it comes in pints?

Talk about your eclectic radio

I wonder how many people here remember Air America. They used to be a radio network.

I guess they're still around, at least until last week.

Liberal AM radio fails to pay its own way in Santa Cruz
BY SHANNA MCCORD
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER

SANTA CRUZ — Al Franken, Randi Rhodes and Sam Seeder — articulate liberal pundits — don't sell well, even in Santa Cruz.

To borrow a line, if they can't make it there, I suspect they can't make it anywhere.

The trio are part of the nationally syndicated Air America, which was dropped from Santa Cruz radio station KOMY 1340 AM on Thursday and replaced with music from the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

The left-leaning radio network, aimed at taking on Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk shows, debuted on Central Coast airwaves in July 2005, but local advertisers never bought in, station owner Michael Zwerling said.

"We didn't sell a single ad in a year and a half," Zwerling said Thursday. "I thought liberal radio would work as a viable advertising business in the most liberal town in America. I was wrong"

One should also recall that Air America is also the only radio network that (sometimes, at least) pays to be broadcast, rather than the radio stations paying them.

Santa Cruz isn't the only place Air America has problems. The network is struggling nationwide and filed for bankruptcy four months ago.

I hear that Al Franken is no longer with them. That might help.

Zwerling put Air America on the air as an alternative to the Limbaugh program, which plays on KOMY's sister station KSCO 1080 AM every morning.

Limbaugh is a major moneymaker for the station, Zwerling said, and his show pulls the highest ratings of any program on KSCO or KOMY.

However, in Santa Cruz, where the vast majority of registered voters are Democrats and voted for Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, Zwerling wanted to give listeners a program that better plays to their political beliefs.

Sounds like a reasonable idea but I guess sometimes theory falters on reality.

Some Santa Cruzans loved Air America, Zwerling said.

But advertisers either didn't want to be associated with a station long known for a conservative stance ...

Didn't expect to see that phrase.

... or they simply didn't believe the show was a good place to spend their money, Zwerling said, speculating why ad sales never got off the ground despite decent ratings.

"Never got off the ground" sounds like a rather large understatement.

"It's an angry, nasty, pissing and moaning format where the only thing they say is 'Bush stinks' or 'Bush is bad'," he said. "No commercial advertiser wants to be associated with that"

Throw in their occasional death threat and one can sympathize with the advertisers.

Early on, Zwerling saw trouble with Air America.

Only a few months after putting it on the air, he toyed with canceling the program but held off to give advertisers a chance to warm up to the new network.

With ad sales continuing to be lackluster, ...

Man. The massive understatement continues apace.

...he announced to Air America executives in September that KOMY would no longer run their shows, and had planned to pull the plug Oct. 25.

KOMY hadn't come up with a replacement program by October and Air America stayed on until Thursday.

Three months of extra life. And still not a single ad sold. That's rough.

Anyway, we now skip to the end of the story to get to the "eclectic radio" part:

Earlier this month, Zwerling also dumped Michael Savage, a strident conservative talk show host based in San Francisco who says "liberalism is a mental disease".

The cost to purchase Savage's show became too expensive for the station, Zwerling said.

Um, that's "strident" in the sense of "fucking cretinous jerk" for those of you not familiar with that particular "personality".

But I do find it interesting that the same station would have drooling idiots from both the left and the right. I wonder if Tim Blair owns some shares.

Posted by Ken S at January 30, 2007 07:19 AM | TrackBack (0) |