Air America
 

Nothing new here. Democrats (liberals) want yet another program, but this time, they couldn't force the taxpayers to pay for it.

Is there anyone out there who would like to make a contribution?

What? Since when was air-america publically funded? :confused:

GF: I think he's trying to say that democrats always want programs that they cannot pay for; the difference is that since Air America is not publically funded, it is being forced to file for bankruptcy, rather than merely overburdening the taxpayers.

As a conservative I find this a bad thing for my viewpoint.

The more liberals talk freely, the more you get to hear what they say, the better.

Well that's an extremely partisan idea. I'm sure companies run by conservatives go under all the time. :|

I'm a conservative, but really, that kinda talk's not necessary...

Neither is a great deal of what Al Franken says. Remember "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot?" That wasn't terribly constructive.

Rush has had less than stellar moments as well, but it would seem that Air America was putting out a message that few supported.

That being the case, the upcoming election will be interesting, because many polls have found that the populace is disgusted with Congress, but it thinks their own rep or senator is okay. That, coupled with the inherent advantages enjoyed by incumbents, is likely to make many of the races exceedingly close. Whether those are enough to overcome the Foley factor, who can say?

Perhaps some of us would like to express their opinion of the reason for Air America's apparent demise: Unpopular ideas, or other factors?

We just have to convince america bill o'reilly has wmd. Then america would easily pay for it.

Nice troll. Plus, you're obviously misinformed, as several have pointed out already: taxpayers have nothing to do with whatever it is you're going on about.

Perhaps you hit the "submit reply" button a little too hastily. I said they COULDN"T make the taxpayers pay for the program. Therefore, Air America is dying a timely death due to lack of funding, unlike the NEA, the "war on poverty," block grants, Americorps, et. al.

You should read before trolling.

Democracy Now is still quickly growing. Free Speech TV is still quickly growing. Link TV is still quickly growing. All liberal, all funded by viewers and not corporations. Fox News should switch over to funding by viewers and let's see how quickly it goes bankrupt. I'd love to see Bill O'reilly on a street corner holding one of those signs and dancing.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking. Or maybe BOR in Guantanamo.

This thread should win an award for being the biggest waist of time. Why do we allow flame bait like this?

this thread seems to come framed by elements of the limbaugh set.
and here i thought that limbaugh had faded into a richly deserved irrelevance---one more example of the extent to which american conservatism is something of a jurassic park of otherwise discredited ideological formations.

i listened to air america once or twice and found it really tedious.
i understand why it was formed--but i never understood why the organization decided that it needed to play the same flintstone radiogame as the limbaugh set played.

i would have thought that it made more sense to support the expansion of democracy now or other such programming that pulverize the conservative worldview by exposing its manifest limitations in terms of information, which in turn undermines the one-dimensional interpretations that the conservative set seems to gravitate toward. given that the weakness above all others of contemporary conservatism is its refusal to deal with complexity, the proliferation of sources of information would seem its worst nightmare.

besides, regardless of the legion problems with the planet limbaugh, the show was an interesting and effective strategic development during the clinton period--but the effectiveness of the format dissolved quite rapidly once the conservative set came out from under its cultural rock.
the tactics of the planet limbaugh are played out.
air america had nothing to do with this---the tactics are played out due to overexposure.
right talk radio is the p-diddy american politics.

but we'll see what the far right comes up with this time, once they pass into a richly deserved oppositional position again, prelude to their slide back into the ooze of the american backwater, where strange fish like ustwo swim in dank waters that admit only indirectly of information, and where coherence cannot survive because of the intense pressure directed against it.

Can we start a thread talking about the enron colapse and how it shows that republicans are currupt and steal money from hard working people? I think that has the same "correlations" that the OP has....

I think its more a result of deregulation than anything else. Prior to the passage of the Telecomm Act of '96, there were limits on radio station ownership, both totally and within a particular market, and there was a commitment to local ownership.

Since then, a small number of national telecomm companies now own a larger share of radio stations and programming is packaged, with little local input. Clear Channel, which some would describe as having a conservative bias, went from owning 40 stations in the 90s to over 1,200 stations now, including owning multiple stations in a single market

The bottom line is that radio programming has become homoginized and increasingly difficult to find a station willing or able to take a risk on something new.

