Air America continues to struggle

[Montgomery Burns]

Station in liberal California struggles to sell ads for Air America

SANTA CRUZ — Even in the nuclear-free zone of Santa Cruz, left-wing talk radio doesn’t sell well.

Since programming content for local AM sister stations 1080 KSCO and 1430 KOMY made the great political split July 18, the liberal arm has been slow to hook advertisers.

It’s so slow, station owner Michael Zwerling went on the air recently with an ad of his own threatening the future of progressive shows on KOMY.

"For liberal programming to continue ... you need to support it," his ad said.

Zwerling said his ad was designed to "get in people’s face" and remind listeners that radio is a commercial business, and if ad space is available, they need to know about it.

Commercial business? Sounds like that evil capitalism. Why not just raise taxes and get the public to fund something they don't want to listen to?

KOMY, the new home to the Air America network featuring Al Franken and Randi Rhodes, lags in advertising appeal, Zwerling said, especially compared with Rush Limbaugh, who has ruled the KSCO airwaves for more than a decade blasting conservative tirades.

This is all so bewildering. Finally…FINALLY…America has a liberal voice in the media. People should be flocking to it, after having to put up with conservative media like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, The LA Times, Vanity Fair, Time, Newsweek, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NPR, etc. I figured they’d have no problems selling ads because the American people were starving for liberal news coverage. But apparently they’re not selling a lot of ads - even in liberal California. Apparently their liberal target audience likes to talk a lot about how they want to hear liberal commentary on the radio, but when push comes to shove, they’re tuning in Rush Limbaugh and trying to get past his call screener so they can get on the air and call him a drug-addicted big fatass. And advertisers…those evil greedy corporations...refuse to buy ads unless they think people will actually hear them and buy their products!

That's what’s wrong with America. Everybody wants to make a profit. Nobody is willing to do stuff just because it’s the right thing to do! I mean, okay, so you buy ads on Air America, and nobody buys your product. So what? At least people get to hear Al Franken connect the dots. You know. George Bush’s grandfather owned stock in companies that owned stock in companies in Nazi Germany, George Bush is the President, George Bush has friends in the oil business, therefore the election was rigged by Texas oil people so Bush would start a war in Iraq, take the oil, and use the money to start his own Nazi regime where a retarded 12 y/o raped by her Republican father can’t even have a partial-birth abortion!

That’s what the Republicans are all about. Nazi Halliburton incest oil rape. And Al Franken is out there on the front lines every day, connecting the dots, which is hard, because some of the dots are really far apart. And some - I’ll be honest - some he has to make up, because they aren’t really there. But that’s okay, because falsified information is acceptable, as long as the final story is accurate. Just ask Dan Rather.

[B. Max]

I guess even liberals can't stand to listen to their own nauseate.

[Argus]

I guess even liberals can't stand to listen to their own nauseate.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You think it could be worse than Rush?

[Montgomery Burns]

I guess even liberals can't stand to listen to their own nauseate.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You think it could be worse than Rush?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

A great retort from that noted conservative, Argus.

Btw, did you know that Rush's ratings are 3.5 times higher than AA's are in San Francisco? That's the last figures I saw - a couple of months ago - and I have no reason to doubt that they have changed.

Yes, Rush whips AA in The City of Moonbats - San Francisco.

[losiguy]

n

[Riverwind]

Yes, Rush whips AA in The City of Moonbats - San Francisco.

You don't measure the worth of a news source by the number of viewers/listeners/readers. In most cases, media that provides entertainment value will attract a larger audience than media that reports facts honestly. In all cases, right wing media outlets provide entertainment by spouting propoganda that re-enforce prejudices that people in its target audience have. It would not surprise me to find out that the people running Fox don't actually believe the stuff they report - they just report it because it makes bags of money for them.

I was rolling on the floor laughing when BD pointed out a study that that showed that Fox viewers are the most likely to be misinformed about key issues.

[Montgomery Burns]

Yes, Rush whips AA in The City of Moonbats - San Francisco.

