Air America

Who's been listening to Air America? What do you think?

Explanation for those who are out of the loop?

Air America is the new liberal talk radio network. Two of the on air people are Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo. It is broadcast in a few of the major markets, xm and sirius satellite radio, and can be heard online at Airamericaradio.com.

ahhh.. nifty!

thanks.

It sucks.

O'Reilly is a jerk... but that doesn't mean that the other side has to try to outdo him.

And besides... it... well, it sucks.

I was kinda wondering about that.
(disclaimer: I still haven't heard it for myself)

The idea of a left-wing limbaugh or o'riley doesn't sound much better to watch than the real thing. Is there much more substance to the shows on Air America?

the show's title is a basically a jab in the ribs of o'lielly since he convinced fox to bring the stupid lawsuit against his book for using the copyrighted term "fair and balanced" in the title of his latest book. since parody is protected speech, the lawsuit was laffed out of court and it helped shoot his book up into the bestseller list. i think its a great title, hopefully fox (or o'lielly himself) will sue franken and the publicity will help keep it going.

and really, you ought to listen to the show.. its actually pretty good.

Right. I'm plenty aware of the whole "fair and balanced" deally.

I dunno, when I get a chance, I'll give the show a listen, but that format just tends to do nothing for me.

Could you be more specific? Are they lying like O'Reilly, and just shouting down their guests, or what?

O'Reilly is a populist jerk. O'Franken, while being a typical whiny, illogical left-liberal, actually manages to be funny at times. I only heard his first broadcast and they didn't take many callers. Unfortunately, they don't play down here in Texas and the internet feed blows.

If I had the time to listen to the radio, I would, and if Air America aired in my city, I would, and if I was a raging liberal . . . oh, wait. I am. Well, two out of three.

or . .� one out of . . . three . . . I . . . MATH!

I've been listening - and I like some of the shows better than others. It might be because I listen almost exclusively to member supported radio, but I find there to be a lot of commercials. On top of that, more than half of them are from the US military or the Ad Council - seems like sponsors are wary.

Today I heard G. Gordon Liddy and John McCain was also on. They *are* getting the top guests. It's still all very new though, and I'm waiting for it to find its groove. Sorta like TNG, or something.

The ads I keep hearing are from the US forest service and are about protecting your home against wild fires, a pressing need in New York :-)

its a brand new radio station/service of course advertisers are wary, they also want to see what kind of audience they draw, what kind of demand there is, etc. these kinds of things don't just happen overnight. i've listened to it a fair bit (hard to do it at work and since i don't live in a market where a station is currently operating with its content, i gotta listen over the internet) and find that overall its much better than I had anticipated it would be. in a world that is dominated by right-wing-nuts, its a breath of fresh air, thats for certain, esp. now that NPR has taken a turn to the right. they'll find their groove and hopefully, others will follow.

plus with a show that has a show with the title of the "o'franken factor" how can you not like it?

NPR has taken a turn for the right? I seem to have missed that.
*shrug*
Then again I've always been in the camp that NPR is closer to netural than most of the other outlets. Probably a more left-leaning audience, and the non-news stuff is to the left, but the news has never seem very weighted either way.

Juan Williams and Mara Liasson work for who?

Fox news.

Who is covering democratic events on NPR? I rest my case.

Erm, but Juan Williams has been with NPR longer than Fox and with Mara Liasson has been with NPR even longer (since '85), and has covered the elections since 1992. Even if this was a sign that NPR was shifting to the right, it's aparently been going on for a long time.
If anything, this argument could be used to show that Fox is shifiting to the left.
There's really little argument that Fox is slanted to the right, but that doesn't mean they every single person who works for them slants all of their reports that way.

conflict of interest?

maybe.

slightly.

i dunno.

if i were say working at a place that was supposed to be objective and recieving a paycheck from another organisation that has shown itself ot particularly biased in one direction, how much confidence would you have in my reporting? it wouldn't matter, in my opinion, whether or not you had worked at unbiased news source for X years or X hours.

Hey, I thought you rested your case ;-)

Fox is biased in what it chooses to report, and how it phrases things, but as much as I'd like to paint them as the root of all evil, I don't think they brainwash their corespondents either.