An interesting article on radio ownership consolidation:

http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/n...?cat=5&media=8

i think you are right, dc....

the deregulation of media ownership has been a catastrophe--at the seemingly benign level, it was the explanation for a strange state of affairs in philadelphia, where clear channel is an overwhelming broadcast radio presence with the results that boradcast radio is a wasteland--the strange thing was the you could not hear air america in philly, a city that voted something like 80% democrat in the last presidential election. it is also one of the top 10 media markets in the country. this state of affairs was very strange indeed.

on the other hand, there are hearings going on now (i think they are still happening) within the fcc that are designed as a review of this deregulation idea. part of the explanation for this is the case brought by prometheus, which is a west philadelphia based group of media activists that include several close friends. so this provides a chance to cheerlead for them. go hannah. anyway, here is a link to the fcc' page about the hearings:

http://www.fcc.gov/ownership/

and here to the prometheus project:

http://www.prometheusradio.org/

these folk are doing great work out there and are a quite amazing group, particularly as a grassroots operation that has come to be a significant force, one which is changing the terms of debate about media ownership patterns in general.
they are also a great source of information about low powered radio stations, how to set them up, etc.

they particularly despise clear channel, as i think most people do, or would if they understood what these folk are about and what they do.

http://prometheusradio.org/media_own...clear_channel/

As "god" suggests, the OP begs an issue worthy of discussion, which is what the reasons were that led to the necessity for Air America to opt for Chapter 11. I listen to lots of talk radio, and if Air America programming is an offering in these parts, I've missed it. The midwest is pretty conservative, so I end up hearing the likes of Rush, Sean et al. While I disagree with a lot of what I hear, the programs are interesting. Enough listener interest = favorable ratings = ad revenues = successful business model. Listening to the "other" side of an issue tests the soundness of one's own beliefs, so I would give equal time to Air America programming, if it were offered here, assuming it held my interest.

Take the TV show "Will and Grace". What could be more liberal than normalizing homosexual behavior? Even so, it was hugely popular and successful because it was funny, ie, entertaining. Was that where Air America has failed? Maybe they've just come to the party late, after radio listeners have already picked the radio personalities they like and the shows they'll listen to, in the time available to them. Maybe liberals prefer music to talk radio. Even assuming the adverse influence of these factors, however, I think it's not just that no one wants to hear the message, but rather that it hasn't been presented in a sufficiently marketable manner. If a show can demonstrate that it will generate tons of ad revenue, we'll be hearing it all over the radio, whether the program's slant is conservative or liberal.

Yea Air America failed because of deregulation, not because no one listened to it :rolleyes:

Nothing to do with overpaying celebs, and attempting to create something the market wasn't interested in.

well, ustwo, were you to actually think about it for a minute.....i'll wait here.....there is a correlation between the concentration of ownership in philadelphia radio and the inability of air america to get any access at all.

if your one-dimensional non-model of market relations obtained--you know, if supply really did follow demand--you would think air america would be all over philadelphia, which voted something like 80% for kerry last election and is one of the strongest democrat cities on the east coast. the reason there may be a linkage is the extensive support clear channel provides to republican politicians, including extensive financial support for the bush people. to wit:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtm...nnel_Worldwide

but i do not expect you to even wonder about such things, insofar your political position benefits from such arrangements--and were you bothered by media monotony and if you did think about it, you might be driven to say something dimly critical of the capitalist order. which seems like something i should not hold my breath waiting for.

I can't imagine that we could have a realistically well-informed conversation that established exactly why Air America is filing Chapter 11. It could be limited access, poor business model, terrible leadership, bad decisions, bad management, talent issues, marketing, technical problems, or regulatory issues.

I think it is more interesting to look at the situation from the other direction, as roachboy has hinted. If Philly's market (like NYC's) is overwhelmingly democratic (sympathetic to liberal causes?), then why isn't this theoretical demand reflected in the media?

AAR has indeed suffered from bad management, but it is the insufficient advertising revenue that has brought it to filing a Chapter 11. I don't have the search skills needed to see if AAR has published revenue sources by city, but I believe we can all agree that AAR doesn't have the deep pockets for penetrating a market place as does Clear Channel. If AAR isn't financially able to bring in a high number of listeners due to it's absence in large segments of the market place, advertisers will look elsewhere to make the best bang for their buck. AAR needs more revenue to create a larger audience, but it's current audience size isn't attractive to advertisers.

