Five years later: Air America and the mainstreaming of progressive talk

[a kennedy]

from the website LTR


Come noon Tuesday, Air America, the little radio network that could (or couldn't), reaches a notable milestone. After five years, through all the chaos and turmoil, they're still miraculously standing. As is the progressive talk radio format they helped to inspire.

Wait a minute! Air America's still around? I thought they were dead. To believe the hoards of crazy right-wing bloggers, one would think this little ragtag radio outfit was a dismal failure. They're kaput. Dead. Nobody's listening. Obviously, they're lying. Because, believe it or not, this much-derided privately-owned radio network managed the seemingly impossible, in that they've given the middle finger to the naysayers and managed to stay alive for five whole years. And yes, that's quite an accomplishment. Especially if you're Air America.

To salute this rather unlikely success story, I felt it appropriate to take a look into the past, the present and the future, via several blog entries posted over the next few days, and pay tribute to this controversial radio startup, often a lightning rod for friends and foes alike. You may like them, or you may scowl at the very mention of their name. But in terms of what this blog is all about, minimizing their significance is quite short-sighted. Sure, Air America didn't invent liberal talk radio. Then again, the Beatles didn't invent rock n' roll either.

Obviously, there was left-leaning talk before Air America. Perhaps we should go back in history to explain why and how Air America came into being. In the late 1940s, long before something like Air America was even imaginable, a non-profit organization, Pacifica, was founded with a somewhat similar aim in mind, albeit in a more cultural, less soapbox-like kind of way. In the late 1960s, free-form rock stations emerged on the then-obscure FM dial, complete with left-leaning disc jockeys free to express their views on politics and the emerging counterculture in between long music sets featuring artists like Bob Dylan and The Doors expressing views on the the same issues via their songs. Talk radio was then a novelty on AM, compared to today. Most AM stations still played music. But the talk stations that did exist were locally-oriented and featured a variety of views and opinions.

full article: http://ltradio.blogspot.com/2009/03/five-years-later-air-america-and.html

[doc03]

1. Air America is still around, like where? I can get it

on XM at work but the shows I hear are just about as anti-Obama as the Repugs.

[KharmaTrain]

2. A Very Well Done Article

I'll admit, I'm surprised that AAR made it this far. It's had a very rough go in a radio world extremely hostile to independent operators and thought in a time when the industry was imploding under its own greed and stupidity. In many ways, the network succeeded despite itself, but it still stands...barely...and served a very valuable purpose as a rallying point in the slow march towards Democrats gaining first the House and Senate and then the Executive.

That said...AAR has a big mountain to climb from here. Jones has now become the leading Progressive radio purveyor and the Greens continue to funnel their own money to keep the place going. Radio deregulation could be AAR's salvation, but there appears to be no urgency by the Obama administration to move in this direction.