The Death of Air America

As of 6PM local time here in Los Angeles, Air America Radio, the liberal talk radio network that sought to be the answer to conservative talk superstars like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, will have aired its last program and will permanently cease operations. After years of struggling to find audiences, pay its bills and gain financial backing, the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and will liquidate its assets to pay off its debts.

The official statement from Air America's chairman Charlie Kireker can be found here at the company website and it was covered in the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.

I am not surprised that Air America finally bit the dust. Actually, I am surprised that it was still around.

I listened to Air America on KTLK-AM in Los Angeles occasionally to see what was going on over there. Personally, I heard better rants and snarks from the DJ's back at my old college radio station--and they were drunk. Air America as a whole loved to attack NPR as liberals without backbone. Its single purpose was to bash George W. Bush, then move on to slamming Barack Obama for not being liberal enough, expanding the war in Afghanistan and not bringing "change" as quickly as hoped. Many hosts acted like bratty 45-year-old mean girls who refused to grow up or accept the consequences of their actions because big daddy liberal activist George Soros would always bail them out no matter what.

Yes, they had two shining stars in Al Franken, who is now the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota in the U.S. Senate, and in Rachel Maddow, who now has her own show on cable network MSNBC. But Air America was pretty much doomed from the very start because in their business model, program content and expectations, they didn't know what the heck they were doing. It originally tried to buy its first stations outright, then switched to leased time, then bumped off those stations for not paying its bills. In 2005 it signed a deal with radio giant Clear Channel to carry Air America programs on "progressive talk" format stations, but then got cleared off the dial when the format died in several cities and Clear Channel replaced Air America with its own liberal personalities on the remaining stations.

The impression I had of Air America was that they wanted all of the USA to be just like San Francisco, Santa Monica, Minneapolis, Austin, Miami's South Beach, New York's Greenwich Village, Boston and Washington, DC, and would violently beat us into submission like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad if they could. Heck, they were just as deranged. But the far-left fringe they catered to is actually so small and radical an audience that advertisers wanted no part of it.

NPR, on the other hand, is just as liberal but everything Air America wasn't--mature, calm, open-minded and reasonable, such as the hosts of talk shows "Fresh Air", "Marketplace," and "Talk of the Nation". There is actual news and information talked about on NPR, whereas Air America would make a frat-house prank or joke about the conservative whipping boy du jour and extend it over three hours. And as a result, NPR receives support from corporate donors, foundations and individual subscribers who appreciate the difference.

I used to be a liberal myself in college, and used to love the snarky low-brow humor Air America reveled in. But then two things happened. First, I felt betrayed by President Bill Clinton over his broken campaign promises and steamrolling an agenda far more radical than I voted for. Second, I grew up. Such cheap shots and insults get old after a while, and I have largely given up talk radio altogether because the bulk of it, liberal and conservative, consists of such mean-spirited humor at the expense of others.

Some of my fellow conservatives are complaining that Air America's demise means nothing because liberal talk continues on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC et al, and that even right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Clear Channel are really puppets of a sinister conspiracy to keep "true conservatives" ideologically stoned while "the insiders", under the influence of Satan and the Freemasons, bring us into a one-world goverment and make war plans to defeat God's fundamentalist Christian army in the Battle of Armageddon before President Obama leaves office, since it failed to come about when President Clinton was in office. Sigh... 12-step groups teach us not to even bother arguing with such people, since like alcoholics, they are not in their right minds and speaking under the influence.

Air America is dead, long live NPR. Yay! :D