Seattle has a progressive talk station (AM 1090) that takes feeds from AAR, and other syndicated talk hosts. If AAR ultimately fails, AM 1090 will continue to broadcast because of the political demographics of the city. I can't answer as to why Philly hasn't done something similar, but I think it fair to say that a Democrat does not necessarily represent a progressive.

i was thinking about elphaba's last point--contrary to what the right likes to pretend is the case, what exactly constitutes "a liberal"? is there "a" liberal position? is there "a" liberal market?

most of the left folk that i know--and i know alot of them--do not define themselves around the conservative notion of what their opposite is. most use the word "liberal" with a degree of contempt. and none of them listen to air america--they know about it, but--i dont know,maybe it's the format. most listen to democracy now, bbc, to a lesser extent npr (which they complain about for its ineffectual coverage and blandness). most read though. you know, newspapers and books and other such. i dont know if talk radio functions in the same way for folk who take in lots of different kinds of information--the folk i know (fewer) who listened to limbaugh et al seemed to do it FOR the information first and the political gloss second... so i dont know.

gotta go

I agree with roachboy that a single source of information, whether it AAR or Fox News, will offer little to the broader understanding of a subject or event. Multiple sources of information, without partisan selection, are best (imo) in forming an opinion.

Maybe it AAR failed because there are fewer liberals than conservatives in the "we want to have our opinions spoon-fed to us" category. I didn't really care for AAR because whenever i listened to it i just heard all the shit that i hate about conservative talk radio with liberal-centric details.

Nice dig. And total bullshit.

Eh, it's a plausible-enough counterexplanation to "they're bankrupt because liberal viewpoints require government subsidies". I doubt it's most or all of the reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if it explained a part of the revenue problem. Filtherton could've phrased it a bit more diplomatically, like "liberals aren't as interested in the Limbaugh/Savage/O'Reilly temperament/format, that's why Air America failed", but I can buy his basic point.

If Liberals didn't like spoon feeding the Daily Show wouldn't be so political these days. I'll ignore that sillyness.

Air America was created for political purposes. The left hated talk radio for the conservative nature and wanted in on it. Rather then letting the talkers develop slowly on their own and gain audiance naturally, they tried to create their own Limbaughs et al, over night, before there was an audiance.

They would have been better off with no-names and find out who people like to listen to. Of course that implies people wanted to listen to them, liberal talk shows don't tend to last long in my experiance, you can only bottle 'angry' and 'Bush/republicans suck/s' with 'well I dont' have any ideas' for so long.

I have to agree with this statement. In this area the demand was and is there for some liberal radio. However, the Radio America station was a low wattage station that static was heard more than the station. They had signs all over advertising it and people wanted it, but the bandwidth was shit.

If it had been or was on a better amplified station, they may have had more loyal listeners here. They put too much into advertising the commodity here, but not enough money into making sure the commodity had quality (i.e. bandwidth frequency).

But that is just the example here

edit: this is in response to Ustwo.

Huh. Daily Show. Good point. Perhaps my "liberals aren't as interested in the Limbaugh/Savage/O'Reilly temperament/format, that's why Air America failed" phrasing is a better way to put it, then... but I'll stop putting words in filtherton's mouth.

At any rate, there's also the Philadelphia situation that roachboy raised as a possibility.

Who's to say there aren't multiple reasons for the failure?

fta: you dont actually think ustwo is making a serious or informed point about "liberals" above, do you?

all he does above is reiterate in a backhanded kinda way the extent to which "liberal" is a conservative projection, a fantasy that circulates within conservativeland as the mirror image of the right---it has no content independently of a series of minus signs stuck in front of attributes that conservatives claim for themselves.

so in conservativeland, and this despite all evidence, folk like ustwo fancy themselves as "having ideas" and so it follows that the inverse, the "liberal" does not....in the end all he is saying is that in conservativeland, other rightwingers are "us" and those who do not agree are not us, or "them"--there is nothing more to it.
there is never much more to ustwo's positions....the same crude procedure is repeated ad infinitum.


the talk format worked pretty well for the right during the clinton period. its central function really was the framing of information around conservative talking points, the collapsing of the latter into the former; the endless repetition of the same memes, the illusion of interaction generated by the call-in segments, the illusion of unanimity as a function of the meager amount of dissenting calls allowed past the screeners---these general features would be streamed toward ends that were often wholly absurd---remember the far right's vince foster paroxyms?---that in the end were little more than radio orwell type group hate opportunities directed not only at clinton but at everyone and everything that opposed the extreme right. strangely, talk radio from rightwingland also benefitted from much wider distrubtion than did any other political media format at the time, conservative paranoid drivel about the "liberal media" not withstanding.

