Oooops
Reuters Business News: Air America Radio files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy – MSN Money — Apparently these guys were losing more money than a dot.com in the heyday!
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Air America Radio, the liberal news and talk radio network whose on-air talent includes comedian Al Franken, on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after talks with a creditor broke down.
The network said it plans to stay on the air while it reorganizes. In a filing with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan, Air America said it lost about $40.9 million since the spring of 2004, including $13.1 million so far in 2006.
I have to say I will miss AIR AMERICA. I am a staunch conservitive but I enjoyed listening to some of the shows they had ( always good to see what the enemy is up to) I found Al Franken very enteraining and one of the few liberals on the network who could actually inteligently argue his point, although I disagreed he did put up a good arguement. I will miss them on my buisness trips to Dallas ( the old air america is now a religeous station in Dallas, now thats karma)
Why cant they go NET wide, insted of radio..
Yah know im sure they would do better as a netcast network that had ads in the it.
I think they will still be on the air for a while. Maybe Soros will bail them out. I understand the concpet of listening to the enemy, but these guys were hard to listen to. Grating.
Anyone who couldn’t see this coming is either really delusional or an investor holding out hope for some kind of return. Guess what; it ain’t happenin’, deal with it.
The sole purpose of the network was to get Bush out of office in November of ’04, and they couldn’t even pull that off. They should’ve called it quits the day after the election, but they pressed on like a bunch of children moping over the fact that they don’t get to go to Disneyland with all of their friends. They willingly accepted money intended to help the elderly and innercity childiren (Google “Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club” if you want to know more) with seemingly no moral qualm whatsoever. They lied to their own employees, telling them they had loads of money in the bank, right up to the moment that their paychecks bounced and their health insurance was cancelled!
As far as I’m concerned, Air America is responsible for its problems. They’ve made their own bed, may they rest in peace in it.
Who cares. Apparently very few wanted to listen to their drivel.
Guess thats one Democrat group that can’t out earn it’s Republican opponents. 🙂
I’ve never understood why, when this country, politically, is 50/50, the Democrats can’t seem to drum up 10% for their radio programs.
I’ve never understood why, when this country, politically, is 50/50, the Democrats can’t seem to drum up 10% for their radio programs.
Too busy listening to rap music, Barbara Streisand and the Dixie Chicks to bother with Franken and his band of lefty losers.
Apparently, one of the issues is that conservatives with their suburbia lives have much longer drive-times, thus they listen to the radio more
Liberals, on the other hand, are more likely to listen over streaming broadband (at work?) or podcast.
But has anyone made real money podcasting? I don’t know.
Thought this would survive…flourish. After all, it’s part of the “liberal media” right?
That always makes me laugh…the “liberal media” that the right wing has thrown out there so much everyone, even people IN the media, spout it all the time. Why do I laugh? Well, I’m an average Joe I suppose, but right off the top of my head I can’t think of any personalities in this liberal media. Well, Al Franklin comes to mind but that’s it. What about the conservative media? OK, again, off the top of my head (so excuse any spelling errors on their names): Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Robertson, O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Pat Bucannan. How come, these people that are in the media, are usually the ones that talk about the “liberal media” yet they’re the only ones I know the name of?
The term “liberal media” was thrown out there so much to get the media themselves to start second guessing themselves…which is why they all laid down and went to sleep after 9/11. They first thought “bah, we’re not a liberal media” but then they started thinking “wait, everyone keeps saying we’re liberal, perhaps we should second guess everything we write to make sure it’s really balanced….maybe we should kill that story or edit that other one…because we don’t want to look liberal”.
Only in the past year or so are they growing their balls back and waking back up.
The bankruptcy is hardly surprising given the questionable financal practices of Air America’s board of directors from the outset. The mainstream media has been largely silent on “loans” given to Air America and whether or not the money (earmarked funds given to charities by the federal and state govts) was actually repaid to the Bronx kid’s charities: http://wizbangblog.com/2005/07/28/air-america-steals-half-million-dollars-from-bronx-kids-charity.php
If this had been a conservative talk radio program the media would have been all over the story. But AA won’t be going away. Like the walking dead it’ll keep going as the left throws more money into it. And there are plenty of charities they haven’t raided yet. 😛
The thing about the venal, conservative conservatives; they do insist on making a profit.
#10… I agree
One service Air America did was to actually be liberal.
Rush Limbaugh and Fox tried to claim they were a counter-balance to the supposedly “liberal” media like New York Times, CNN, ABC etc.
When, in reality, the “mainstream” media is center (or even center-right). Most Americans have not local access to anything truly liberal.
So, it was nice that FINALLY people got to hear what we liberals were saying about ourselves rather than the GROSS MISREPRESENTATION of liberalism by Limbaugh, Fox and the loony toon Ann Coulter.
Well, that was nice while it lasted!
It should also be pointed out that a few shows will probably survive the loss of Air America.
