Phoenix, Liberal Talk Radio, New Times

'MOM, HE HIT ME!'

Conspiracy-Wielding Phoenix Lib Talk Backers Scolded





From a very unlikely place, Air America Radio's Phoenix backers faced a print media scolding this week.

Aimed right at the tinfoil hat-wearing crowd, the "progressive" weekly tabloid Phoenix New Times cut right through the rampant conspiracy theories now used to explain Air America's Valley of the Sun demise.

While remaining firmly on the left, the paper essentially advised former staffers and fans to get a fast grip on reality.

Here's an excerpt:

The Bird thinks that the only thing more unfortunate than the death of Air America Phoenix is the whining and bitch-fighting that's taken place since the liberal radio station's funeral.

Former employees of Air America Phoenix are as busy slinging mud and pointing fingers as they are scrambling to relaunch their hyper-liberal chat station with one of those "save our sunk ship" fund-raising sites -- behavior that The Bird thought liberal radio types were way above.

Wrong. The guys from Air America's Phoenix affiliate -- home to famed chat hosts Charles "Fearless Talk Radio" Goyette and lefty Ed Schultz, and found on the AM dial at KXXT 1010 until March 1, when the station's new owners, Denver-based religious broadcasters Communicom, switched to an all-Jesus format -- are taking the sort of self-pitying "Mom, he hit me!" stance so popular with, well, conservative Christians.

"Air America's Phoenix station was taken off the air by a Christian broadcasting company," according to the group's woe-is-me Web site (www.saveairamericaphoenix.com), which goes on to beg for $500,000 in donations from former listeners.

Please. As much as The Bird enjoys a good conspiracy theory, and as much as it enjoys going after big-bucks-corrupted Christians, even a pretend pigeon can tell that this is merely a case of someone with a bigger pile of dough buying out a little guy who couldn't say no.

Air America Phoenix's former station manager Robert J. Christy agrees.

"There's no conspiracy here," he moaned to The Bird. "S**t happens. Like a radio station gets offered a ton of money and decides to sell. There's nothing surprising about that. Everyone knew what was happening."

Not so, said former Air America employee Jeff Farias, who produced the station's Mike Newcomb Show and co-hosted a weekend chat fest with The Bird's favorite legislative lefty, state Representative Kyrsten Sinema (see "Howl of Sanity," March 9). "We were as shocked as our listeners. We found out the night we went off the air, when Ed Schultz announced on his show that he was going off the air in Phoenix."

"B*****t!" Christy squawked to this foul fowl. "These naive people that I gave paychecks to think they're smarter than I am. They don't know what it takes to put up a successful broadcasting business. Fifty-dollar donations from listeners aren't enough to finance a station -- the bank will throw their ass out the door!"

Christy hasn't given up, however, as the story continues:

But the former Air America-ers won't need a bank, if all goes according to their plan. "We're going to find a rich Democrat," Farias explained to The Bird. "We've already found a station in town that we can lease for a year. We had a meeting with our attorneys, and now we're looking for that wealthy Dem who wants to bankroll a radio station."

Hey, if these guys can get liberal talk radio back on the air in Phoenix, the Radio Equalizer thinks they should go for it. And if they've found a way to make it viable, who are we to stop them?

But why bother to re-affiliate with Air America?

From our perspective, it appeared KXXT's local programming garnered the most publicity and listener support. So why not stick with what worked best?

We'll be watching this one.

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