may never be known. Even in markets where the format did well, it was often squelched and replaced with lesser performing formats. It was a noble experiment, and it did manage a couple of pretty nifty tricks.

One was to help prepare Al Franken for Senate. Another was to season Rachel Maddow for television. And it got me deeper into politics, and much more informed on the issues. And though I tend to listen to liberal talk radio most days at work, oddly, this unfortunate event won't change my listening patterns much.

In recent years, AAR lost some of its on-air talent. And since we never had an affiliate here in Las Vegas (in the bluest of the counties in Nevada) I listened via the Internet. I started streaming the feed from KTLK-AM out of Los Angeles long ago, and they only feature AAR shows in the evening these days. I listen to The Stephanie Miller Show (not AAR), The Thom Hartmann Program (not AAR), The Randi Rhodes Show (not AAR) and The Ron Reagan Show (AAR). I'm sure KTLK will fill the last hours of my work day rather quickly, so my listening day will be pretty much the same.

It's funny though, most conservative talk fans (defacto enemies of liberal talk) are under the illusion that all liberal talk is Air America. I heard the often clueless and always irritating Mark Levin today wondering gleefully "Where's Ed Schultz going to go now?" Shultz isn't even on Air America, genius. Still, I'm sad to see the network go, even if I sorta stopped listening to most of their shows. It was a valiant effort, and I for one have grown from the experience of having listened to it.

[Excerpt]

Air America, the Talk Radio Network, Will Go Off the Air

Air America, the long-suffering progressive talk radio network, abruptly shut down on Thursday, bowing to what it called a “very difficult economic environment.”

The chairman of Air America Media, Charlie Kireker, said in a statement that the company would file under Chapter 7 bankruptcy “to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business. . .”

Read more at: New York Times