The Fire Un-reined
When James Taylor wrote “Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground”, he could have had Air America in mind.
Air America’s 92 affiliates reach 2.4 million listeners per week (58 percent of the country!) through 19 hours of original programming a day, Mon-Sun 6a12m. These numbers should have meant that Air America would be successful economically.
But that wasn’t to be. In a press release Piquant LLC, which does business as Air America Radio, announced that it has filed for Chapter 11 protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York after “good faith efforts to resolve outstanding debt with a creditor from the company’s earliest days broke down.” Court documents showed that MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting Inc., a creditor with whom the network had tussled in its early days, had Air America’s bank accounts frozen.
You could hear the chortling from the wrong-wingers.
The only rational statement made by one such went:
“There have been hints of impropriety and suggestions that money was not spent correctly and this bankruptcy filing confirms their dire situation.”
There is evidence to demonstrate the factuality of this assertion. Recently, Al Franken, owed $360,749 by Piquant, complained publicly that his paychecks had stopped. Mike Malloy, whose contract was not renewed, is owed over $100,000 in back pay. The 25 page bankruptcy filing, reprinted at thesmokinggun.com, lists RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser as the single largest creditor who is owed more than $10 million.
Glaser, a former Microsoft exec who once served as chairman of Air America, holds a 36.7 percent stake in the company. Glaser resigned as director of the network’s parent company Friday, but will still be involved with Air America through funding provided by Democracy Allies LLC, an investor group of which he is a member.
One can only assert that for a shoestring operation just getting up off the ground, an awful lot of vital Air America Radio lifeblood flowed out through self-opened veins. This financial irresponsibility makes no sense when those who started Air America were themselves entrepreneurs:
The network began as the brainchild of Chicago-area entrepreneurs Sheldon and Anita Drobny, longtime Democratic fundraisers, who — weary of what they described as a conservative political monologue — aimed to purchase radio stations and launch a left-leaning talk-radio network.
They didn’t stay with it very long, selling out their stake in what was then dubbed Central Air to investors including onetime America Online executive Mark Walsh, former Internet adviser to the Democratic National Committee, and venture capitalist Evan Cohen of New York.
Cohen almost ended the venture before it could begin, abusing his position as a director of the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club in the Bronx by transferring $875,000 from the nonprofit to Air America (according to the New York City Department of Investigation) to make up some of the $20 million reported as startup funds that never materialized. Walsh, Cohen and several other executives were gone quickly.
“They’ve never had any idea how radio works.”
According to real radio professionals, the problem with the management of Air America was much more basic. Michael Harrison, the publisher of Talkers Magazine, a talk-radio industry trade magazine, said:
“By running such a poor business they did a disservice to liberal talk radio by making it seem like the problem was that they were liberal.”
The real problem, Mr. Harrison?
“Before you change the world, make sure you pay your bills.”
That wasn’t the only misconception that should make Rush blush - he’s demonstrating through his smug glee that he does exactly what he accuses his rivals of attempting and failing. Limbaugh said, “They were not a broadcasting concern to begin with. … They went into business to affect elections.”
Like he would never stoop so low!
Rob Kall of opednews.com gets reality back on track, reminding us that even Rush was once in Air America’s holey soles:
The right wing media, like FOX News and the Rush Limbaugh show, ran for long periods of time, in the red, but were able to survive through those times because they had funders– it’s hard to call them investors, since there were political payoffs and motivations rather than conventional profit motives– who carried the money-losing media for long periods of time.
Such is expected by Air America insiders to happen for them. According to insideradio.com, “Air talent Al Franken joked several weeks ago that he’s flown on airlines that are in bankruptcy - anticipating that this day might come [to Air America Radio], and that operations would continue.”
Mike Papantonio, co-host of Air America’s Ring of Fire, agreed with this metaphor, saying:
“It’s same thing you find with United airlines… they’re still flying. There’s not going to be any interruption in programming,” he told OpEdNews, saying “The good news about this is that AA is actively seeking new investors and that they expect to come out of bankruptcy stronger, with new, dynamic leadership.”