air america was formed to counter this kind of thing, but i think it had a number of problems, not least of which was that air america is not trafficking in an ideology predicated on identification with the "us" with a hallucination of "nation" with the person of the Leader like that which is central to conservativeland, so the other tricks that radioheads like limbaugh worked out to use talk radio as to reinforce a sense of identification were not in place or functional-nor could they have been.

short version: air america was set up AS IF the conservative fantasy about the political context it operated in was an actual description of that context, as a weapon in a trench war against the right that was close to doomed from the outset because it was set up on the wrong strategic grounds.

one thing that the difficulties air america is having demonstrates is the arbitrariness of the conservative construction of american politics beyond ever-shrinking borders of conservativeland.

Whatever. Let me know when you have something substantive to say. I know you think we're all idiots in here, so why don't you enlighten us with your no doubt completely watertight reasoning abilities.

Only to the extent that liberals aren't immune to the love of spoonfed viewpoints. In my own anecdotal experience, there have been plenty of Daily Show viewers whose lack of critical thought mirrored the Hannity/Limbaugh apologists on the other side. That's what I considered his good point.

I do agree that he hasn't given enough creedence to alternate/additional explanations of the bankruptcy, particularly yours.

Welcome to capitalism. Blame what you want, but if people listened to Air America they would have made money. This money would in turn prevent Chapter 11.

No listeners, no advertisements. No advertisements, no money. No money, no talk show.

Say what you want about deregulation, about static, about how evil Fox News is. What it boils down to is no one was interested in listening.

Nothing to see here...


2004

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200504261400.asp

2005
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/001631.htm

2006
http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2006-04-29ba.html

No special theories are needed for why it failed in even the most liberal of areas. No one listened to it, I think the last article really summed it up nicely....

But even hard-core liberals (who make up only about one-fifth of the American electorate, it’s important to remember) must find Air America’s incessant and often moronic Bush bashing monotonous and unentertaining—the kiss of death for talk radio.

There are plenty of more indepth pieces out there (you can all google it yourself I'm sure).

It didn't fail because someone in philly didn't want to put this programming nightmare on the radio, if failed because it was bad radio.

I dont doubt that it failed in part because it was "bad" radio, or the result of bad management, bad business model. technical difficulties, etc.

But to ignore the impact of ownership consolidation is to ignore a legitimate reason in addition to the above.

From a speech by an FCC Commissioner in 2003:
If Clear Channel (or any national media company) owns mulitple stations in a market and receive nearly 1/2 to 3/4 of the ad revenue in the market, doesnt that make access a little difficult for a new venture?

If Clear Channel (or any national media company) makes the programming decisions at the corporate level, doesnt that make access a little difficult for a new venture?

The FCC hid a more recent study on radio consolidation than the one referred to in the above remarks.

http://reclaimthemedia.org/legislati...comes_to_light

Do me a favor and scan your AM channels. This is the region in which the Conservative talk shows are, this is also where (I believe) where Air America is. There are VERY few AM channels in comparison with FM, it's not hard to get access to one of them. It's even easier with deregulation (less government interfereance), not harder. The only hard part is raising the cash for towers and expenses in which every station deals with. Fortunately for Air America, they are not the poor helpless, they have millions upon millions donated by George Soros and other contributers.

This is not David being held down in his fight against Goliath. This is people complaining that they can't sell ice to eskimos during the winter.

I actually agree with this statement. I am a liberal. I don't listen to Air America. It's never held any appeal to me. Personally, when I listen to the radio, I don't want to hear my own viewpoint coming back to me. I want to hear diverse opinions about diverse topics--not just politics.

Usually, though, I just listen to public radio or the college radio station. One of the most interesting things I've heard on NPR in the past few weeks was an interview with former Secretary of State James Baker on Fresh Air about his new book. Another one was an interview on NPR Weekend Edition with a Democratic political consultant and a Republican political consultant about the chances for the Democrats in the upcoming election. Interestingly enough, they agreed that the Dems have a good chance of winning a significant number of seats this fall. A non political topic I found interesting that they discussed on Talk of the Nation was cochlear implants. Even human interest topics have controversy sometimes.

Things like that interest me--not my political platform repeated back to me over and over.