You don't measure the worth of a news source by the number of viewers/listeners/readers. In most cases, media that provides entertainment value will attract a larger audience than media that reports facts honestly. In all cases, right wing media outlets provide entertainment by spouting propoganda that re-enforce prejudices that people in its target audience have. It would not surprise me to find out that the people running Fox don't actually believe the stuff they report - they just report it because it makes bags of money for them.

I was rolling on the floor laughing when BD pointed out a study that that showed that Fox viewers are the most likely to be misinformed about key issues.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You're right about entertainment value; that's something leftwing radio doesn't seem to understand. To AA, entertainment value is calling - twice - for the President's assassination over their airwaves.

Class, real classy.

When Rush is whipping your ass in loony San Francisco - which is right by Berkeley - then you have a BIG problem with your entertainment value.

I'm not sure what BD posted that said Fox News viewers aren't informed, but if it is the infamous PIPA study, it will be my turn to roll on the floor laughing. PIPA - inadvertently - proved that Fox News viewers were 4 times more knowledgeable than viewers who got their Iraq news from liberal TV.

Fair and balanced reporting will always beat out the lies and forged memos of Dan Rather and his ilk.

[Black Dog]

You're right about entertainment value; that's something leftwing radio doesn't seem to understand. To AA, entertainment value is calling - twice - for the President's assassination over their airwaves.

Class, real classy.

Whereas the right wing gets off on sodomizing teenage boys (" a harmless prank" in Rush's words).

Class.

PIPA - inadvertently - proved that Fox News viewers were 4 times more knowledgeable than viewers who got their Iraq news from liberal TV.

Yeah...in Bizzaro world.

Fair and balanced reporting will always beat out the lies and forged memos of Dan Rather and his ilk.

And what has fair and balanced reporting have to do with Rush? Oh wait, I forgot: Bizzaro world.

[Shady]

I've listened to both Air America Radio and Rush Limbaugh. I still listen to Rush Limbaugh. I can't listen to Air America Radio. It's as boring of a radio show as I've ever tried to listen to. I liken it to sitting in a boring College/University lecture. I wish I could listen to it, but I can't. It's simply too painful. That's just my opinion.

[Montgomery Burns]

Montgomery Burns:

PIPA - inadvertently - proved that Fox News viewers were 4 times more knowledgeable than viewers who got their Iraq news from liberal TV.

Black Dog:

Yeah...in Bizzaro world.

The left had a field day promoting the results of an October 2003 study from the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). The study, entitled "Misperceptions, the Media, and the Iraq War," led its readers to believe that viewers of Fox News were much more likely to wrongly believe that there had been a solid connection found between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The study claimed that "the consensus view in the intelligence community" was that there was no such link.

The PIPA message: Viewers of Fox News are misinformed, and the network may be misleading its audience. After all, the liberal media had insisted that there were no links between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

It’s no wonder that the liberal Univeristy of Maryland's PIPA did not cite one specific source to back this claim. Apparently, the PIPA folks "accidentally overlooked" a letter CIA Director George Tenet issued to the Senate Intelligence Committee a year before their study was released.

The eye-opening letter read:

" ... We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade.

... Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.

... Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.

... We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

It was Tenet’s letter that later led James Woolsey, Director of the CIA under President Clinton, to remark to Wolf Blitzer, on the November 16, 2003 edition of CNN's Late Edition:

"Anybody who says there is no working relationship between Al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence going back to the early '90s; they can only say that if they're illiterate."

"Illiterate"? Yikes. Maybe Black Dog should take some basic reading courses!

Fox News had reported the Tenet letter; the liberal media had not. Bizarro World, indeed.

Conclusion: One can reasonably argue that this study tells the opposite of what PIPA told its readers. By a margin of over 4 to 1, viewers of Fox News showed that they most likely correctly, rather than incorrectly, identified the Iraq-Al Qaeda link, compared to those who got their news from NPR and PBS!

And that's why the left never brings up the PIPA study anymore...

