First time diarist; usually I'm at my own space. Air America, in its infinite non-wisdom, has been "trying out" guest hosts while trying to heal the gaping wound that happens in a radio lineup when you try to strongarm your marquee name and she decides to take a powder.
More after the jump....
So far we've heard Richard Belzer, Joy Behar, and Roseanne Barr and Johnny Argent. All have been varying degrees of awful, with Belzer being the least objectionable. Next week they're trying out Ron Reagan, Jr. and Ron Kuby, the latter of whom was last seen alongside Curtis Sliwa on WABC wingnut radio on New York.
This week those of us who have tried mightily to support AAR even while the parade of suits that runs the place has tried to smack us silly every chance they get, are being treated to the two best hosts the network has ever had in Sam Seder and Marc Maron.
Seder has quite simply bled Air America blue for the last four years as he's been shuffled from timeslot to timeslot and finally off to Sunday afternoons and a gig as the network's chief blogger. It would be a nice reward for the guy who has matured the most over the last four years as a radio personality to give him this timeslot.
As for Marc Maron, it's a huge leap of faith for him to even agree to do this, since the pre-bankruptcy AAR management owed him a ton of money when they pulled the plug on his Los Angeles show in 2006. But agree to it he has.
Sam was on yesterday, and will be on Wednesday as well, Marc is on today, Thursday and Friday.
The two of them have been doing a weekly VODCast at SamSederShow.com and if you watch some of the archive, you can see the kind of show they could put together if given a chance. Sam and Marc have the kind of loyal listener/fan base that most radio hosts would kill for. It's not everyone who can keep a fan base together two years after being yanked off the air the way Marc Maron has, or while banished to Sunday the way Sam Seder has.
If you can, please try to listen to Air America between 3 and 6 PM Eastern time on your local affiliate (or whenever that show airs) or else stream it from Air America's web site. Please comment at the site's blog expressing your support for Sam Seder and Marc Maron, and contact the network's programming manager, Phillip Collin (pcollin-at-airamerica-dot-com or pcollins-at-airamerica-dot-com) telling him you want to see Sam Seder and Marc Maron on five days a week. If there are enough of us, the suits just might listen.
These guys have been very supportive of the netroots and they deserve our support.
Thank you.
More from my blog partner Melina at my place.
UPDATE: This is NOT about supporting the suits at Air America; frankly, I couldn't care less about them, because each generation of management has messed up worse than the one before. It's about the on-air talent and about doing right by two huge talents who have been screwed over by the network in the past. It's also not about dissing Rachel Maddow, who is in a celestial class by herself, but who does a different, more news-oriented kind of show...and who is safely ensconced on the air for as long as she wants to be.