There’s
something foul on the air
Gerry
Wachovsky
Listening
to Air America Radio, the liberal radio
network that debuted two weeks ago in select
cities across the nation, is like hearing
a broadcast from outer space. The hosts
of the station live in some alternate universe
where the opposite of practically everything
we know holds true, and they take pride
in pumping out propaganda and concise catch
phrases in proving points to their dumb-and-dumber
listening audience. Despite all this, the
folks over at Air America think they are
on to something big, something that will
become a huge success. I hate to burst your
bubble, guys, but Air America will not be
a success. Instead, it will be an utter
failure.
According
to Al Franken, comedian and talk show host
on Air America, “We are flaming swords
of justice! Bush is going down, he is going
down, he is going down. And we’re
going to help him.” Mark my words:
Air America will, for all intents and purposes,
be dead before the election in November.
Why is this, you may ask? Why not give it
a chance?
Quite simply, radio is market driven, and
by the nature of this station alone, it
has already alienated itself from most potential
advertisers that would keep it in business.
You see, commercial radio is free to the
public for a reason: the commercials you
hear are from companies who have paid good
money for that airtime, and studies have
shown that people do buy products from advertisers
that they hear on their favorite radio station.
According
to a recent Los Angeles Times article entitled
“Talk Radio Takes a Turn to the Left,”
several advertisers have already signed
on for the long haul. I find this statement
interesting, since when I tuned in to listen
to the station on April 19, during afternoon
drive, one of the biggest listening times,
I heard nothing but public service announcements
and a spot advertising a “George W.
– You’re Fired” T-shirt.
The only spot that I heard that was from
an actual bona fide paying advertiser was
for XM Radio, which already has Air America
on its lineup. Where are all these advertisers
that they claimed were in it for the long
haul?
Another
reason Air America is destined to fail is
that at best, it is quite amateurish. The
hosts have absolutely no experience in radio,
and not one of them knows how to actually
broadcast. Let us consider the nightly show,
“The Majority Report” with unfunny
comedienne Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder,
who is described on the Air America website
as a “writer, director, and actor”
and “sycophant” of Garofalo’s.
Since when did these people become political
experts? The Web site even goes as far as
calling Garofalo an “activist!”
Anyway, I listened for about a half-an-hour
to this sorry disgrace for a radio show,
and I came to the conclusion that these
people don’t even belong on college
radio.
For
one thing, they complained on air about
the fact that the New York station was broadcasting
both the pre-delay feed and the post-delay
feed. For those who don’t know, a
pre-delay feed is put in place to give the
broadcasters time to dump indecent material,
and is usually anywhere from 6 to 8 seconds.
It kind of defeats the purpose when both
feeds are broadcasting at the same time,
doesn’t it? Garofalo proved that she
really knows what she is doing when she
referred to it as either a “seven
minute or seven second delay”.
As
far as the content of the show went, Sam
Seder constantly accused President Bush
of “stealing $700 million to plan
for [the administration’s] role in
Iraq,” and was met each time with
guffaws from Garofalo. How did he steal
the money? I wondered.
Unfortunately
they never actually addressed how he “stole
the money” or delved any further into
the topic. You see what I mean by “concise
catch phrases?” Meanwhile, Garofalo’s
answer for the Iraq war was as ludicrously
simplistic and equally hare-brained as Seder’s:
“Oil,” she said. Note that this
comes from the same woman who likened President
Bush to Adolf Hitler and called the current
administration the “43rd Reich.”
Of
course she had to have learned something
from the one of the best obnoxious comedians,
Al Franken, who misquoted Arnold Schwarzenegger
on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno”
last year saying that the action star “liked”
what Hitler did with the way he “spoke
and presented himself.” Schwarzenegger
had actually said that he did not like what
Hitler did with his charismatic speaking
abilities.
Franken
has other memory issues too, it seems, as
evidenced on CNN’s “Crossfire”
earlier this month. After G. Gordon Liddy
asked Franken how many radio stations he
would be on, Franken incredulously replied,
“I am on six or seven ... or eight.”
Couple this with the little check bouncing
episode last week which got Air America
pulled off the air in Chicago and Los Angeles
(it has since returned to Chicago), and
one might question Franken and his cohorts’
business strategy. Oh, who am I kidding,
bleeding heart liberals don’t need
a business strategy!
So,
how much longer will Air America be on the
air? My prediction is that it will fade
from the spotlight in less than six months,
and will be off the air completely within
the year. The clock is ticking.
Gerry
Wachovsky is a journalism major at Cal State
Long Beach.
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