Air America Bankruptcy, Mainstream Media Reaction

OPERATION ISOLATE AAR

Media Continues "Libtalk Is Strong" Campaign






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Five full days after it filed for bankruptcy, the mainstream media continues its push to convince the public that Air America Radio's failure is not a sign liberal talk radio is unable to succeed in a free market environment.

Call it Operation Isolate Air America.

From the Guardian, here's but one example of many:

Almost from its inception, the network has been in turmoil. A central financial mistake, experts say, was the expensive strategy of buying up individual stations, in the belief this was the only way to prevent its programmes being drowned out by their established conservative rivals.

But some stations in important markets turned out to have weak signals and poor coverage, making it even harder for Air America to gain listeners.

Backers of Air America claim its ratings have been no disgrace, pointing to 2.4m weekly listeners, and the 92 stations across the country which carry its programming. They insist that whatever now happens to the network, the liberal talk format is here to stay.

And to make its case that Air America's financial mismanagement was the only issue behind its downfall, the same few "experts" are repeatedly being utilized. Whether commercial, or partisan in nature, could they have ulterior motives? That is absolutely never mentioned.

In several cases, we've seen the assertion that even though it has been a disaster, Air America has somehow blazed a trail as "pioneers" in the "progressive talk" field.

In addition, the network's own inflated audience and affiliate figures are cited as factual. Instead of "92" or "nearly 100" stations that are claimed as part of Air America, we counted 71 in March. Since then, several more have dropped its programming.

And we've never seen hard evidence to back up audience claims of more than two million people.

That ignores the inconvenient fact, however, that many others have come and gone before them, both as individual talkers and even whole networks (such as i.e. America, which employed both Mike Malloy and Thom Hartmann before joining AAR).

Remember past "progressive" talk shows by Jerry Brown, Alan Dershowitz, Jim Hightower, or Mario Cuomo? Didn't think so.

In addition, many current non- Air America talkers are also struggling, in some cases quite substantially.

What's the real problem? In every case, these shows have failed because they simply could not attract a significant audience.

So where's the mainstream media's list of current success stories outside of Air America? Here at the Radio Equalizer, we've acknowledged the gains made by Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller, but even they have a fraction of the stations and audience that most conservative talkers enjoy. In addition, both are fairly ideologically moderate, especially compared to Randi Rhodes or Malloy.


As for the "experts" cited in stories we've seen in recent days, readers should be alerted to their underlying agendas. One is commerical: syndicated liberal talk radio shows have purchased a great deal of advertising in publications such as Talkers Magazine, whose Michael Harrison is featured in almost every story on Air America's bankruptcy.

The other is ideological: like the rest of the entertainment business, talk radio is dominated by liberal executives, who've had to hold their noses over the years while programming Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Each libtalk launch has provided an opportunity to add shows that match their own political views.

No matter how much spin is applied, there's simply no honest way to disguise the fact that liberal talk radio is still an unproven concept, attempted many times over the years, but without any pattern of success.


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