Newsweek Bails Out Air America. Who Bails Out Newsweek?
March 21, 2009 · carl · Print This Article
I deliberately scheduled this to show up today, the day before the new partnership between Newsweek magazine and Air America talk radio takes place.
Right now, some of you may be asking “What the heck is Air America?”
Stand by, gentle readers, all will become clear.
Air America is a left wing talk radio show that has had it’s struggles over the years.
Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, having no measureable audience in the Washington D.C. area, (according to Arbitron), asking what few listeners the network had to send in donations (when’s the last time you heard Rush Limbaugh asking for money to help him stay on the air?), a California radio station pleading, on air, for advertisers to sponsor the program, as they could not get a single paid ad, and a multitude of other woes.
In yet another example of liberals being so desperate to try and find a listening audiece for their point of view, and letting illusion overcome reality, the head of Air America Media Syndication, Bill Hess, had this to say about the partnership with Newsweek:
“This is a great show, with an excellent track record of performance on many great radio stations.”
Mr. Hess must consider bankruptcy, begging listeners (the few that there were) for money, and the abject failure of being unable to generate any revenue from advertisers as trivial obstacles.
Of course, you have to wonder about the level of intellect of the folks over at Newsweek also.
To form a partnership with such a “successful” media outlet, they must be getting a bit desperate.
Some of it may be due to the fact that Newsweek is also having trouble attracting advertisers, their number of ad pages has dropped by a third when compared to 2004.
Or that they dropped their guaranteed circulation rate for advertisers by half a million copies last year, and magazine industry experts agree that it will drop even more this year.
So, when you combine one broadcast media failure with a failing print media outlet, what do you get?
Probably a bigger cigar for Rush Limbaugh.
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Yeah you rightist are really riding high now, with majority GOP registration down to 5 states, the bottom 5 in every rating including infant mortality! You can afford to sneer at tiny struggling Air America, the network whose affiliate in L.A. has United Airlines and Bank of America as sponsors – but they don’t count either, right because they are failing businesses too? Hardly a day passes when some right wing site doesnt sneer and smear Air AMerica, which makes me wonder why you guys would pay attention to it so much. Little paranoid about being able to continue pulling off your right wing disinfo juggernaut on 95% of the AM publicly owned airwaves, huh?
I suppose that you want to present California, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, as an example of a state where liberalism has proven to be such a resounding success?
As far as paranoia, you will have to come up with a much better argument than that.
And please, your statement about publicly owned airwaves is no better.
Air America is just one example of the hundreds of left-leaning talk radio stations that simply can’t compete in the free market.
Perhaps it’s the folks that are pushing so hard to bring back the “Fairness Doctrine” that are suffering from paranoia.
And as far as the AM airwaves being publicly owned, that is about the the only part of your comment that is accurate.
However, how does that relate to conservative talk radio dominating the market?
Is it your contention that people listen to Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc. because someone is forcing them to listen?
Yes, the AM airwaves ARE publicly owned.
Which means the American public is free to listen to anything they want to.
Right wing, left wing, hell even chicken wing!
Allow me to try putting that another way.
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, ON THE PUBLICLY OWNED AIRWAVES, CAN LISTEN TO WHATEVER RADIO SHOW THEY WANT TO!
Which is what determines a shows popularity.
Yet you folks want a federal law passed so that more people will listen to you.
And I’M the one who’s paranoid?