The New York times (and CNN, and just about every other news outlet that isn't Fox) has been accused of being left-leaning. Does that mean that no one should be able to work on one of those and then go work at somewhere "objective" (granted, I think Fox is more heavily right-wing than those examples might be left).
Or, would it show Fox going to the left if they hired an established writer from Salon? Fox is definitly over the top, but it isn't quite the same as right-wing propaganda.

Hell, let's say that they do have a slight bias to the right. Assuming it was balanced by having a left-leaning person covering the republican side, I think that's a better set up than having the left cover the left, and the right cover the right.

(of course, objective reporting is better than either)

Maybe they are looking for a little bit more "balanced" cred in the wake of all the people pointing out what a slanted load of bullshit they are?

I dunno, the O'Franken part? :)

I've heard that they've had to PAY the radio stations they are on to be carried on their stations. Most other major programs in a radio format garner advertising by means of ratings and don't need to pay the stations to air them (other than the access rights).

Most left-wing liberals can't survive in a talk radio format.

Most left-wing liberals can't survive in a talk radio format.

this is such an unbelievable fallocy as to border on ignorance. the main talk radio show station here in seattle, the most popular show on that station that has the prime slot (9am - 12) is a liberal talk show segment. its like saying that because the washington times consistently loses money that right wing news papers could never survive. without a proven audience, you don't have advertisers. jeebus andy, you've worked in industry for long enough to know that most businesses lose money the first few years that they operate. why is that? because you can't just jump from business idea to successful business. if that were the case everyone would be doing it. so they have to pay to have their content on radio statons for the time being. it does not mean that if they have quality content that wouldn't be able to succeed. goodness knows if they were broadcasting in seattle, I'd listen to them.

No liberal talk radio format has ever survived for very long. In Chicago they had a couple of stations which had liberal talk radio. It was even very popular for a year or so, but then it folded because they eventually stopped taking calls for very long, or only put on calls which agreed with them. There wasn't any debate and there wasn't any discussion of events. Why? Because when they started trying to push hard left ideology, they could not defend themselves against callers, could not give good citations and back up what they were saying.

Seattle is an extremely liberal city, so I'm not surprised if the show is popular. How long has it been on the air, and do they actually discuss issues, or do the callers just agree with everything the host says?

dave ross (who is pretty liberal, although centrist on many issues) has been on the air for awhile. he takes calls from everyone. and you're really naive if you believe right wing nut radio takes calls from people with dissenting view points. there is plenty of documentation concerning rush's muting of phone calls that don't agree with him or hanging up on callers, etc etc. not only that, but there is also plenty of documentation that once howard stern started bashing the president (i.e. taking a little more liberal view of things) that his ratings went up, significantly.

so what you're saying is that if a talk radio station is run poorly it folds. i agree with you, the market will definitely decide there.

i know, seattle is really liberal. we don't allow secret spying of citizens, promote fair wages and actually believe in paying for services. not only that, but as a whole washington state puts in more dollars to the federal government than we take out, unlike some states (*cough* idaho *cough*) that complain about big government and then are greedy pigs at the trough. i'd have to look at that map again (it looked an awful lot like the red/blue map from the last election) to see if texas is one of those states that gets more money out of the federal government than it puts it (which wouldn't surprise me). but hey, we're the big government, tax and spend liberals up here. :)

Not familiar with Dave Ross, is he marketed outside of Seattle?

Okay, you stated "right wing nut" radio, not right wing talk radio. There are two hosts here in Dallas which definitely take calls from liberals. I don't like Limbaugh and O'Reilly for that very fact. Boortz, the other really big national host, does take alot of calls from dissenting opinions.

Then again, exactly how many liberals listen to Limbaugh or O'Reilly?

Stern's ratings go up whenever there is controversy, not just because he's bashing the president. If right wing talk radio is so slanted and don't discuss dissenting view points, why does it get such good ratings?

Your last paragraph I won't even respond to except to say I stated that Seattle is a liberal city. Liberal talk radio is naturally going to do better there than here in Texas.

I believe he is, but to be honest, I don't care that much about this argument, so I'm not to expend that much effort in finding out if he is syndicated or not and if so, where. since he's mentioned a couple of times that he's gotten email from oklahoma i'm going to guess he's on a few stations (since kiro doesn't have an internet feed that i'm aware of).

as far as listening to limbaugh or o'reilly, probably not many. sort of futile to listen to someone that doesn't take an opposing viewpoint.

