- Listen to Air America
I must admit, it pains me to see how Air America is slowly but surely becoming more or less irrelevant. Several years ago, when I was trying to find interesting AM radio stations to listen to, I came across radio stations such as the “Head On Radio Network”, a channel I found through the iTunes radio listings. These stations would either have their own shows, or they would syndicate shows from other talk shows hosts such as Thom Hartmann, Ed Schulz, The Young Turks, and many others. If you’ve been following liberal talk radio, you know that some of these talk shows hosts have gone way beyond their radio shows and now have either national exposure through various Satellite Radios stations, or they’ve even been picked up by some of the Major networks, as is the case with Rachael Maddow and Ed Schulz, both having been with Air America before their move.
During the height of the past Bush Administration, which gave conservative talk shows hosts around the nation justification for their hate speech, Air America was a beacon of hope, as corny as it may sound. When I first started listening to talk radio back on my college days and delivering pizza, the only thing I could ever find on the AM dial was rush and a few other local talk shows. There was certainly nothing to be found on the radio that would represent some kind of liberal alternative to Rush and his cohorts, not counting NPR here since they’re on the FM dial.
s certain talk show hosts were already familiar to me, I was very pleased to find out about Air America and the launch of their website and with it a national network of affiliates. To this day, the coverage in Cities around the United States fluctuates, and you can’t get Air America everywhere like you would be able to do with for example Rush Limbaugh. Another thing that had me thrown off with them was the fact that the shows and content they streamed on their website, often didn’t reflect what you could listen to on your radio. If for examle I was listening to Air America radio via the internet at 12:00PM EST time, I might hear talk show host A, but if you were to go to your AM dial and find your local Air America affiliate, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to listen to the same talk show host. In addition to that, you would even sometimes hear talk shows on the AM dial, that you would never hear on the website. Mike Malloy is a great example for that. First, Air America kicked him off the station since he was too drastic with his comments. Where I agree that his retoric is harsh at times, I find in no harsher than the retoric of someone like Michael Savage, who runs a hate based radio show out on the West Coast. To see some examples of the outrageous things he says on his show, visit Media Matters who do an excellent job of keeping track of what people in the media are saying.
Months went by, and it didn’t take long before the line up so its first changes. I understand that with a such a new network, not all of talk show hosts would be perfect fits right off the bat and with certain shows I even applauded changes. Al Franken was one of the first “big names” to have been part of the show host line up and where I think he’s an extremely good comedic writer and overall a very hillarious kind of guy, I thought the radio show came across way to politically cocky. I felt that it never took into consideration that not everyone listening was seeing the world as clearly as Franken and for that matter I myself do as well but the constant laughing at the stupidity of the Republicans although they were taking the country for a ride, with shows such as Franken’s certainly barely putting a dent into the Republican reign, I thought he just sounded to sure of himself and I think this showed when he broadcasted. So when Franken moved on to start his political career in Minnesota, I was actually rather happy since I felt there were better talk shows hosts than him. I actually had Thom Hartmann in mind for years before he even came to Air America, simply because he’s one of the very few peole I hear in the media that are truly asking all the right questions. He’s liberal and extremely well educated on our history and what the elements and their history are that have kept this country running since its inception.
- Host Cenk Uygur
So as time went on, the line up started to change more and more. Where Jerry Springer and Al Franken were part of the original line up, other smaller names in the radio industry slowly started to make their way on to the Air America stage, one of these shows being “The Young Turks”. A show that I believe is intuitive in terms of its approach and focus is very unique in what it delivers. They were also a show I had heard about on AM radio and again I was very happy to see them become part of the Air America morning line up. Their show is hip, their show is different and I believe it brought a real sense of radio cultural diversity to the network. Unfortunately in December of 2007, the network decided to drop the Young Turks and their radio show which I thought was one of the first steps backwards that Air America has made. Again, I understand that some shuffling of the players had to be done, but after a certain time period I started to feel like you couldn’t even really get used to a certain show, before they were again moved somewhere else or abandoned completely.
When it comes to talk radio, I’ve found that most talk show hosts require a certain amount of time to get into. Where I thought “wtf is Jerry Springer” doing talk radio at first, after listening to his show a few times I had to admit that his content wasn’t really that bad. I didn’t miss him when he left, but his show wasn’t a completely waste of time in most cases. In the case of the Young Turks the loss hurt Air America but as with other talk shows that bring their audience, website, etc they were able to continue on their indepdent path of producing their own radio shows with a very heavy focus on Youtube videos. The host himself has also been featured with various blog posts on the Huffington Post, so he brings a certain amount of name recognition and followers with him and recently he’s also been seen on MSNBC in various shows. An example clip is shown below.
Air America have had so many different shows in various time slots that I’m having a hard time remembering them all. There were Randi Rhodes, Mark Maron, Sam Seder and many others who I thought delivered some exceptional content on average. I’m pretty sure Sam Seder has something to do with Air America’s operations on the backend, he’s definitely not heard on any show anymore. When Rachael Maddow got her show on Air America, I thougth she was one of the better contributions to the media landscape and listening to Randi Rhodes followed by Rachael Maddow definitely gave you the inside scoop on most political issues, as both of these hosts due extensive amounts of research for their shows. They aren’t just hate spewing ignoramus’, they’re actually doing the job we should expect of all journalists, which is to ask the tough questions. Randio Rhodes was cancelled because she called Hillary Clinton a whore, and Rachael Maddow as stated has her own show now on MSNBC.
- Montel Williams on Air America
So where does this leave Air America fans? Well, a lot of us simply aren’t fans anymore, it’s that simple. We’ve moved on to podcasts from the people you kicked off and quite frankly I don’t care what they said, did or even what kind of demands they made -- in the name of consistency and continuity the network should simply have operated differently, made different decisions and not become like a revolving door of talk shows. I run various websites and sometimes the most simple change will throw users off that are used to a certain way of things working -- I had to find that out the hard way so I think it’s sad that the decision makers at Air America could’t keep to the most import rule of consistency. The reason I’ve finally sat down to vent my disappointment over this issue is because their most recent addition is Montel Williams! Oh man, please, I say please don’t get me started. I’ve already written in this post that I think he’s the biggest fraud, supposedly driving around the nation in the “Orange Bus“, handing out free medicine, sponsored by those companies who don’t make it available cheap enough to begin with.
I’m certain that I’m not the only one who’s turned away from Air America and I’m probably also not the only one who’s very disappointed about this. I feel sorry for all the people that have put in so much hard work to keep the network running over the years, but fact is you blew it Air America….
This article was written by Alex - Author's Website
