Zorn: Liberal Network Needs Stronger Arguments

Air America's Critics Wrong?

Columnist: If Radio Equalizer's Off Base, Let's Hear Response!


Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn has issued a challenge to Air America: if the Radio Equalizer's contentions about Air America's performance and future are wrong, then let's hear stronger, more convincing arguments!

What Zorn's getting is flak for his column in today's Tribune, taking Air America to task for their clumsy moves in the Chicagoland market. His perspective is potentially supportive (and certainly leftist), he thinks "progressive" talk radio could work, but that this outfit is using the wrong personalities and marketing strategies. Here's an excerpt:

An Air America spokeswoman in New York said that listenership among the target audience of 25- to 54-year-olds has been "consistently encouraging," particularly for hosts Al Franken and Randi Rhodes. She had no national numbers to back up that assertion.

The format starts with a built-in disadvantage--most liberals got out of the habit of listening to commercial talk radio during its right-wing renaissance in the late 1980s. Now it's attempting a daytime-only Chicago revival in a political off year.

It looks to me like a recipe for failure. Inevitably weak ratings will tell advertisers and programmers that there's no market for left-wing talk, dooming us to decades of smug, hectoring conservatives.

"I don't believe that," said network co-founder and major investor Sheldon Drobny of Highland Park. I asked him if 850 AM is the proper station at the proper time for Air America in Chicago. "We'll do fine. The socioeconomic profile of our target audience is excellent. And it's either this or no broadcast at all."

Drobny sounded a little frustrated with me. I've been bugging him since last year about the curious lack of an Air America outlet in the hometown of not only its wealthy co-founder, but also the hometown of Eychaner, who is a Democratic Party mega-donor along with being a broadcast impresario.

Then came a false alarm in mid-March when Al Franken announced on the air that Chicago would be back on the air March 31 to mark the network's first anniversary.

Newsweb Corp. station's vice president Harvey Wells and officials at Air America hedged far more than Eychaner did Monday about if and when a formal announcement will come.

This leaves open the slim possibility--or is it a hope?--that the news about WCPT-AM is just another false alarm.

Instead of taking on his contentions, it appears Zorn's getting the same whining and name calling that greet my inbox daily, rather than sound refutations of arguments.

Worse, subjects of my criticism would rather unleash Arbitron's attack dogs, rather than address the issues. It's a kill-the-messenger strategy that won't work, because the cows are already out of the barn!

Since the Radio Equalizer first began to chronicle Air America's performance in a January piece for WorldNetDaily, my monthly follow-up posts have been linked to hundreds of blogs and websites, far more than I can track.

They've been referenced and/or quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Raleigh News & Observer and at Powerline. Michelle Malkin has carefully tracked each Air America development as it occurs.

Zorn sounds like a liberal who isn't afraid to tackle internal mismanagement on his own side of the fence. To that end, I'm doing the same thing, with an Op-Ed in tomorrow's WorldNetDaily edition that will spell out major challenges ahead for conservative talk radio, if it doesn't get its act together, very soon.


Welcome Orbusmax readers! Click here for my brand new WorldNetDaily piece on conservative talk radio. To RadioEqualizer home page for the latest coverage.

This story has been updated, Wednesday evening, here. It just gets funnier!