I was a little surprised to hear that Air America was going off-air this week. I didn't even realize they were still around.It shouldn't come as a shock to anybody,really.
From the inception, this was a big FAIL.
What the creators of Air America failed to understand is that broadcasting, be it radio or otherwise, is a business first, entertainment second, and a source information/opinion placing somewhere even further down than that.
('Third' would be too high in importance, but i don't know what the hell would come before it).
This network was designed all backward. They wanted to be the left-wing response to right-wing talk radio. This was Priority One for them. FAIL is the natural result of any economic endeavor when profits are not Priority One.
Next, they lined up some meatheads they thought were funny; a few comedians and the like that may have made a living elsewhere, but these were not broadcast trained talent.
Broadcasting is a skill set. Not all have it. Not all can be taught to have it.
Air America ended up casting a talentless flock of dunderheads with little sense of timing who seemed not to know how to use a microphone.
Lastly, they offered no argument or rebuttal. Lot's of name calling and charges of 'they just don't get it', but no reason or clue of what it was 'they' didn't get. Maybe a coherent explanation of any issue would have helped? I tried to listen to several of Air America's hosts, and got nowhere.
Pity the loyal liberal who was trying to arm himself with debating points only to be left with little more than "Yeah, well Bush is Hitler".
About the only new insight to be gleamed was that liberals were not only mistaken in their ideas, but seriously off their meds.
Air America's creators were not wise enough to know how talk radio got to be tilted to the right, didn't know how to make a profit, and thought that agenda topped product when the product should have been the agenda.
8 comments:
Wow, I missed this whole thing. Pretty sure this is the first I'm hearing about this radio station. When I saw the title I thought you were talking about radio we shoot out to foreign countries or something.
Never heard of it. Seriously!
I don't think Air America failed because of its politics; they failed because it was a dumb business model. It was a mistake to think that someone could reproduce the success of Rush et al. by simply producing a lefty version of the same thing. Conservative talk radio was successful because it came at a moment when it was filling a perceived gap in the marketplace. Outside of the WSJ and the odd token columnist (Safire, Will) there just wasn't a lot of representation of conservative viewpoints in the mainstream media.
Air America was never in direct competition with Rush, they were in competition with NPR, the NY Times, the Washington Post, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc., etc. Not to mention that when Rush started there was basically no internet. I'd be willing to bet that the typical Rush listener is over 60 and has been listening for 20 years. The younger demographics are much, much more fragmented in terms of their (our) media consumption.
RW: wiki it. i'm shocked that you been unaware. it was quite newsworthy when it launched.
brian: rush spoke of things that other people were saying among themselves that were never presented in the media. that was the key to his success.
firts time i heard him, he was talking smack on ted kennedy, chappaquidk et al...
i was amazed. this was the stuff i only heard at home.(and my family was ethnic-blue collar-democrat-catholic, ie kennedyish people) kennedys were always sacred figures when presented in the media, and at school
Honestly never knew about it. I don't like advocacy "news" anyway. I don't listen to the bloviating bullshit artists of the Right, why should I listen to the bloviating bullshit artists of the Left?
I don't think AA came even close to duplicating Limbaugh's show; they got a bit of bombast and some shocking rhetoric right, but they always simply bludgeoned the listener instead of getting the "light touch" of telling a joke.
(like when Rush simply waits and taps his fingers while waiting for the audience to get his drift)
You can see the problem for Air America in any Al Franken skit from SNL; he was occasionally funny, but it was always the bludgeon. That doesn't work on radio.
You didn't miss much, RW. But I'm guessing you already knew that.
Brian, I don't think the average Rush listener is 60. Based on what I know, his demographic is a lot younger than that. And growing. Obama is good for business, just like Clinton was.
2112 was a good album...
Were they thinking of Al Gore Jr when they wrote Red Barchetta?
oh, wait, that's a different Rush listener, nevermind.
But Rush, the band, did predict Air America with their album "Fly By Night." Eerie.
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