Air America Radio, Mother Jones

SAME AS THE OLD BOSS?

'New' AAR May Be Doomed To Repeat Past Mistakes







Nothing infuriates some of our readers more than finding your Radio Equalizer and Mother Jones, the venerable lefty "alternative" publication, in agreement.

Hey, on any other issue, it probably couldn't happen. But when it comes to Air America Radio, Mother Jones has been a rare "progressive" voice thinking clearly on the subject.

In fact, the publication sounds downright capitalistic in making this assessment of the "new" AAR:

Air America 2.0 -- Any Different from the First Time Around?

In January, Clara wrote about the plan to sell the financially-troubled Air America to brothers Stephen and Mark Green. That deal was consummated yesterday and Mark Green celebrated the event by posting his vision for the new Air America (a/k/a Air America 2.0) on Huffington Post.

Unfortunately, having read Green's essay, I'm a bit skeptical of the "new" attributes of Air America. They sound an awful lot like the old attributes -- the ones that sent them into Chapter 11. Green asserts in the "Huff Po" that Air America will now:

# "[Focus] on the radio fundamentals of making a strong line-up even stronger."

# "[Connect] to other progressive membership organizations to be mutually fortifying."

# "[Be] a multi-media content company involving other distribution platforms -- Internet, blogging, audio and video streaming, mobile, social networks, and more."

I think you can do all three of those things and still not make any money if the idea of progressive radio is a fundamentally flawed one, or if the execution of your core product is shoddy, or if there simply isn't a market for what you are selling.

Green also says Air America will "be a business with a sharp point of view. The era of on- the- one- hand- on- the- other- hand liberalism is over" (what, AA didn't take a strong point of view before?) and that "Air America will aggressively cover national politics and policies in ways that will be informative, opinionated and entertaining."

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!


While writer Jonathan Stein does wish Air America well, his critical points are dead- on. What is different this time that would make the liberal talk radio network a success?

At the same time, are conservatives compelled to like every talk host who comes along and claims to be in our camp? That's exactly why your Radio Equalizer has criticized a decent number of right- leaning talkers on this site.

From both sides, a bit of intellectual honesty can go a long way, can't it?


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