Air America Radio is wrapping up its first full calendar week on the air today. Time for another report card after
its first. Please post your grades (A, B, C...) in the following categories and vote in the poll....
- Publicity. My 2nd grade: B. (No change.)
- Branding. My 2nd grade: B. (No change.)
- Engineering. My 2nd grade: C. (Improved.)
- Host Training (Overall). My 2nd grade: B. (Improved.)
- Advertising. My 2nd grade: A. (Improved.)
- Callers. My 2nd grade: B. (Improved.)
- Carriage and Affiliates. My 2nd grade: A. (Improved.)
Program by Program
i. Morning Sedition. My 2nd grade: B. (Improved.)
ii. Unfiltered. My 2nd grade: B. (No change.)
iii. The O'Franken Factor. My 2nd grade: C. (No change.)
iv. Randi Rhodes Show. My 2nd grade: A. (No change.)
v. So What Else Is News?. My 2nd grade: B. (No change.)
vi. The Majority Report. My 2nd grade: B. (No change.)
vii. Weekend Programming. My 1st grade: Incomplete. (Too early to rate.)
viii. News Department. My 1st grade: A.
Nominations for Additional Night/Weekend Hosts
Nancy Skinner
Mike Malloy
Margaret Cho
My Comments
Affiliate growth is good. Air America added Plattsburgh/Burlington (1070 AM), San Francisco, and San Jose, at last report. Also Sirius Satellite Radio starting in a few days (an addition alongside Sirius Left, which is fantastic).
Air America added lots of new advertisers: J.C. Penney, NBC, Bravo, Supercuts, Gumout (Pennzoil-Quaker State), a few hospitals (Calvary, Lutheran Brooklyn), and several others. A little too New Yorkish still, but excellent job.
Too early to say what the ratings will be like, but Sam Seder claimed there were 2 million individuals who streamed Air America at some point during the first three days. Wow.
The news department is doing a terrific job, breaking the Sandy Berger/Condi Rice tapes from January, 2001. And Air America had each program spend time with the tapes that day. Their Rice testimony coverage was excellent. Terrific top of the hour news segments.
Engineering is still weak but (slowly) improving, so I marked them up a grade. Internet streaming and web site seem better now. Still some mysterious dropouts in the Chicago affiliate (which I listen to), still some bleed through of live feeds (when we're an hour delay), still some WLIB station IDs on WNTD. But these problems seem less frequent now. Things should get better when Air America goes live in Chicago next week. (Thanks for listening to us, Air America! Good move!) Not clear yet how much of their broadcast day goes live in Chicago, but hopefully all of it. I'd also like to see them go live on the West Coast except for Morning Sedition, which they should then rename "Today's Sedition" and flip to the end of the broadcast day (after The Majority Report) as the only tape-delayed program. Having (almost) everything live will ensure more callers from outside New York.
Their recorded satire pieces are great and getting better. Nice job!
The hosts are learning how to work with each other. Franken and Lanpher still don't work for me as a duo -- Lanpher is way to NPRish -- so I'd consider that the weakest part of the lineup, oddly enough. They're improving too, though. Also, the hosts are learning how to get a little more focused on the topic-of-the-day (or hour) instead of jumping all over the place like raving lunatics. It's still a little jumpy. Condi Rice helped, I think.
They're doing a good job of lead-in teasers for the next program. I'd like to see a little bit of banter just before the top (from old hosts to new hosts passing the baton), but that's gravy.
GREAT guests (in terms of big names). Keep it up! The Majority Report is a little too heavy on bloggers for my taste, but maybe they're still auditioning their favorites. If AAR keeps up the great hosts there's no way the mainstream media can ignore it too long. "So-and-so said today on Al Franken's program..." Also, it's really great to see how they're building a left wing echo chamber (with web sites like Salon). Paul Krugman was on this morning, for example.
They need a better toll-free phone number. I e-mailed AAR a list of much better available toll-free numbers (which I won't post here in case somebody tries to grab them first). Suffice it to say that there are some excellent ones available that'll really help the network's branding.
They should ditch the full list of programs/times bumper (or at least recut it). It's too confusing.
That's it for now. Overall, my grade: B. Nice job, guys!