Air America: A Dead Horse

Fire of Liberty

Brian C. Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives, has a wonderful column in The Los Angeles Times on why Al Franken and the other fellows at Air America are currently in the ratings cellar and probably will stay their well into the future. It seems that talk radio has drifted to the right because it offers a medium to people who want to hear Rush say what they want to say but don't have the energy or the time to articulate what El Rushbo does so gracefully. As a consumer of talk radio, I prefer to listen to a pro-American broadcast that doesn't shrink to the blame America first crowd, who emerged shortly after September 11th 2001 and have tooted their horn ever since. Even the people at NPR never drop to the level that the "Michael Moore and George Soros is right" hosts that Air America broadcasts everyday. To truly understand the reason why Rush & Hannity rule the AM airwaves and Air America is gasping for air, just read these paragraphs by Anderson:

Yet even if we were to grant the premise that conservative talk radio can sometimes be crudely simplistic - a tough charge to make stick against, say, onetime philosophy professor Bennett or Clarence Thomas's former law clerk Laura Ingraham - how can anyone plausibly believe the right has a monopoly on misleading argument? Moreover, talk-show fans aren't dummies. Industry surveys show that talk-radio fans vote in greater percentages than the general public, tend to be college educated and read more magazines and newspapers than the average American. Successful talk radio is conservative for three reasons:

• Entertainment value. The top conservative hosts put on snazzy, frequently humorous shows. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication, observes: "The parody, the asides, the self-effacing humor, the bluster are all part of the packaging that makes the political message palatable." Besides, the triumph of political correctness on the left makes it hard for on-air liberals to lighten things up without offending anyone.

• Fragmentation of the potential audience. Political consultant Dick Morris explains: "Large percentages of liberals are black and Hispanic, and they now have their own specialized entertainment radio outlets, which they aren't likely to leave for liberal talk radio." The potential audience for Air America or similar ventures is thus pretty small - white liberals, basically. And they've already got NPR.

• Liberal bias in the old media. That's what birthed talk radio in the first place. People turn to it to help right the imbalance. Political scientist William Mayer, writing in The Public Interest, recently observed that liberals don't need talk radio because they've got the big three networks, most national and local daily newspapers, and NPR.

Yep, Air America is losing tons of blood and don't realize that Liberal Radio is a financial bust in a nation that has Rush Limbaugh and his 15 million a week audience. They're in such a horrible state for numbers that Air America has retained Jerry Springer to the airwaves. When you start asking for Jerry Springer to bring in the listeners, you are probably on you last leg. Maybe they should stop a look around and realize that the reason why they haven't gone far is that their Liberal Radio horse died.