CNN's Reliable Sources, not so Reliable on Air America

[itsrobert]

The host said Air America tried to "buy" entire stations. Actually Air America was "Brokered" on some stations. Air America never owned any stations.

[KharmaTrain]

1. Whorie Kurtz The Grave Dancer...

I had to turn that shill off...his framing of many issues shows his full devotion to "conventional wisdeom" of right wing framing of issues. You are correct, AAR never owned any stations and it was able to weather several financial messes. Its demise is not symbolic of the failure of Progressive talk...far from it...Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller and others are still out there and have advanced the ball. It's failure is endemic of a radio industry in economic collapse...losing a large audience to the internet, satellite and IPODs and downscaling away a lot of great talent. Those who are grave dancing like Whorie should look over their own shoulder...papers are also failing as the economic recession/depression due to Raygunomics and 8 years of booosh has shriveled up advertising...radio now is at the bottom of that food chain. That wasn't AAR's fault.

[democraticinsurgent]

2. Due to media consolidation they never had a chance

They were forced to run on the worst AM stations, while Rush and his ilk got the best signals because the right wing owns the airwaves. Then, if AA stations started to do well, Clear Channel or the other station owners would change the format and dump them. Happened over and over again.

[KharmaTrain]

4. More Case To Revise Or Revoke Telcom '96

That's what turned the public airwaves into a private plantation. You are spot on...the best signals are in the control of corporations that encourage the right wing hate radio that dominates the airwaves. They eliminated local radio, replacing it with cheap programming targeted at one of the few audiences that didn't reject the cookie-cutter formats being forced upon listeners. AAR was limited from the get-go and got caught in a Catch-22 where they were stuck on poor signals that were hard to sell and thus didn't have the money to market to get better ratings and revenues...and in most large markets were locked out of getting on the best signals.

[democraticinsurgent]

5. Telcom 96 will be hard to unravel

Clear Channel treated Air America like a cat toy. In Columbus, OH they gave AA a station which was the crappiest AM frequency in the city, but it still did well. Then they unceremoniously dumped it for a sports format saying that "it didn't do well" even though the ratings were quite good considering.

AA got a second chance in Columbus on a revived signal that had been dark, but the station owner dumped them again.

Not a chance.

Here in Indianapolis, we have two right wing talk stations and two sports stations. They never even tried AA here, even though the owner of one large station group is a big Democrat.

The rich and powerful are not interested in the truth being disseminated.

[Leopolds Ghost]

3. I wouldn't know, ClearChannel killed AAR in DC a whole year ago. No liberal talk radio station in DC

That's right, it's all because "radio is struggling right now." :eyes:

Oh yeah, and Howard Kurtz is a fucking information warfare agent. Bought and paid for by his Republican boss who has driven the Washington Post into the ground.