RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media Franken's "Air America" Going Under Already

Arthur Liu, owner of Multicultural Radio Broadcasting, which owns Air America affiliates WNTD-950 AM in Chicago and KBLA-1580 AM in Los Angeles, said Air America bounced a check and owes him more than $1 million.

Air America and Multicultural had entered into a time brokerage agreement in which the network was essentially renting Multicultural's airtime, Liu said.

"They bounced a check today," Liu said. "It's a default. They have paid only a very small portion of what they owe us." Liu declined to say how much Multicultural is owed, but did say he is holding $1 million in checks that Air America has asked the company not to cash.

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woodstock said:
Perhaps it's because they're starting a brand new radio station with no real past experience in the industry...?

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Air America Radio is a collaborative effort that brings together a group of experienced radio entrepreneurs

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040415/media_nm/leisure_airamerica_dc_10


.....aparently theyve started there own National Private Radio, a jusdge just ordered the stations to carry them even if they bounced the checks....

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Enter stage left the new radio network Air America Radio, a self-proclaimed attempt by liberal commentators to counteract the conservative over-saturation of the media. With the days of objectivity and level-headedness behind us the liberals adopted the vitriolic tactics of the right in an effort to fight fire with fire. Air America Radio is an all talk station built around liberal funny-guy and commentator Al Franken. I will openly admit to liking Al Franken. He reminds me a lot of Limbaugh back before drugs, power, and weight loss turned him into a bitter and unfunny shell, and of course Franken's politics more closely resemble my own. They certainly could have picked a worse person to use as their star talent.

With Franken as the lynchpin, whatever sinister liberal think tank is behind Air America Radio began assembling a full 12 hours of talk lineup. The channel is 24-hours a day but most of the content repeats. Since Air America Radio debuted on March 30th (in only about ten outlets, although most of them are major) I have been listening to it a good part of each day to get a feel for how good or bad the channel is. Let's take a look at the all-star lineup.

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at 6 a.m. on Good Friday — the first anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, the day after Condoleezza Rice testified before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks — I tuned in to 1580, turned on my computer to take notes and sat with both until 11 p.m.

It may have been the most boring day of my life.

Henry Kissinger was "a war criminal." Rice was "reptilian," "a liar" and "a perjurer." President Bush was "an idiot," "a liar," a "lazy sack of crap," "a fake Christian," "a murdering scumbag" and — amid a discussion of Janet Jackson and the Super Bowl — "the biggest boob of all."

didn't get a single laugh from Franken, Garofalo or Rhodes — or from any of the other Air America hosts I listened to.

Most of the programming was as earnest as C-SPAN, though — and as dreary as a lecture on agriculture price supports, albeit filtered through a liberal sensibility.

Air America Radio, the upstart liberal talk show network that has been plagued by management troubles, is seeking to raise new money in efforts to pay off debts and steer the business toward profitability.

A group of early investors that include Florida plaintiffs lawyer Mike Papantonio, Chicago entrepreneur Sheldon Drobny, and Rob Glaser, chairman of RealNetworks Inc., have committed to invest new capital, people familiar with the company said.

Air America has also moved to fill a void in its executive ranks. Doug Kreeger, also an investor, assumed the role of chief executive last week.

Earlier this month former CEO Evan Cohen was pushed out after the board lost confidence in his management.

Air America has racked up unpaid debts, which include payroll to sales forces it hired in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but was forced to let go after backing out on plans to lease radio stations in those markets.

The network would normally not command much attention, but it has been billed as the liberals' answer to popular radio programs run by conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

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Radio's Bushwhackers
By RICHARD CORLISS
Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Posted: 12:53 PM EST (1753 GMT)

Launch a left-wing talk-radio network in a medium ruled by the bully pulpiteers of the right? They said it couldn't be done.

Air America Radio exec Jon Sinton recalls the loud whispers before last year's start-up: "They said, 'Liberals aren't funny or engaging. A concept of a liberal network is stupid.'"

And for a while, they were right. The name-brand hosts, comics Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, were audio amateurs. In their on-the-job training, three hours a day, they learned that comedy is easy, radio is hard.

The most persuasive hosts were radio veterans Randi Rhodes and Rachel Maddow.