Montgomery Burns:

Fair and balanced reporting will always beat out the lies and forged memos of Dan Rather and his ilk.

Black Dog:

And what has fair and balanced reporting have to do with Rush? Oh wait, I forgot: Bizzaro world.

I was talking about Fox News, not Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh is a conservative pundit. I also don't expect the liberal pundits on Air America to offer fair and balanced reporting, either. That said, I also do not expect AA to call (twice!) for President Bush's assassination.

[Guest eureka]

And that "solid" evidence liquified as soon as it saw the light of day and then evaporated as it turned to gas under the pressure of the truth.

There was once a thread here asking why people posted: to teach, to learn, to inform, to be informed etc.

You certainly could never answer that you were here to learn, Monty. And, since everything you post is a reasonable facsumile of a colander, you are not here to inform, either.

[moderateamericain]

And that "solid" evidence liquified as soon as it saw the light of day and then evaporated as it turned to gas under the pressure of the truth.

There was once a thread here asking why people posted: to teach, to learn, to inform, to be informed etc.

You certainly could never answer that you were here to learn, Monty. And, since everything you post is a reasonable facsumile of a colander, you are not here to inform, either.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Eureka this is the 2nd time you have gone after him and not his argument. How have you not been warned/banned for this yet is beyond comprehension. Because you dont outright call him a facisit right wing nut doesnt excuse you from attacking his credibility. Why dont you attack his argument? Honestly i think its pretty sad that you cannot find something to refute the letter and then have to decend into a personal attack on his charachter. Shape up.

Thanks for the link to the letter, im reading it now.

[Black Dog]

It’s no wonder that the liberal Univeristy of Maryland's PIPA did not cite one specific source to back this claim. Apparently, the PIPA folks "accidentally overlooked" a letter CIA Director George Tenet issued to the Senate Intelligence Committee a year before their study was released.

I wonder what "solid reporting" they had...the same kind that led them to the massive stockpiles of WMD (oops!)? That showed 9-11 hijackers meeting Iraqi agents in Pargue (nope!)

Conclusion: without knowing exactly what intelligence they're talking about and knowing the qualityof intelligence they were using in the run up to the war (what's up, "Curveball"?) and then taking into account the administration's reluctance to paint anything more than tenuous links to the two subsequent to the war, the only reasonable conclusion is that the evidence does not support any solid, collaborative relationship between the two. Or, in the words of the British Foreign Office "U.S. scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and al-Qaida is so far frankly unconvincing." This conclusion is supported by the Senate's report on the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, which states:

Conclusion 93. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship. (Page 346)

Conclusion 94. The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably and objectively assessed in Iraqi Support for Terrorism that the most problematic area of contact between Iraq and al-Qaida were the reports of training in the use of non-conventional weapons, specifically chemical and biological weapons. (Page 346)

Conclusion 95. The Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment on safehaven – that al-Qaida or associated operatives were present in Baghdad and in northeastern Iraq in an area under Kurdish control – was reasonable. (Page 347)

Conclusion 96. The Central Intelligence Agency’s assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al-Qaida attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise. (Page 347)

Conclusion 97. The Central Intelligence Agency’s judgment that Saddam Hussein, if sufficiently desperate, might employ terrorists with a global reach – al-Qaida – to conduct terrorist attacks in the event of war, was reasonable. No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al-Qaida in conducting terrorist attacks.

[BHS]

And that "solid" evidence liquified as soon as it saw the light of day and then evaporated as it turned to gas under the pressure of the truth.

There was once a thread here asking why people posted: to teach, to learn, to inform, to be informed etc.

You certainly could never answer that you were here to learn, Monty. And, since everything you post is a reasonable facsumile of a colander, you are not here to inform, either.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Eureka this is the 2nd time you have gone after him and not his argument. How have you not been warned/banned for this yet is beyond comprehension. Because you dont outright call him a facisit right wing nut doesnt excuse you from attacking his credibility. Why dont you attack his argument? Honestly i think its pretty sad that you cannot find something to refute the letter and then have to decend into a personal attack on his charachter. Shape up.

