Listening in to the Leftist Launch

I must admit to an unusual bit of interest in how Air America would take to the airwaves of the USA this week. So much so that I stayed up late on Tuesday night, listening to WLIB a station which I discovered would be the flagship station of the brave new adventure.

WLIB was an interesting station to tune into Tuesday night, mainly music of the Caribbean and audio clips from the Station president. He would regale the listener with tales of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the days of the Nation of Islam. Broadcasting from the heart of Harlem as it was described, it seemed like a bit of New York History was about to disappear. One suspects its location on the AM dial more of a death knell than the actual programming, but as the hours ticked off the frequency of the historical quotes would increase, indicating a change was imminent.

I caught a bit of sleep and then woke up early just before 6 am, figuring the station would be up and running by then, but just before 6 (which would be 9 am NYC time) they're still featuring the steel drums and rhythmic stylings of Jamaica, Bermuda, St. Kitts and other dreamy islands. Then at six am (9 NY time) the changeover takes place.

With the screaming guitar riffs to the Beatles "Revolution" kicking things off, you know the format switch is complete. For the next three hours the same one hour block of tunes and audio clips would be repeated.

Neil Young with Rockin in the Free World, Billy Joel and We Didn't Start the Fire, Bob Marley and Get Up, Stand Up, Marvin Gaye with What's Goin' on, Public Enemy with Fight the Power and CCR's Fortunate Son just some of the tunes to fill some time.

Audio clips featuring John F. K Kennedy's famous ask not what your country can do for you, speech, George Carlins preamble to the seven words you can't say and Bumpers with positioning statements like Democracy without Demographics, Discussing things, not dictating them all give the listener a sample of where this station is going to be coming from.

The one hour loop continued on until 9 am (Noon NY time, it seems that Liberals don't get up early I guess) and the main attraction Al Franken and the O'Franken factor officially launches the counter attack on the right wing agenda in the media. Franken who has been carrying on a feud with Bill O'Reilly of Fox for a number of years now, came right out and said he named his show the O'Franken Factor, purely to make Bill as annoyed as possible. With that Air America is off and on message.

Franken with co host Katherine Lanpher explained why they've launched the station, what they hope to achieve (chasing Bush out of office mostly) and how the entire line up will serve as a counter balance of the raging ravings offered by the likes of Rush, Sean, Bill and such.

They trotted out a few Conservatives in the form of G. Gordon Liddy and Ben Stein to provide a bit of an early foil for Franken. Then began to bring in the Liberals, Bob Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Moore offered up the Liberal defense on this debut edition. Sloppy at times, occasionally drifting off in a dead end direction, they work out the nerves of a first day. The Moore segment was rather entertaining, but predictable, the illegitamacy (in Moore's eyes) of the Bush presidency, the main talking point in this segment. Basically they are offering up NPR with a bite. There's a lot of sarcasm, some biting comments about right wing politicians and media personalities and some comedy bits, mostly at the expense of the right wing.

The three hours of the debut went by rather quickly, the internet feed occasionally dropping out due to high volume on the servers. A frustrating thing for a listener to have the content just plain disappear only to reappear minutes later, Radio Marta never had this kind of a problem! But if you surfed around to their four different cities you could pick up a working feed after a bit of work.

And that in a nutshell is the one problem the new venture has. A lack of transmission sites for their product. While they can be heard over the internet, the overwhelming reaction to the launch and the subsequent clogging of the bandwidth, could send more than one would be listener off to the enemy! Air America is currently only available in four large American cities, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland. Mostly on low rated AM radio stations, usually ones that featured niche programming such as that offered by WLIB.

The first act of the Liberal revolution it appears, was to silence one of the voices of the minorities in the various markets. But to be fair to them, those stations were the ones suffering the most in the corporate controlled world of private radio in the US, thus they were the only properties available to purchase. But the irony of black and Hispanic radio programming being replaced by Liberal white polemics is not one lost on the right wing, that's for sure.

The concept though is one that is needed in the over managed radio environment of the US broadcasting industry. The daily line up of leftist dogma should give the radio listener a nice cross section of how some of the American population is thinking. Far too long has the right wing had a grip on the radio media, its last bastion of dominance. The newspapers and television stations are all over the map as far as rhetoric goes, Radio for whatever reason seemed to be the domain of the right, Air America will at least carve a little corner out for itself.

Whether they can keep up the pace in the long run remains to be seen, a full day of talk regardless of the political direction is hard to keep fresh let alone entertaining. Right now Air America gives the illusion of the old Pirate Radio stations of the sixties and seventies, you're just not sure what you're going to hear next. Which in radio is great, it's what keeps an audience listening. In the end, they'll have to attract advertisers to keep the stations on the air, the necessary beast that must be fed. For now it's a curious diversion, time will tell if Air America becomes a part of the average listeners day.

We'll know it's taking off if one day we hear Al Franken referring to his loyal listeners as Franken heads, though if he actually did that he'd then have to turn around and mock himself. The real goal of Air America seems to be to provide a completely opposite vehicle than that of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, the task is a daunting one. Air America's five stations will take to the battle against the juggernaut of the 600 stations of the Limbaugh show. A true David and Goliath battle, but you know I get the feeling that the crew of Air America wouldn't have it any other way.