The Right might want to hold off on gloating over Air America's demise
January 21, 2010 5:46 pm ET by Jamison Foser
With today's announcement that Air America is shutting down, I'm sure it'll only be a matter of minutes before conservatives start gleefully insisting that this demonstrates that there is no market for liberal news outlets.
Two quick points to keep in mind:
1) You can either claim that ABC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC/NBC/NPR/NYT/WAPO/ETC are "liberal media," or that there is no market for liberal media -- but not both. Please pick one.* Thanks!
2) The Washington Times has been losing money for two decades. In the early days of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch paid cable companies $11 per subscriber to carry FNC (and Rudy Giuliani pressured Time Warner to carry the outlet in New York City.) Point being: conservative media outlets have succeeded not only because of market forces, as conservatives would have you believe, but because right-wing billionaires like Murdoch and Rev. Moon have been willing to subsidize them.
* Or neither. That works, too.
http://www.businessinsider.com/air-america-is-bankrupt-2010-1
I'll take the former for 100 Alex...
what a great 24 hours. First MA, and now Air America is gone.
You also said you would wait for me to come back and congratulate you on the Health care bill....first you said in Nov, then Dec....looks like you will be waiting a longgggg time.
Cheers
MA. is gone? And I didn't even see it on the news.
Pretty soon there will be only one voice of opinion. The reich-winged voice. Forget equality. Liberals and Progressives has been deemed evil by the radical right since the signing of the Constitution.
They will be on mission after this news announcement.
Just listen to any local Hate Jock, and tell me that they succeed because of the quality of their content. Sorry, but I don't see any evidence to support that notion.
I listened to the single station here in Southern California that carried Air America programming as well as other liberal shows, but just when I was driving, or on the computer while working sometimes.
The target demo for daytime am radio - the unemployed, retired, unemployable, shut-ins, people who like a lot of repetition and simple answers- are mostly right wing types.
With the SC move today, giving corporations even more power compared to individual Americans, the corporate media may become even stronger. And the idiots who support them to their own detriment will gloat and cheer that they're being screwed even more than before.
God forbid that Americans be allowed to speak their minds, Cleghorn. The error of your thinking is that if the government has the authority to prohibit the political speech of corporations (owned by those evil, greedy shareholders) or non-profits, it has the power to prohibit your political speech as well. Which I might be in favor of, but you might not like too well. I think the Bill of Rights addressed that very idea somewhere...
I don't think anybody was doubting that, but thanks for volunteering to prove me right.
And I realize the Bill of Rights is one of those things you wingnuts like to talk about more than you like to try to understand, but if you think the founding fathers mentioned "the people" more than once in that document, and just forgot to mention corporations, you're a perfect subject for what's coming; more corporate propaganda designed to get suckers like you to vote Republican.
Did you even think about this before you posted?
Ever hear about some guys in Boston a couple hundred years ago chucking tea overboard? Tea belonging to a corporation wielding disproportionate power with the British government ?
Do you know that corporations were originally forbidden from making political contributions, or that it was intended that they would only exist for a short time before being dismantled?
Do you know Jack sh*t, or do you just repeat whatever your trainer on the am radio tells you?
Don't bother me with your stoopid. Moran.
The problem with liberals is that they don't believe in freedom or liberty. They think that the 'masses' are just stoopid morans who can't figure out liars and charlatans. So, in their greathearted goodness, they feel it is their duty, their noblesse oblige, to protect the poor ignorant hoi polloi from their own ignorance.
It's just arrogant horsesh!t.
Do you know Jack sh*t, or do you just repeat whatever your trainer on the am radio tells you? Oh wait, your trainer went bankrupt! Sorry about that.
Thats ok, all you Communists still have NPR. No gloating necessary however. It's satisfying enough knowing you traitors only make up 20% of the populace.
The success of conservative media outlets is a function of the type of people on the right rather the number of them.
This is how the free matket works. Stuff that people don't like fails.
FOXNEWS HANNITY 6,809,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 6,399,000
FOXNEWS O'REILLY 5,228,000
FOXNEWS BECK 3,446,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 3,338,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 3,241,000
CNN KING 1,681,000
CNN COOPER 1,508,000
CNN BROWN 1,308,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,274,000
MSNBC MADDOW 1,236,000
CNN BLITZER 1,135,000
CNNHN BEHAR 845,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 798,000
Air America is a good example of the kind of stupidity that liberal/progressives often use in their approach to business. You could call it Zombieconomics. Air America tried to fill a niche that wasn't there. It was ill-conceived, ill-managed, and ill-mannered. The commentary seemingly consisted of name-calling and profanity, it never attained to humor.
AA was an abysmal failure from the get-go, and predictably so. Anyone could pretty much predict that a bunch of arrogant, whiny, unpatriotic, sniggering statists might not be a big hit. Unless, of course, you were one of them - one of the three hundred or so who listened to AA at its zenith.
There, now you know the real story. Yours was cute, though.
Most new businesses fail. And if a business is started by a group of people who do not have a strong background in the field, the likelihood of failure is almost certain.
It's a shame. But I think that the left can develop a new model for liberal programming, as witnessed by the efforts of Mike Malloy, Thom Hartman, Stephanie Miller, Randi Rhodes, and (I hope very soon) Ron Reagan will join them. There also are experiments with internet transmission by noted commentators such as Danny Schechter and Jeff Farias.
It's important to look at the Nuevo Cancion of Victor Jara and others in Chile, the street and small-theater groups of earlier decades, coffee-house singers, "Movemet" singers and dance groups, and remember that people who are committed to providing cultural, analytical or organizing support for left or progressive politics usually aren't in it to get rich. If they want to get rich, they can go work at Rupert Murdoch's Whorehouse. If they want to save the country, or maybe the world, ingenuity, fundraisers, lower salaries, and as I have suggested before, a Media Trust to fund a wide variety of projects, is likely required.