While that may merely be brave talk, other progressive talkers are still on the air:
Ed Schultz says his “independently-owned and operated show is in no danger of bankruptcy or other financial obstacles.” ‘Big Edddie’ says he now clears in over 100 markets – and there are other progressive talkers like Stephanie Miller adding stations.
Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice adds support:
It’s important to note that two of the best progressive talk shows are hosted by Schultz and Stephanie Miller, who also isn’t with Air America. Schultz opened his [Friday] show talking about his appearance on Larry King Live and addressing the Air America bankruptcy [mp3].
Gandelman points out that Schultz seems to understand “how radio works”:
I heard [Schultz]’s show when he had Stu Kane on [mp3]. Kane was instrumental in helping launch Rush Limbaugh. Kane made it clear on Schultz show today that Product 1st’s bottom line is “the bottom line.” They want to produce a show that’s good radio, good entertainment, that gets listeners and makes money. [Emphasis mine - ed.]
Rob Kall almost stumbles over the solution to Air America’s money troubles. He just didn’t take his thought far enough:
If the money powers on the left are wise — the unions, George Soros, progressive foundations, even the smallest $5 dollar contributors — they will do all in their power to get Air America back on track.
Leave it to very conservative National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg to point to the real savior for Air America, even though he doesn’t realize it as such and would never admit it:
“The problem? Pacifica Radio already exists.”
Pacifica Radio, founded in 1949 by Louis Hill, is a financially-struggling network which regularly broadcasts the kind of programming that Air America sought to air, and more. While many people pay the full subscription rate Pacifica asks, it survives on those $5 contributions that Rob Kall mantioned above:
Funded by the listeners via subscription, it’s listener-sponsors have the power, electing the local boards at each of the five Pacific stations [KPFK 90.7 FM Pacifica Radio Los Angeles | 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, KPFA 94.1 FM Listener Sponsored Free Speech Radio Berkeley, KPFT 90.1 FM Houston | 89.5 FM Galveston, WPFW 89.3 FM Pacifica Radio Washigton, DC, and WBAI-FM 99.5 Pacifica Radio in NYC]. These local boards elect the Pacifica national board, which in turn hires the executives. In early 2006, Pacifica hired Greg Guma as the new executive director of the Pacifica Foundation. All boards are subject to accountability and recall by the listener sponsors.
Can you imagine Rush subjecting himself to control of his show by his listeners? Me neither! But I digress.
Pacifica founder Hill saw an opportunity, and took it in true entrepreneur spirit. He just chose to allow the ‘wealth’ of the airwaves to belong to the people and not keep it for himself. But with privilege comes responsibility. It is entirely up to the listeners to keep Pacifica Radio going, as Hill asserts in his 1951 The Theory of Listener-Sponsored Radio [abridged]:
Listener sponsorship is an answer to the practical problem of getting better radio programs and keeping them. We usually think at once of the advertiser or of the mass audience. We feel that one or both of these demonological figures must account for the mediocrity and exploitation which on the whole signify radio in the United States.
We seem generally to ignore, when we criticize radio, the moment and situation in which someone actually broadcasts. I refer to the person who actually opens his mouth or plays his fiddle. I mean to include also the individual who holds the stop watch, the one who writes the script, and perhaps the man who controls the switch.
[W]e never hear these people mentioned in any serious social or moral criticism of American radio. They constitute most of the radio industry, but are perhaps the last people we would think of in trying to place the fundamental responsibility for what radio does.
We all know, for example, that the purpose of commercial radio is to induce mass sales. For mass sales there must be a mass norm, and the activity must be conducted as nearly as possible without risk of departure from the norm.
But art and the communication of ideas–as most of us also appreciate–are risky affairs, for it can never be predicted in those activities just when the purely individual and abnormal may assert itself. By suppressing the individual, the unique, the industry reduces the risk of failure (abnormality) and assures itself a standard product for mass consumption.
Fox and CNN seem to have a pretty good handle on this, but I digress.
Let me instance the announcer… I know of no better explanation of this man’s relation to you, to his utterances, his job, and his industry, than one of the time-honored audition tests given to applicants for announcing jobs at certain of the networks. The test consists of three or four paragraphs minutely constructed to avoid conveying any meaning. The words are familiar, and every sentence is grammatically sound, but the text is gibberish. The applicant is required to read this text in different voices, as though it meant different things: with solemnity and heavy sincerity, with lighthearted humor, and of course with “punch.”