But Air America came close to folding for a reason the right couldn't have guessed: it ran out of liberal fat cats and went broke in two weeks.

When its checks bounced, it lost stations in Los Angeles and Chicago. As the documentary Left of the Dial (on HBO this week) shows, staff members went for months without pay or health insurance.

The story has a happy ending for liberals--or at least a promising second act.

As it hits its first anniversary this week, Air America has expanded from six to 51 stations. It reaches more than 2 million listeners a week, with greater appeal for the young and women than most talk radio.

It just signed Jerry Springer (a piquant choice but a pity, since he replaces Maddow). "I give them every benefit of the doubt," says Michael Harrison of the industry magazine Talkers. "They have ratings to show, they get publicity, they're selling ads."

And they have imitators. Liberal talk is radio's fastest-growing format. If Air America hasn't yet drowned out Rush Limbaugh, it has at least found its own voice.

By Richard Corliss. Reported by Carolina A. Miranda

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March 28, 2005

TELEVISION
Air America's difficult birth, caught on film

HBO's documentary on the liberal-leaning radio network chronicles its tumultuous first weeks.

By John Cook

Air America Radio, the left-wing talk-radio venture featuring Al Franken, Randi Rhodes and Janeane Garofalo, celebrates its first anniversary on the air this week, and HBO is giving it a rather macabre gift to mark the occasion: a searing, warts-and-all documentary showing just how perilously close the fledgling network came to oblivion in its first weeks.

"Left of the Dial," which premieres on HBO on Thursday (8 p.m.), was supposed to be a relatively benign insider's account of the launch of Air America, which was in turn intended to be both a counterweight to the dominance of conservative voices in talk radio and proof that there is a market for left-wing voices in the heartland.


Neither project turned out quite as expected. Instead of a triumphant beginning and universal acclaim, the new network found itself tossed off the air in Los Angeles and Chicago and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy just weeks after its launch, owing to what the film portrays as the murky financial doings of Evan Cohen, the network's co-founder and one of its primary investors.

And instead of an entertaining political documentary on a plucky band of liberal dreamers, New York filmmakers Patrick Farrelly and Kate O'Callaghan wound up telling a gripping tale of incompetence, betrayal and perseverance as their subjects struggled to keep one of the most overhyped media launches from crumbling around them.

"I knew one way or another we were going to get a good documentary," said O'Callaghan, who with her husband, Farrelly, worked as a producer for Michael Moore's "TV Nation." "We knew there was something really weird going on. In a strange way it was an upside, but we were strongly rooting for them as well. We had grown close to them, and we didn't want them to fail. But we were thinking, 'We've got to get this.' "

This is what was going on: In April 2004, after two weeks on the air, Air America's Chicago and Los Angeles affiliates booted the network because checks to pay for airtime had bounced.

Cohen, a frenetic, gregarious businessman who is rarely seen in the film without a cellphone earpiece, portrayed it as a simple business dispute. He denied that any checks had bounced and challenged the claims in court. But even as Air America's legal battle met initial success — a judge briefly ordered them back on the air in Chicago — the true picture began to emerge inside the network's offices: The first round of paychecks to the staff bounced, group healthcare premiums went unpaid, and creditors began calling.

Cohen, Air America's investors say, claimed to have invested millions of dollars into the network that never materialized. Just one month into the network's short life, the investors ousted Cohen and discovered that they had no money.

All with Farrelly's and O'Callaghan's cameras rolling.

"Here they were doing the launch of progressive radio — which is a story in itself — and now all of a sudden they had a real story," said Doug Kreeger, one of the network's investors, who stepped in as chief executive after Cohen's departure.

The film offers surprising revelations about what was going on inside the heavily publicized start-up.

Aside from an acute lack of organization — of all the talent and executives, only a handful had any radio experience, and one extended comic sequence involves executive producer Carl Ginsburg's quixotic attempt to arrange for something as simple as a simulcast of then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission — "Left of the Dial" captures a company seemingly intoxicated with its own sense of destiny, displaying little regard for the nuts and bolts of the radio business and a fraught relationship with the truth.

"This is not the sign of a company in trouble," Air America's general counsel tells a reporter in one scene, exercising damage control after the network's Chicago and Los Angeles stations were shut down.

