No Ted Rall on Air America

As one of the few liberals to have worked as a host for AM talk radio for a major station (KFI AM 640, Los Angeles, from 1998 through 2000), I’m getting deluged with email asking whether I’ll be part of the new Air America leftie radio syndicate that debuts tomorrow.

I haven’t been asked.

As I describe in my upcoming book WAKE UP, YOU’RE LIBERAL, I had discussions with the predecessor to Air America, AnShell Media, but the new Air America has decided to take a less partisan, less overtly liberal political stance than the “left wing Rush Limbaugh/Clear Channel Communications” approach originally conceived by AnShell. That may be why they’ve excluded progressive voices.

Their roster includes some brilliant comedians–I’m a fan of both Al Franken and Janeane Garafalo–and it seems that that’s the direction Air America management wants to go: the leftism goes down easier with a dose of humor. While my KFI show did include a lot of humor, including Dave Eggers’ “Brooklyn Traffic”, “Dial a Dump” and the infamous “Stan Trek 2000” reality tour of Central Asia, my approach really was to attempt to be the left-wing Rush–aggressive, unfair to the Republican right, and unabashedly unashamed about promoting a liberal agenda. If Air America ever heard my aircheck tapes, they probably thought I was a little too strident for their tastes.

I wish them well, but to be honest, I believe that Air America is doomed.

First and foremost, political talk radio is a difficult medium, very personal and different than televised and stand-up comedy. Listeners to AM talk radio crave honesty, straightforwardness, the ability to think on your feet when dealing with callers. You also have to know your shit, backwards and forward. It took me a year to find my legs on the air; the Air America hosts won’t have that much time. If I’d been a member of the management, I would have eschewed the big/expensive names in favor of lesser-known liberal hosts with on-air experience in the medium.

Second, moderation is death. Like many Democrats, I listen to Rush and Hannity because they piss me off. It looks like Air America wants to convince Republicans by becoming their friends. That won’t work. Democrats want to hear a strident voice echoing their opinions; Republicans want to throw something at those Goddamn commies. Putting soft liberals on the air–Franken, I read somewhere, favored the war in Afghanistan–doesn’t accomplish that.

Third, the distribution model doesn’t make sense. Air America is only on six small stations. Here in New York, their WLIB is currently the home of obscure Carribean hits (yes, really). If you’re going to buy a station outright or take over its programming, you need to make a big splash. Here in New York, that would have required buying a big 50,000-watt talker like WABC or WOR, where an audience already exists for talk radio. Granted, that would have been prohibitively expensive. A far more intelligent approach would have been the slow build model. Right-wing talk radio, after all, didn’t spring up overnight. It started in the late 1970s. If Air America were serious, it would have begun acquiring stations in smaller markets, using their airwaves as a farm system to develop on-air talent for future national syndication. Buying small stations in big markets is an attempt to make a big political splash during an election year, not build a radio network.

Lastly, what happens if Kerry wins? The real test for leftie talk radio, as I can attest from my experience during the Clinton era, is whether it can attack a Democratic president from the left. Right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush often attack Bush from the right; they lose credibility when they suck up to authority. One suspects that Air America’s milquetoast approach won’t allow for that sort of thing.

Air America was a good idea, but its execution sucks.