Air America Goes Silent: Why?

Nobody listened. Simple. Not enough listeners to support ad time.

If their mission was to defeat GB, that is a pretty narrow mission that is now outdated.

Corporations are pragmatists. If it makes money for them, I don’t think they really care about the politics of those who buy their products. Money talks loudest.

It makes more sense to advertise on whichever stations will reach the largest audience.

Thats just the unfortunate reality for Air America. I’m not really sure why the audience for a progressive station is so diminished, but I don’t think it’s realistic to blame big money corporations for doing what their raison d’être mandates, namely, to make money for their shareholders.

Maybe liberals are tuned into conservative programming, obsessed with picking it apart and sifting for conspiracies and such.

Money. Liberal radio is by nature boring and doesn’t make money. Good times…good times.. I listen to NPR all the time but it but it kind of lacks the inflammatory edge of “conservative” radio hosts who fear the demise of everything sacred. Their loyal listeners lap it up like pablum as well as their “family values” sponsors
But for my enjoyment I listen to Howard. Now that’s radio.

what? I listen to lionel- don’t know his last name- I hear lots of liberal radio – hehe @SeventhSense I listen to coast 2 coast and have to wake up to put on npr so I don’t have to listen to ‘focus on the family’ on sunday mornings gag

Liberals don’t need idiots telling them how to think. That, and it was boring as hell.

@trailsillustrated
But there’s always Pete Schweddy

It was terrible programming. I loved the Al Franken show, but he quit that quite a while ago.

Now I listen to Ed Schultz when I need my fix. I’ve always loved Big Ed.

I don’t know, it is now the American Left on XM. That is the only way that I ever got them. Most of the Air America people have better things to do than sit at the kitchen table and listen to the radio while polishing their guns.

@missingbite & @SeventhSense Yeah, I didn’t listen either.

@Buttonstc That sounds right to me … erm, correct to me

@Ivan Ha! Two great points. Lurve sent.

@trailsillustrated & @Mamradpivo Glad to hear there is audience out there. MSNBC is doing fairly well on TV too.

@Ron_C I haven’t even bothered to get XM. Maybe I should.

I too listen on XM. I don’t think it died because of lack of an audience. From what I’ve heard Air America had a decent number of listeners. The problem was one of sponsorship. Corporate America refused to buy airtime. You can’t keep a network going forever with PSA’s.
I just hope Thom Hartmann continues his show. As for Ed Schultz… you can have him.

Conservative talk radio is based in anger, it really taps into the Conservative movement. Basically, rich old white guys who remember a time when they owned the world and could do whatever the fuck they wanted are seeing society level out and try to put all of humanity on an even footing. Problem with that is, it means that some of their power, which they’ve come to see as a birthright as an American, gets taken away in the interest of creating more equality and equity in our society. People don’t like to lose things they’ve already obtained, and that pisses them off. So, they listen to talking heads who provide them with a steady dose of scapegoats for all that ails them in the world today. It taps into this anger, this sense of disaffectedness that is a driving force behind much of the modern Conservative mindset. And since it’s based entirely on opinion, it doesn’t have to be legitimate, truthful or make any sense to connect with the listeners, it just has to be persuasive, and when one is angry, one is more willing to accept an answer, ANY answer.

Liberal talk radio was nothing like that. Liberals tend to make arguments that they feel are fair, they constrain themselves with rules that a Conservative talking head would scoff at. So, even though the talk on Liberal talk radio may have been more substantive and more fact based, it wasn’t as effective at tapping into Liberal anger. The only way to really make Liberal talk radio work would be to throw out the playbook and play on the same terms as the Conservative talk radio hosts…throw logic and fact out the window and just have people throwing out any number of whack job conspiracy theories, anything to stoke the fires of Liberal hatred towards Conservatives. But Liberals don’t play that game as well, and what they opted to do instead was to take the concept of NPR and augment it with Liberal opinion. But people looking for news and information like they’re likely to find on NPR are really more in the market for the facts, they don’t really want someone’s opinion being forced down their throat, what they like about NPR was it’s neutrality, and fact based reporting.