Oh.. and here's that tax map, texas is strangely enough a state that puts in more than it takes out as well..

http://www.taxfoundation.org/sr124.pdf

And yes, it only makes business sense to place your business where it will do well. But because liberal talk radio wouldn't work in texas, doesn't mean that it can't work other places.

I was really excited about it, and I listened online the first day, but I haven't gotten a chance since then. That's partly because the O'Franken Factor comes on too early for me and partly because my dial-up gets a hernia, when I try to listen to streaming audio. I wish I could listen on, like, a real radio, but I live in South Jersey, so I won't be able to until Philadelphia or Atlantic City pick it up.

I'm sure it's all pretty good, but it's Al Franken that I'm most interested in hearing. I love his books like crazy.

aw man. it can only be played on realplayer :/

nah, go to the portland radio site and you can get a non-RP stream. it cuts out a fair bit which I find kind of annoying and goes silent at times when some commericals go on ... but otherwise its alright.

I hate to have liberals sink to the level of the right wing media, but taking the high road hasn't worked, so maybe we ought to accept that this is "class warfare" (as O'Reilly would call it) and start fighting it as such.

i haven't listened in a week or so, due to actually being busy in the middle of the day. but i don't think O'Franken Factor is really "liberals sinking to the level of the right wing media". Al is genial with his guests, and usually fact-based in his criticisms. His humour is sophomoric and that sometimes bugs me -- but that's always been his style and shouldn't be a surprise. He does not come across as a bitter or enraged man, like O'Reilly/Limbaugh and company. And although he's an ideologue he can and does poke fun at his own camp

The late-afternoon host, however, drives me up the wall. Randi Rhodes is her name, and I cannot listen to her because all she does is rant.

I've only heard the "Minority Report" (I think that's its name) with Janeane Garofalo once but I thought it was more ranty and less thoughtful than Franken's show.

I personally like Neil Boortz best, although his unabashed support of the war in Iraq has gotten annoying and I usually tune out when he goes on an on about it though.

He does do a good job of illustrating Kerry's blatant lying and also does take Bush to task for expanding the federal government.

The AirAmerica morning program is called "Morning Sedition" - which is a play on NPR's "Morning Edition." While I think it's more clever than "The O'Franken Factor" I don't think that either is a great idea.

Those names are attention getting, and would be great "nicknames" for ad campaigns while getting the station off the ground, but if AirAmerica is going to grow over the next few years, hopefully into a self-sustaining and even (gasp) profitable business, it shouldn't rely so much on defining itself in the "as opposed to" manner. I know it's Al Franken's "thing" - see Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot - but it gives the radio station an amatuerish feeling.

My sister pointed out that the hosts also don't have their radio chops - things like introducing callers and going to commercial are still sometimes bumpy.

This is an excellent point.

its new. its allowed to be amateurish and to use show names that aren't as professional as its countparts (but they're certainly more inventive than some of the show names I've heard.. like "the dave ross show" or the "dory monson show" or the "rush limbaugh show"...). if the station and its conent become popular/profitable, the corporate whores with their advertising revenue will make sure things are a bit more presentable. I think AL Franken's "thing" is actually far more reasonable than say Ann Coultier's "thing", like labelling all liberals as terrorists (you don't support the president, you're a bunch of unpatriotic .. umm. terrorists) and avocating our execution. Or saying that Joe McCarthy wasn't a bad guy, he was just misunderstood. But, hey, thats just me.

Dude. I like Al Franken's thing. No need for "if you are not with Al, then you are with Ann Coultier."

;-} <----- winky friendly smiley grinny guy means to say that I'm attempting to be lighthearted*.

*description of emoticon represents my investment in putting my message across in an not-vague manner. see note

note: clarification in no way intended to suggest that anyone is incapable of interpreting the semicolon-hyphen-curly-bracket symbols as a classic web vernacular

P.S. Reference to the above mentioned emoticon as a "guy" would usually, by the construct of the English language, refer to a male-gendered being. However, the plural form of the word "guys" can encompass individuals of both (or multiple) genders, as in the phrase "do you guys want to get something to eat?" I have chosen to employ the singular form of this particular understanding of this word. Once I am in the business of representing a human face using symbols, indeed by anthropomorphising this subset of punctuation, I prefer to use a word that uniquely refers to an animate - even if additional discourse will be necessary to unsaddle the word of it's gender baggage.

Afterward: Did I mention that I do like Al Franken?