Picked this up today from a
right-wing site:
Winter 2006 Arbitron ratings, leaked to Matt Drudge earlier this week and reported in greater detail by the invaluable Radio Equalizer blog, show Air America registering a weak 1.0 share in Los Angeles, an even tinier share in Chicago, and a catastrophic drop in New York City, where flagship station WLIB hemorrhaged nearly half its listenership over the last ratings period, falling from a mediocre 1.4 to a pathetic 0.8 share.
So how do we make progressive radio thrive?
OK, I'm a left wing liberal that believes in an active government, but the market makes ultimate choices.
An earlier diary here has a lot of comments I agree with, including especially that Air America is too much top-down. Trying to build an instant radio network from a studio in New York and broadcasting it across the country never did make sense to me. Instead, syndicating local talent seems a lot more viable way to grow, albeit much more slowly.
Frankly Big Eddie is probably the show I enjoy the most (on KPOJ here in Portland) and he's not even part of Air America. And I really like Tom Hartman who is local here but I think gets some air in other cities as well.
And as much as I love Randi Rhodes for playing old Rusty Warren records, which brings back great memories of Dick McGovern on KSAN in the 70s, I can't really listen to her monologue for very long.
So Air America in my opinion was a hugh experiment that proved that there is a market for progressive radio. Maybe couldn't have done that quickly any other way. But now its time to grow organically. We need to find great radio personalities and let them grow into new markets.
Of course, that's easy for me to say. I don't have to actually do it. But I think it's right.
Just as Howard is pushing for the Democratic Party to be more grassroots driven and work from the bottom up, I think progressive talk radio should grow from the bottom up too. I will be eternally grateful to Al Franken for shattering old myths that it would never work, but now it's time to do the hard work and let the market pick the winners.