I think that could be Stephanie Miller (who never was affiliated with them) Al Franken and, perhaps, Randy Rhodes.
Sad to hear this. The show was a noble attempt to compete against GOP-TV (Fox News) and the rest of the GOP propaganda machine.
Look:
Fox News didn’t get Clinton out of office (although they helped Bush get in), and that’s a television network. So to smear AA for not getting Bush out ignores the fact that it’s AM radio which next to no one listens to in the first place, not cable television.
AA came into being on the heels of massive drops in radio listenership, the rise of podcasting and online radio (which doesn’t have nearly the advertising model), and had an outdated model from the beginning. Any radio venture at this point that’s not strictly an ad list with a song sprinkled here and there is not going to succeed. AA is as much a victim of the current media environment as it is by its own poor business practices.
And just because it’s filing for bankruptcy doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of it. Much of conservative media is supported by conservative foundations and are perenially money-losers; they get the funding because the point is to get the point out, not to make money. Just look at Richard Scaife’s foundations and where he’s dumped his family empire’s money.
Finally, comparing Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, etc. to the AA staff is ridiculous, precisely because of my first point — comparing television personalities who’ve had a decade to develop their audience over a cable network piped straight into most homes to AM radio personalities who’ve had three years to develop an audience with very limited distribution is like comparing Dvorak to a college newspaper tech column, and then blaming the college kid for not measuring up.
If Air America works its way out of Chapter 11, its biggest hurdle so far may be competing with the new radio network, that is both run by and for women and plans on a progressive format. Advertisers will be falling all over themselves to reach a radio audience with the similar demographics to TV shows like “The View”. Also, it’s a lot harder to avoid supporting a Women’s format that happens to be progressive than one which is just simply to the left politically.
On the more specific issue of Air America faltering financially, they have proved two thing clearly. Democratic financial support, of satellite efforts like Air America, is the 95 pound funding weakling on Limbaugh Beach. If the Dems want to beat the Pubs at their own game they need to find a way to manufacture the success of stations backing their agenda, the same way the right has been doing for a decade. The dozen or so conservative talk shows still on the air today aren’t there because they are so darn good, they are there because they are still funded.
Well that blows.
>Democrats can’t seem to drum up 10% for their radio programs.
The right does well on radio because it’s an alternative to left-wing TV and newspapers. The left already has NPR.
>Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Robertson, O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Pat Bucannan.
Limbaugh is radio, and the others are opinion guys. And how many of these guys could get a job at NBC, CBS, ABC, or even CNN? At the same time, people who worked for Bill Clinton get jobs all over the place, like Stephanopoulos. Think CBS would hire Karl Rove to be their top politics guy? You left out Joe Scarborough.
>what we liberals were saying about ourselves rather than the >GROSS MISREPRESENTATION of liberalism by Limbaugh, Fox and >the loony toon Ann Coulter.
Actually they confirmed the misrepresentation.
I’m not shedding any alligator tears over Air America. The liberals still have ABC, CBS, MSNBC, MTV and CNN for television news and NPR which is paid for by all tax-payers for radio news.
All the non-liberals have is Fox which is owned by a Hillary supporter for television news and gobs of unaffiliated radio stations.
And the liberals cry because they don’t own it all! They’re as arrogant as the Muslims.
Too bad about Air America. The liberals still have ABC, CBS, MSNBC, MTV and CNN for television news and NPR which is paid for by all tax-payers for radio news.
All the non-liberals have is Fox which is owned by a Hillary supporter for television news and gobs of unaffiliated radio stations. And nothing when it comes to entertainment media!
If democrats can’t run a radio station, how can we expect them to run the country?
How long is everyone going to keep pointing fingers at each other while the nation as we have know it collapses around us? If we would spend this much effort trying to figure out how to collectively solve our problems (world wide), we wouldn’t have so much to complain about!
What collapse? The economy and population are growing, and unemployment is falling.
#22 If democrats can’t run a radio station, how can we expect them to run the country?
Comment by Mike — 10/14/2006 @ 8:41 am
By remembering that a decade ago we were run by Democrats and enjoyed the greatest peacetime economic expansion ever… Most chapters about great American successes in the 20th Century begin with words like, “During the term of Democratic President________”
Sadly, all the Democrats today have is memories of past grandeur.
Good riddance. The only thing dummer than this channel were
the 5 people listening to it.
Fox News 1 , Air America 0
If democrats can’t run a radio station, how can we expect them to run the country?
Comment by Mike — 10/14/2006 @ 8:41 am
Oddly enough, republicans are great with radio, but bad at running the country.
>decade ago we were run by Democrats and enjoyed
Links up with the other thread about investing in Democrat-run businesses. Things work if you have Democrat executives with Republicans handling things at lower levels(Congress controlling spending).
For all the talk of no liberal media, how come Mark Foley gets tagged with pedophilia when it’s not even clear he had sex with anyone, while the news story out of the AP talks about Gerry Studds’ ‘error in judgment’ in what was more like date rape.