Now you know from whence Rush gets his style - and his content.
If his judges award him the job and turn him loose on you, he has succeeded on account of an extraordinary skill in simulating emotions, intentions and beliefs which he does not possess. In fact the test was especially designed to assure that nothing in the announcer’s mind except the sound of his voice–no comprehension, no value, no choice, and above all no sense of responsibility–could possibly enter into what he said or what he sounded like.
Like Rush - and Sean, and Bill, and …
We have to give a somewhat elementary interpretation to the idea of freedom in radio. The problem was, you remember, not whether you as a listener should choose what you like or agree with–as obviously you should and do–but how to get some genuinely significant choices before you.
The answer of the KPFA project on this point… requires that the people who actually do the broadcasting should also be [directly] responsible for what and why they broadcast. In short, they must control the policy which determines their [own] actions. KPFA is operated literally on this principle. Whatever else may happen, we thus assign to the participating individual the responsibility, artistic integrity, freedom of expression, and the like, which in conventional radio are normally denied him.
Well, then, who in present-day America might be expected to permit such a broadcasting group to earn a living at it, and on what terms? Certainly when we develop the idea of broadcasting to this point, the listener is the only one discernible who has a real stake in the outcome. Some self-determining group of broadcasters might find that no one, not the least minority of the minority audiences, gave a hang for their product, morally responsible or not.
But it is the reverse possibility that explains what is most important about listener sponsorship. When we imagine the opposite situation, we are compelled to account for some conscious flow of influences, some creative tension between broadcaster and audience that constantly reaffirms their mutual relevance. Listener sponsorship will require this mutual stimulus if it is to exist at all. A constant exchange between the staff and the audience enriches the schedule with fresh judgment and new ideas, materials, and issues.
[W]e use a system of broadcasting which promises that the mediocre will not survive. But the significance of what does survive increases in ways of the profoundest import to our times when it proceeds from voluntary action. The fact that the subscription is voluntary merely enlarges the same point. Anyone can understand the rationale of listener sponsorship–that unless the station is supported by those who value it, no one can listen to it including those who value it.
Anyone can listen to a listener-sponsored station. But beyond this, actually sending in the subscription, which one does not have to send in unless one particularly wants to, implies the kind of cultural engagement… that is surely indispensable for the sake of the whole culture. When we have a radio station fully supported by subscribers who have not responded to a special gift offer, who are not participating in a lottery, who have not ventured an investment at 3 per cent, but who use this means of supporting values that seem to them of basic and lasting importance–then we will have more than a subscription roster.
It will amount, I think, to a new focus of action or a new shaping influence that can hardly fail to strengthen all of us.
Listener sponsorship is not a substitute for the commercial industry. KPFA happens to be the pilot experiment. The survival of this station is based upon the necessity of voluntary subscriptions from 2 per cent of the total FM audience in the area in which it operates.
[I]n every major metropolitan area of the country there is room for such an undertaking.
We are hoping to succeed for several reasons, not the least among which is the realization that our success may inspire others to experiment for the eventual betterment of the broadcast product.
It may well be that this is the philosophy by which Air America can break through the Wall Street Profit Barrier and reach the American people with an alternative to Rush & Company, Inc. They just have to open their eyes - and their closed, corporately-trained minds.
They also have to stop giving away the store to celebrities who have every right to expect to get paid large sums for their services.
All across America, as we bloggers of all stripes attest by our existance, there are talented people who can do the job of a Franken or a Malloy, and be just as effective, provided they get the chance to do so. There is no reason not to emulate Pacifica’s practice of auditioning producers’ shows for broadcast, allowing those that are successful to remain on the air while those which are not are replaced by newer applicants. Eventually, one would have a full roster of successful broadcasters who are already living on low wages, grateful for the chance to be on the air with their programming. All it takes is expertise, and Pacifica has been doing it for over 50 years, no matter what the government throws at them.
That alone is itself a lesson that Air America needs to learn. Let’s hope that they do - along with all the other wisdom Pacifica can offer them.