HA HA!!
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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| And then there was one: Air America Hits Bottom |
| 2004-04-22 |
| Via Right.thinking.com Despite a court order to return the all-liberal radio network to Chicago, it appears the Windy City won’t have Air America by the end of this month, leaving New York City as the sole Top 10 market for the fledgling company. The Chicago Tribune reports Air America will cease broadcasting over WNTD-AM in Chicago April 30, and will remain off the air for now in Los Angeles, where it was yanked from KBLA-AM last week by station owner Multicultural News Radio. Los Angeles and Chicago are the nation’s No. 2 and 3 media markets respectively, according to ratings service Arbitron. Besides No. 1 market New York, Air America’s next largest region is No. 16 Minneapolis, with other affiliates in Portland, Ore., Riverside, Calif., West Palm Beach, Fla., Key West, Fla., Chapel Hill, N.C.,and Plattsburgh/Burlington on the New York-Vermont border. Programming also can be heard on XM Satellite Radio as well as the Internet, and the company says "coming soon" markets include No. 4 San Francisco. Air America features liberal personalities including comic and author Al Franken and actress Janeane Garofalo, and was floated as an alternative to conservative radio talent such as Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity. And the idea did float; like a turd in a punch bowl... As WorldNetDaily reported last week, the network was silenced in both L.A. and Chicago during a payments dispute with Multicultural Radio, which alleged Air America had bounced checks, a charge strongly denied by the liberal network. They have money for lawyers but not to pay their bills. Funny that... A Chicago source familiar with the situation told the Tribune "a Multicultural representative showed up at WNTD’s offices, ... kicked out Air America’s lone staffer overseeing the network’s feed to the station from New York, switched over to a Spanish-language feed, and changed the locks on the doors." Air America has since won a court order to return it to the air in Chicago, but yesterday said that it would stop broadcasting on WNTD at the end of this month as it reached a deal with Multicultural. "We are pleased that we reached a negotiated settlement," said David Goodfriend, executive vice president of Air America, in a brief statement. "We’ve been vindicated," Gene Heinemeyer, general manager of Multicultural’s New York stations told the Tribune. "It was a dark day in radio for what they did." Air America isn’t giving up on Chicago, however, and is reportedly in preliminary talks with another station, WONX-AM. Certified funds or a cashier’s check this time I bet... "If their money is green and there’s enough of it, OK," station owner Frank Kovas, a self-described political conservative, told the Tribune. Industry analysts say Air America definitely has an uphill battle in reaching financial success in broadcasting. "The liberal talkers are not only battling the conservatives for air time, they are up against the sports talkers, on-air counselors, medical advisers, computer talk geeks and so on," writes Jeffrey McCall, professor of communication arts and sciences at DePauw University in Indiana. "This is a tough party to crash." Trust the smartest interviewee, the intellectual, to get it wrong. Trying to get a widespread audience for an ideology that is anathema to the entire economic structure of the radio industry. Smarmy, lame jokes, sentimentalism, environmentalism, mentalism. I haven’t even named a tenth of the amount of baggage they haul onto the airwaves. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #7 hay that prity good jack i have no nack for the hiaku unless i can use em dash then it real easy |
| Posted by: HalfEmpty 2004-04-22 7:20:09 PM |
| #6 Air America Hating Capitalism Whimpers like a bitch! Woohoo! My first Haiku! |
| Posted by: Jack Deth 2004-04-22 2:31:18 PM |
| #5 Who thought the infomercial model for spreading their opinions was a good idea anyway? They should have created shows and then tried to syndicate them out. They could have been in far more markets a lot faster, of course the shows would then have to compete. I guess that's the rub isn't it. Does anyone know if a commercial-free radiostation gets the rated by the same viewer/numbers neilson system? |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2004-04-22 1:22:26 PM |
| #4 this is not funy! we are run out of money chainey behind this alla ackbar! |
| Posted by: muhamud4doo 2004-04-22 12:33:09 PM |
| #3 im still say the blog do good hiaku i tried but my muse left about same time as bong |
| Posted by: HalfEmpty 2004-04-22 10:57:11 AM |
| #2 Air Amerika has been a great success for the CONSERVATIVES! The Libs have trotted out there 'best' face and have pretty much fallen on it. After all the hoopla of the 'first day' not much has become of the gang over at AA. I listened to two shows on different days and I couldn't handle more than five minutes. The koolaid crowd might lap that stuff up but few mainstream Americans will listen to their hatefest. However since they are paying to broadcast they have become an 18-hour infomercial for the left wingers. Must cost a ton to pay for that much air time! |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2004-04-22 10:40:22 AM |
| #1 HA HA!! |
| Posted by: Yosemite Sam 2004-04-22 10:32:16 AM |