In fact, David Goodfriend — a college acquaintance of Cohen's and the one responsible for bringing him on board with the company — did not yet know the extent of the company's troubles.

Just days later, Goodfriend tells the camera: "We found out there's a lot less money than Evan said there was. We found out there was no money. It's not clear to me whose funds went in and whose didn't. What is clear to me is that we were all pretty misled. All of us — including me."

In another scene, Cohen is seen exaggerating the network's revenue. When the New York Times calls with a question about ad sales, he asks an associate for the gross sales figure and is told, "Right around $639,000 — pushing $650,000." Cohen immediately calls the newspaper back and says, "We're $1 million in sold advertising as of today. That's a fact, a documentable fact."

Later, after being told of a $6,000 sale of advertising to Hewlett Packard, Cohen tells someone on the other end of his cellphone: "The good news is that we just sold a Hewlett Packard contract today for April — $16,000."

Reached last week by telephone, Cohen declined to comment on the documentary, saying only, "The movie's made and they edited it the way they edited it. It's a good story." Asked what he is doing now, Cohen said, "Taking care of my son."

The presence of cameras inside the halls of Air America was a mixed blessing: "Left of the Dial" shows the company at its lowest moments but also tells the story of the dedicated staffers who continued to work without paychecks and the executives like Kreeger and then-executive producer (now co-chief operating officer) Ginsburg, who labored feverishly to secure new financing and pay the fledgling company's mounting bills.

"My whole thing was getting it done," said Rhodes, the insecure left-wing firebrand who left a successful talk-show perch in South Florida for the New York-based network and is seen in the film competing for attention with Franken, a radio neophyte.

"I instantly went into 'What do we do now?' mode. I had to pay people out of my pocket."

Ironically, given that he is portrayed as the closest thing to a villain in "Left of the Dial," it was Cohen who granted access to filmmakers Farrelly and O'Callaghan.

"I advised Evan not to let them in," said Mark Walsh, Air America's short-lived chief executive, who resigned shortly after the launch, after butting heads with Cohen over financial issues. "I knew from Day 1 having them around was a big mistake. It was a vanity play on his part, and it boomeranged."

Though Air America had secured an agreement from Farrelly and O'Callaghan that its officials could see a rough cut of the movie and suggest changes, some staffers objected to their presence after Cohen's departure.

"I have a problem with airing our dirty laundry," Rhodes said.

"I just remember avoiding them," said Franken. "Especially when the wheels started to fall off — I thought, 'Oy, oy, oy, this is going to look bad.' "

Farrelly says tension was thick as he and his wife's film crew took their cameras through Air America's Manhattan offices.

"Everyone you'd meet would be giving you the evil eye," he said. "It was like being a guest in a house where you're not wanted."

But with a full year's perspective — not to mention financial stability, thanks to a new round of investment this year from RealNetworks Chief Executive Rob Glaser and others — Air America can look back on its early days as a dark chapter that has closed.

A series of affiliation deals with Clear Channel stations has brought the network to more than 50 markets, with ratings success in many of those markets. Last week, it was announced that Premier Radio Networks executive vice president Gary Krantz will become the network's president April 11.

"You can't run away from your past," said Jon Sinton, then Air America's president and now its co-chief operating officer. "It's the story of the birth of a dream, the sudden near-death of that dream, and its rebirth.

"But it's not like watching it didn't make my stomach hurt. I've lost both my parents and been through a divorce, and this is definitely in the top three. I just got my invitation to the HBO premiere party, and it's sort of like being invited to your own firing squad. Gosh, I guess I have to go."

Not everyone will.

"Oh, my God — do I want to relive that?" Franken said. "I'd rather watch a Duke basketball game."

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Liberal radio is the fastest growing format in radio.

On April Fools Day, Jerry Springer will make his national debut as a radio talk show host on the Air America network. No terms were disclosed but a contract was signed and the deal between Mr. Springer and Air America was finalized on Thursday. That makes Jerry Springer, Air America's newest host and will put Springer on the radio network's 51 radio stations.

Springer will take the 9:00am-noon time slot.

And Air America needs some help. The fledgling network received a boost when radio giant "Clear Channel" decided to put the network's programming on some of its radio stations. All total Clear Channel's assistance gives the network a total of 51 radio stations. But it will take more than that for success, it take interesting and fun talk radio. There is competition galore in the talk radio field and listeners want to be entertained.