Thanks for the link to the letter, im reading it now.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'll just add that I've never seen eureka start a thread, or jump into a topic with a fresh and positive take on the subject at hand. His forte (raison d'etre, really) is criticisizing other people's posts, often without anything to back up his critique except his own bluster. For him to deride others for their posting style is just crass. I'd say more, but the eye in the sky is always watching.

[Montgomery Burns]

Gee Black Dog, Here ya go. A clue for you. If you didn't watch Fox News, as apparently the liberal University of Maryland's PIPA didn't..., you might have known that George Tenet's October 2002 letter stated:

... We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade.

... Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression.

... Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.

... We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

Indeed, it was Tenet’s letter that later led James Woolsey, Director of the CIA under President Clinton, to remark on CNN’s Late Edition, to Wolf Blitzer, November 16, 2003:

"Anybody who says there is no working relationship between al Qaeda and Iraqi intelligence going back to the early '90s; they can only say that if they're illiterate."

Illiterate? Yikes. Maybe Black Dog should take some basic reading courses!

These suckers that only get their news from the liberal media....

[Montgomery Burns]

The NY Times took 2 weeks to report on AAR's stealing of $875,000 from the federally funded Gloria Wise Club, in which the NY Times blatantly lied about what Al Franken, to his credit admitted..."I understand that Paul robbed Peter to pay Paul."

The NY Times, of course, reported the transcript as Franken saying, "I understand that Peter borrowed from Paul.

However, I got a big chuckle out of this:

Air America Radio is virtually broke; they're now begging for cash donations. But the best part is this:

We'll send you a monthly Associates insider email with the backstage news from our shows and our headquarters.

Translation: We'll send you some e-mail spam.

And for gifts of $50 and up, we've got FREE STUFF to send you. See the items on the right-hand side of this page.

Dontcha love the notion that by sending AAR $50, listeners get "FREE STUFF?" Only a liberal hack would buy that argument. It's the same argument that they swallow when arguing that government should provide services for "free".

Those wacky zany liberals.

[Guest eureka]

Quite right, I don't start threads. I am interested in what ithers have to say and want to discuss.

As for attacking Monty's character, I have not done that yet. For all I know he is a paragon of virtue. I will attack his empty rhetoric, though.

[Montgomery Burns]

Washington Post: Air America ratings, from bad to nonexistent

Air America, the liberal talk network carried on WWRC-AM (1260) [Washington], went from bad to nonexistent. After WWRC recorded a mere fraction of a rating point in the spring with syndicated shows from the likes of lefty talkers Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo and Stephanie Miller, Arbitron couldn’t detect a measurable listenership for the station this time around.

Haha ...and Washington is at least 80% Democrat.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh took time out from stomping the crap out of Air America and wrote an opinion piece for the WSJ:

Rush Limbaugh oped in the Wall Street Journal

I love being a conservative. We conservatives are proud of our philosophy. Unlike our liberal friends, who are constantly looking for new words to conceal their true beliefs and are in a perpetual state of reinvention, we conservatives are unapologetic about our ideals. We are confident in our principles and energetic about openly advancing them. We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation--the U.S. Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a people.

I've never heard his radio show, but it is easy to see why his ratings are so high. His analysis above is spot on.

[newbie]

Limbaugh is a joke and a blowhard. Oh, and let's not forget his drug habit.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1895

http://www.nydailynews.com/10-02-2003/fron...9p-110349c.html

http://www.rushlimbaughonline.com/

[Montgomery Burns]

He doesn't have a drug habit. That's a cheapshot on your part.

[newbie]

He doesn't have a drug habit.  That's a cheapshot on your part.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oh, that's right. He DID have a drug habit, and got his maid to get them for him. Sorry, I did forget about that. Cheapshot? Maybe, if you admit Limbaugh was a hypocrite for condemning drug users on his radio show.

[Montgomery Burns]

Apparently he has beaten his painkillers habit. Why do you think it is appropriate to mock him? It's so Howard Dean.