So, what have you got? You’ve got a radio station which doesn’t tap into the audience seeking substantive facts, because they already have a well established and highly superior source for that type of talk radio which does NOT embellish with opinion. And you’ve got a radio station which conversely does not offer enough opinion to stoke the flames of the hard core, pissed off Liberals the way Conservative talk radio fans the flames of the hard core, pissed off Conservatives.

Plus, it didn’t help that at least in my market it was on AM radio. Who the fuck listens to AM anymore?

@dalepetrie good answer. I am one of those that listen to liberal talk radio. Stephanie Miller has a morning show in syndication and is on American Left on XM. I liked her so much that I signed up on here website to catch programs I missed. The one thing about her show is that it is very funny. She and her crew look through daily events and point out the ridiculousness of some of the ultra-conservative positions. She is sort of a John Stewart of the radio.

I think that there was a great fear, among comedians, that they would be short of material when Bush left office. Then Cheney, Beck and Limbaugh, the three stooges of the right stepped up to the plate. It’s great, they make Bush look smart and provide fodder for comedians on the left.

OK wait no LURVE for Schweddy Balls?
Only the funniest bit ever about public radio on SNL. If you’ve never seen it well worth the wait.

@dalepetrie The real irony of what you say is that the old white guys who are the conservative base are not actually loosing their power to diversity and dark-skinned interlopers as they think. In the 32 years since Ronald Reagan took office and launched trickle down economics, the wealthiest 1% of Americans have doubled their share of the nation’s wealth. While they have been constantly howling about redistribution of wealth, thinking all the nation’s treasure is going to lazy welfare moms, the flow has actually been going in the opposite direction, creating a defacto oligarchy that increasingly buys the government they want.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision by the conservative gang of 5 puts the final nail in the coffin lid most of these conservatives built for themselves by letting anger and distrust of book larnin [sic] con them into buying Reaganomics. A rising tide may lift all boats, but human beings aren’t boats. A rising tide sooner or later drowns all but the most powerful swimmers. .

@Ron_C – I listened to Stephanie Miller a few times, I agree her show was quite engaging, glad to hear she’s got another gig.

@ETpro – I agree with you about the irony that they’re not losing anything, but they THINK they are, and they’re angry about it.

@ETpro won’t the conservatives be surprised when they find themselves in the same coffin as the rest of us? I got XM because I travel a lot and am out of range of local stations in the first half hour after leaving town. I used to listen to radio preachers because they would piss me off so bad that I had no trouble falling to sleep while driving. Now I can listen to some intelligent talk and great music, even a couple comedy channels. Satellite radio is the best invention since the GPS.

@dalepetrie No they actually are. Real income for the average American is down over the last decade. That’s the first time that’s ever happened since WWII. And it is happening because the increasingly regressive tax system is transferring wealth, all right, but it’s going to the wealthy. When you are talking about wealth distribution, you are not talking about an infinite sum equation. That’s a zero sum equation. The wealthiest 1% owned about 25% of everything back in 1980. That left 75% for the rest of us to divvy up. As their share has grown, our share to divvy up has necessarily shrunk in proportion.

They are rightly called cons not because it is short for Conservative or because they are conning people but because the majority of them, the right-wing authoritarian followers are being conned by their authoritarian leaders. They see their grasp on wealth slowly dwindling and, at the orders of their Robber Baron bosses, turn around and shoot the guys who are getting robbed even more than they are.

@ETpro you have it exactly right. Conservative capitalist see our economy as infinitely growing. The forget that the only way to CREATE wealth is through manufacturing and mining. Everything else is just moving money around. Their solutions have been to mine for foreign oil and minerals while moving manufacturing overseas. They obviously are unable to look long range at the big picture.

What will they have when they have accumulated the majority of Americans wealth? Just another really big third world country. What do they care, virtually all of the large corporations are internationally owned. When they deplete a country, they just move their closed compounds to a more pleasant environment. Americans had no problem when it was them that were accumulating and moving. Now what happens?

@Ron_C Bingo. That’s the game in a nutshell.

Thanks @ETpro, this is one of the times I wish I was wrong.