That requires some actual talent, and that is what Air America sorely lacks.

The network's headliner Al Franken signed on to continue doing his radio show for two more years last December. And while Franken has name recognition among the left wing moonbat audience that Air America needs as a base, he doesn't have the talent to expand beyond that base. That's probably a big reason that the network bombed in last Summer's ratings period in New York City...the network's affiliate WLIB lost "15% of its summer audience to finish fall at 24th place in the Arbitrons" released in January.

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the G-man said:
Yeah, they are doing so well that they have to hire Jerry Springer, of all people, to try and boost their ratings:

On April Fools Day, Jerry Springer will make his national debut as a radio talk show host on the Air America network. No terms were disclosed but a contract was signed and the deal between Mr. Springer and Air America was finalized on Thursday. That makes Jerry Springer, Air America's newest host and will put Springer on the radio network's 51 radio stations.

Springer will take the 9:00am-noon time slot.

And Air America needs some help. The fledgling network received a boost when radio giant "Clear Channel" decided to put the network's programming on some of its radio stations. All total Clear Channel's assistance gives the network a total of 51 radio stations. But it will take more than that for success, it take interesting and fun talk radio. There is competition galore in the talk radio field and listeners want to be entertained.

That requires some actual talent, and that is what Air America sorely lacks.

The network's headliner Al Franken signed on to continue doing his radio show for two more years last December. And while Franken has name recognition among the left wing moonbat audience that Air America needs as a base, he doesn't have the talent to expand beyond that base. That's probably a big reason that the network bombed in last Summer's ratings period in New York City...the network's affiliate WLIB lost "15% of its summer audience to finish fall at 24th place in the Arbitrons" released in January.

P.S.--Funny how a "newbie" is sufficiently aware of year old threads to find them and bring them back for an aborted "I told you so, G-man."

Welcome back whomod

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Paul Mandral said:
Sorry your dream of a nation soley under right wing propaganda didn't pan out.


Liberal radio is the fastest growing format in radio.

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the G-man said:
Yeah, they are doing so well that they have to hire Jerry Springer, of all people, to try and boost their ratings:

On April Fools Day, Jerry Springer will make his national debut as a radio talk show host on the Air America network. No terms were disclosed but a contract was signed and the deal between Mr. Springer and Air America was finalized on Thursday. That makes Jerry Springer, Air America's newest host and will put Springer on the radio network's 51 radio stations.

Springer will take the 9:00am-noon time slot.

And Air America needs some help. The fledgling network received a boost when radio giant "Clear Channel" decided to put the network's programming on some of its radio stations. All total Clear Channel's assistance gives the network a total of 51 radio stations. But it will take more than that for success, it take interesting and fun talk radio. There is competition galore in the talk radio field and listeners want to be entertained.

That requires some actual talent, and that is what Air America sorely lacks.

The network's headliner Al Franken signed on to continue doing his radio show for two more years last December. And while Franken has name recognition among the left wing moonbat audience that Air America needs as a base, he doesn't have the talent to expand beyond that base. That's probably a big reason that the network bombed in last Summer's ratings period in New York City...the network's affiliate WLIB lost "15% of its summer audience to finish fall at 24th place in the Arbitrons" released in January.

P.S.--Funny how a "newbie" is sufficiently aware of year old threads to find them and bring them back for an aborted "I told you so, G-man."

Welcome back whomod

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Chris Oakley said:
JERRY SPRINGER?!
They've got to be kidding.

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the G-man said:

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Paul Mandral said:
Sorry your dream of a nation soley under right wing propaganda didn't pan out.


Liberal radio is the fastest growing format in radio.

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Another thing: I love it when people like whomod, uh, I mean Paul, pretend that there hasn't been liberal talk radio in the US for decades, namely, NPR.

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the G-man said:
Another thing: I love it when people like whomod, uh, I mean Paul, pretend that there hasn't been liberal talk radio in the US for decades, namely, NPR.

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Paul Mandral said:

But that would be like me saying, 'conservatives who tout FOX News pretend there hasn't been conservative news for decades, namely ABC news'

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But getting back to the point, so how about that "Air America "going under" , eh?

