Daily Kos, Air America

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Look Who's Trashing Air America Now!





Have some liberals finally had enough of Al Franken & Friends?

While Stuart Smalley's defenders continue to pound your Radio Equalizer for relentlessly exposing the truth about this partisan talk network, some of its harshest critics actually come from the left!

In the past week alone, "progressive" mega-blog Daily Kos has featured two anti-Air America Radio rants, the latest with reader comments similar to these sentiments:

An earlier diary here has a lot of comments I agree with, including especially that Air America is too much top-down. Trying to build an instant radio network from a studio in New York and broadcasting it across the country never did make sense to me. Instead, syndicating local talent seems a lot more viable way to grow, albeit much more slowly.

Frankly Big Eddie is probably the show I enjoy the most (on KPOJ here in Portland) and he's not even part of Air America. And I really like Tom Hartman who is local here but I think gets some air in other cities as well.

And as much as I love Randi Rhodes for playing old Rusty Warren records, which brings back great memories of Dick McGovern on KSAN in the 70s, I can't really listen to her monologue for very long.

So Air America in my opinion was a hugh experiment that proved that there is a market for progressive radio. Maybe couldn't have done that quickly any other way. But now its time to grow organically. We need to find great radio personalities and let them grow into new markets.

Just as Howard is pushing for the Democratic Party to be more grassroots driven and work from the bottom up, I think progressive talk radio should grow from the bottom up too. I will be eternally grateful to Al Franken for shattering old myths that it would never work, but now it's time to do the hard work and let the market pick the winners.

Next, to the comments, where some readers let loose:

Too Heavy Handed

I agree with the previous poster: Air Amrica is too heavy-handed. Lord knows, I wanted to like it. But it made me uneasy from the beginning. So i asked a friend to listen and give me his opinion, which was....

..."great, now we have Liberal hate speech. Forgive me if i don't applaud."

He's right. Listening to Al Franken screech:

"These people are liars!", moan loudly, then spit out "it's 25 past the hour" in a tone suggesting he is in the studio under duress....

...well, it's neither entertaining nor useful.

It's simply bad radio. And not many people want to listen to bad radio.

Hosts also rely too heavily on a few sources:
Media Matters, Center For American Progress, etc...

by qwertman on Sun May 07, 2006 at 08:59:41 PM PDT


Air America: Ain't that great

First of all, most of the hosts interrupt their f------ guests! Particularly Laura Flanders. Why the f--- have Ray McGovern on if you're gonna interrupt the guy who just schooled Rumsfailed? WTF?

You listen in to Flanders next week and you'll see what I mean. It's the same with callers. And Randi Rhodes? Why the f--- even take callers? She interrupts everyone of them, most of whom are more politically astute than she is anyway.

And the tone of Rhodes and Malloy must turn people off. No one undecided would actually want to listen to these people.

Air America comes across mostly as Democratic Party radio and why the f--- would you want that? That's dumb, then you've got the Republicans listening to Hannity and Rush and no one in this country is talking to one another. You need actual discussion, folks, to get something constructive done.

Bring the fairness doctrine back, g------ it. Have stations where people get multiple views and, along with democratizing schools, you'll have a population of fairly literate folks who can think for themselves and they'll f------ choose liberal policies. That would be the beauty of that system. And until you get that, we're just wasting our f------ time.

The only decent show we have on the Madison, WI Air American is Matt Rothschild's show, the editor of the Progressive magazine, insightful and decent, he doesnt' shout at you and he lets the guests f------ talk without interrupting them. The Ring of Fire ain't bad either. Bobby Kennedy should get someone to fix his voice, though. He is a brilliant man and the show is informative.

Franken isn't even funny anymore and he has guys like Howard Fineman on.

"In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes." Chomsky

by formernadervoter on Sun May 07, 2006 at 08:35:51 PM PDT
(edited for language)


Other then Rachel and Randi the rest bore me.

I love Rachel, she needs more time. She always seems to be right on. I don't always agree with her, I am not as progressive as she is I guess. But she can be entertaining while getting her message across.

Springer, thank goodness I get to work right as he is coming on.

Franken is a bore. I can not listen to him without yelling at the radio. His humor is gone, and he speaks so slowly. WHATS YOUR POINT, AL FRANKEN?

Ed Schultz is on from 2-5 and Randi is tape delayed until 5. I like Ed the best out of all of them and hes not even part of AAR.

Randi, even though she can go off the deep end, is also entertaining. Different funny than Rachel, but very good.

I dont hear much after that. Overall, I think Dallas can be a good market for AAR, even though the ratings look real bad.

They are trying to get their name out, and the commercials seem to be replacing the canned musak.

Take back Texas
by edalex on Sun May 07, 2006 at 07:18:16 PM PDT

While a few Kos posters do defend Air America here, others are chock- full of ideas as to how the network could potentially salvage itself.

To the network, we might now ask: is it really a right-wing conspiracy to bring down liberal radio, or does your programming simply stink?


Meanwhile, in the blogosphere:


Expose The Left wonders why, after the infamous trashmeister brought up Bush's poll numbers, Hannity & Colmes failed to press guest Jerry Springer on Air America's poor performance. Good point, Ian!

The Channel Changer reveals how cable companies, as they seek to protect regional monopolies, are fighting free- market choices in the Bay State.

From his perch in Rhode Island, Wade is following the latest Kennedy sleaze. Why aren't there more Ocean State bloggers holding their feet to the fire? And from Cape Cod, Peter Porcupine is staying with this one as well.

How environmentalist Rachel Carson killed Africans.

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