Do us a favor. Keep Air America on the air!

Posted by The Masher at 5:37 PM on October 31, 2006.

One of the reasons it would be a mistake to let Air America Radio (AAR) fade away, or get into the hands of corporate suits with no politics, or suitors more interested in themselves than a powerful progressive voice, are the numbers.

Numbers of course speak louder than words, but these numbers speak volumes:

Rush Limbaugh: 13.5 million listeners
Sean Hannity: 12.5 million listeners
Michael Savage: 8.25 million listeners
Dr. [sic] Laura Schlessinger: 8 million listeners
Laura Ingrham: 5 million listeners

Do the math: 47.5 million estimated minimal audience weekly for conservatives. And the billions of progressive dollars out there, and we can't even keep one progressive talk station going? So what if it cost $10 million a year to keep it thriving-- that's the monthly interest for some of the wealth on our side. It would be worth it. The ripple effect is huge, and Air America never got its web presence down-- a sure source of growth in the future. But Air America was never meant to be a vanity project; it is a viable business, that aims to harness the progressive marketplace, something that has yet to be effectively tried. And it takes some time.

One of the problems is that many of our investors and intellectuals, even this writer, don't have much use for talk radio. Too shrill, to repetitive. But it is not about us. It is about a progressive media ecology. For progressives to successfully fight conservative and corporate media requires us to have effective assets in different media ourselves. We must have a shrill voice to compete with the jackasses on the other side... who are, by the way, gloating at the mess that is Air America Radio. And anyway, ours doesn't have to be quite as shrill as theirs.

As Doug Kreeger, one of AAR's original investors and former CEO says:

"We cannot change the climate in this country if we do not have a strong alternative to the vast power the conservatives enjoy in the mass media. While many in the radio business view AAR as merely a format, it is a necessary information network that acts to counterbalance the disequilibrium created over the last twenty years through deregulation of the media and the ascension by the conservative to the point where they dominate the airwaves in every conceivable fashion."

We need progressive talk and no one understands that better than Tom Hartman, one of the more effective and clever progressive radio voices, with a show currently on Air America.

He offers a lesson in losing money and gaining influence:

"There are times when doing the profitable thing is also doing the right thing. That's certainly what Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch thought when they lost an average of $90 million a year for about five years before the Fox News Channel became profitable. It's what Reverend Moon believes, as his Washington Times newspaper lost hundreds of millions of dollars and, according to some reports, even today continues to lose money."

Rupert Murdoch's investment in Fox News not only produced profits for him, it changed America. As Richard Morin noted in The Washington Post on May 4, 2006, in an article titled "The Fox News Effect": "Fox News convinced 3 to 8 percent of its audience to shift its voting behavior towards the Republican Party, a sizable media persuasion effect."

Similarly, Air America Radio may have had a significant effect in awakening people across the United States to positive liberal alternatives to the conservative vision of Fox and Bush. In a democracy, which depends on a vital and ongoing exchange of free ideas for its survival, this is essential.

It's a tragedy that for the lack of investors the size of Rupert Murdoch, Air America is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But its existence and ongoing presence in the marketplace is an essential part of the dialogue that is known as democracy.

Tagged as: radio, air america, progressive

The Masher reveals inner secrets and social linkages, while exposing the media misbehaviors of the corporate bad guys.