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the G-man said:
[We already addressed their continued troubles in another thread, whomod, uh, I mean, Paul.

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You never stop with the tilted punditry and propaganda do you?

What continued troubles, Pariah, um, I mean G-Man?

They have 51 stations nationwide (all in major markets) with only 1 year on the air.

They're beating Limbaugh Hannity and their kind in many of those markets.

They have major funding and investment and are finacncially stable.

They had a sometimes critical, sometimes celebratory HBO special on their 1 year Anniversary.

Face it pundit, they are not "going under".

LOL!

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Joe Mama said:
Wow...lookit those markets. Whatta media empire.

Or something.

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LOL!

Yeah, cuz Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, San Diego, Memphis, Washington DC, New York, etc.etc. are the "sticks".

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Joe Mama said:
Don't forget Davenport, IA and Youngstown, OH. They're juggernauts, too.

(You DO realize that I don't have any opinion about Franken's radio show, right? You DO catch the humor in gloating over those particular markets, right? You did get the joke, right? ...didn't think so.)

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Paul Mandral said:
Nah, you just decided to comment on something intended for G-Man and his "going under" and "continued troubles" punditry.

They're in large markets already and expanding in both metro and rural areas. The point isn't that IA is small, the point is they're far from "going under". They're growing. Rapidly.

On The Air
Nationally:

XM Satellite Radio - ch. 167
Sirius Satellite Radio - ch. 144
Streaming internet @ http://www.airamericaradio.com




West

Albany/Corvallis, OR - KTHH 990 AM

Eugene, OR - KOPT 1450 AM

Los Angeles, CA - KTLK 1150 AM

Phoenix, AZ - KXXT 1010 AM

Portland, OR - KPOJ 620 AM

Reno, NV - KJFK 1230 AM

Riverside, CA - KCAA 1050 AM

Sacramento, CA - KSAC 1240 AM

Santa Barbara, CA - KIST 1340 AM

San Diego, CA - 1360 AM KLSD

San Luis Obispo, CA - 1340 AM KYNS

San Francisco, CA - 960 AM KQKE

Seattle, WA - 1090 AM KPTK

South Lake Tahoe, NV - KTHO 590 AM

Spokane, WA - KPTQ 1280 AM

Central


Austin, TX - KOKE 1600 AM

Albuquerque, NM - KABQ 1350 AM

Ann Arbor, MI - WLBY 1290 AM

Cincinnati, OH - WCKY 1530 AM

Columbus, OH - WTPG 1230 AM

Youngstown, OH - WANR 'The Pulse' 1570 AM

Corpus Christi, TX - KCCT 1150 AM

Dallas, TX - KXEB 910 AM

Denver, CO - KKZN 760 AM

Detroit, MI - WDTW 1310 AM

Madison, WI - WXXM 92.1 FM

Minneapolis, MN - KTNF 950 AM

Petoskey, MI - WWKK 750 AM

Santa Fe, NM - KTRC 1260 AM

Davenport, IA - WKBF 1270 AM


East

Asheville, NC - WPEK 880 AM

Atlanta, GA - WWAA 1690 AM

Boston, MA - WKOX 1200 AM and WXKS 1430 AM

Brattleboro, VT - WKVT 1490 AM

Chapel Hill, NC - WCHL 1360 AM

Charleston, SC - WLTQ 730 AM

Key West, FL - WKIZ 1500 AM

Memphis, TN - WWTQ 680 AM

Miami, FL - WINZ 940 AM

New Haven, CT - WAVZ 1300 AM

New York City - WLIB 1190 AM

Northampton, MA - WHMP 1400 AM

Philadelphia, PA - WHAT 1340 AM

Plattsburgh, NY/Burlington, VT - WTWK 1070 AM

Portland, ME - WLVP 870 AM

Providence, RI - WHJJ 920 AM

Rochester, NY - WROC 950 AM

Washington D.C. - WWRC 1260 AM

West Palm Beach, FL - WJNO 1290 AM


Alaska and Hawaii


Anchorage, AK - KUDO 1080 AM

Honolulu, HI - KUMU 1500 AM

Maui, HI - KAOI 1110 AM

Kauai, HI - KQNG 570 AM

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Poor Whomod. He tries so hard.