Air America is dead.

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http://airamerica.com/

Add this to the 10,000 people Clear Channel laid off last year and the local stations buckling all across the country, and what you get is really bad timing to be looking for work in radio -- especially for any poor fools that dropped 6 dimes and left decent jobs to go to broadcast school (fortunately, the GI bill covered most of my costs, but I'm still looking for a job that doesn't, you know, suck -- preferably in broadcasting, but I'm not holding my breath) in the last year or so. The radio industry will almost certainly recover, but as much as I hate to say it, but those jobs are probably gone for good.

****, as they say, always rolls down-hill. When the big boys are done tightening their belts, we'll almost certainly see yet another consolidation. Local stations, hurting even more than the big boys, are moving over to the satellite model in droves. If the past is any indicator, the stations that switch from in-house local broadcasters and programming to satellite affiliates won't be going back. I'm calling it now. Local radio just died on the 25th of January. Damn.

 

I imagine that it's not particularly good in local television either.... (and probably even worse so in the newspaper biz...) Pretty much all advertising driven industries are probably taking it on the chin, but newspapers were getting hit bad even before the economic downturn, due to the internet.


I agree that it's cheaper to do "re-broadcasting", or syndication. I assume that you don't have to duplicate a lot of jobs in such a process, as you probably only need a bare handful of people to make certain that the programs are being "re-broadcast" probably.

Not to make this political, but there was some talk a while back that one tack that the administration or Congress might try to use to combat Rush Lumbaugh and other nationally syndicated conservative radio hosts in lieu of the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" was some policy of requiring larger amounts of local content. However, given what you've described above (all political considerations aside), I'm not sure that it would be at all wise to try to force such a policy at this point, for economic reasons. Given the choice between staying on the air with national content and doing much more expensive local content, some radio stations may not have much choice but to shut down. And frankly, that would be an utterly despicable thing to do to plenty of hard working people and radio station owners out of partisan hatred.

Anyways, good luck at finding your desired job in the broadcast industry....

 

I don't think proponents of the Fairness doctrine promote it out of any sort of partisan hatred, Crucis. There was a time not too long ago when under-represented republicans thought the Fairness Doctrine was a good idea, too. That said, I wouldn't worry about the fairness doctrine coming back any time soon. Obama opposes it and our democratic congress voted it down 87-11 somewhat recently. In my opinion, the best way to promote balanced viewpoints on the air is to give more funding to public radio.

 

A. I think that NPR and PBS should be completely defunded. TV and radio should be entirely private institutions. Government has no business being in this TV and radio biz.


B. I don't think that there is, nor should be, any government enforced imperative to promote "balanced" viewpoints. Free market principles should drive these things. All one has to do is look at the popularity (in terms of ratings) of conservative talk radio and the Fox News Channel. Libs can diss FNC all they want, but it CRUSHES CNN and MSNBC in the ratings.


C. I strongly disagree regarding the underlying motivation of the Fairness Doctrine (or its alternative). It's ENTIRELY about partisan hatred of the vastly more popular and economically successful nationally syndicated conservative talk shows. Liberal talk is nowhere near as successful as conservative talk shows. I imagine that there are some places where it's successful, like NYC and San Fran, but in general liberal talk is a tiny shadow of conservative talk on the radio.

D. I wasn't aware that there was a recent vote on the FD. Was this in the current Congress? Regardless, I don't trust BHO on the FD. I think that he'll say that he's against it ... right up until the moment that he can sign a new FD (or its alternative) into law.

 

There's a different between publicly funded and government run radio, Crusis. Publicly funded Radio is a public service -- a means to disseminate information. It is not a political platform, and the government doesn't "run" it, either.

The point, Crucis, is that the people who control media wield great influence. The overwhelming prevalence of conservative broadcasters that began after the repeal of the fairness doctrine is not the outcropping of some heretofore unexpressed greater public will, but rather of the interests of the people who own the media outlets and do the hiring. The "little guy" cannot afford to buy such influence, so his opinion is not spoken for using a free market system.

...a disingenuous comparison. Market success has nothing whatsoever to do with truthfulness or journalistic integrity. I have no problem with Fox's conservative bias. My issue is with their history of reporting things that aren't actually true or that never actually happened. To paraphrase Al Franken, we're all entitled to our own opinions. What we aren't entitled to is our own facts.

If the fairness doctrine is about partisan hatred, why did more than 40 senate democrats vote against it?

Republican Mike Pence introduced an amendment in the house to temporarily ban the Fairness Doctrine in 2007. 113 house democrats voted for the amendment. In February 2009 Sen. Jim DeMint proposed an amendment, the Broadcaster Freedom Act, which would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. The amendment passed 87-11. Stop worrying.

Also, please don't refer to our president as BHO. While it is certainly better than BO , I all too often hear conservatives try to demean our president by prominently emphasizing his middle name. I have no problem with his middle name, and I'm not accusing you of intentionally trying to demean our president with by referring to him in that manner, but many people who use such appellations do so with exactly that purpose in mind. Since such demeaning appellations for politicians are against the rules on this board, it's best to avoid any unnecessary confusion.

At any rate, I was hoping to make this a conversation about the direction we think media will be heading in the face of economic reality and competing formats, but I should have known better than to think that would happen. I should have put this one in Lingering Sighs.

 

Details, schmetails. It's socialism, plain and simple. After all, all Socialist countries do have public broadcasting networks to disseminate their vile Socialist propaganda! Stalinist Russia, Communist China and Communist Cuba have public broadcasting. Nazi Germany had public broadcasting. That Air America lasted so long and that NPR and PBS still exist spouting their Liberal venom are only indications to which extent America has been subverted by fascist socialist ... subversion.

The government cannot run anything, and they boss citizens around all the time with their constitution, constitutional amendments, laws and procedures. And don't get me started on big government ... which is a major part of the Socialist Liberal plot to strangle private ingenuity and competition and to eventually destroy America by turning it into a Liberal Stalinist Fascist country.

 

Please tell me you aren't blaming the economy for the demise of Air America. Air America was a failing venture from the very beginning. Even in liberal strongholds such as Boston, New York, and San Francisco the ratings were non-existant from the beginning, and this was in the liberal glory days when Bush was President and they had all sorts of things to vent about. Now with Obama and Dem Congress they were guaranteed to lose what little audience they had.

I'm sure we will see a similiar thing with Fox News Channel. They were the number one news channel during the Bush years, but now with Obama in charge they have grown even more dominate. I'm sure when Obama is gone and conservatives don't have so much to worry about Fox's ratings should go down.

 

Based on the examples listed, I'm not sure Crucis was being all that partizan here. NPR, sure, that's liberal, but PBS is about as vanilla as you can get.

 

It's not government run, but it does all-to-often turn political. Remember, everyone has political views, including announcers, DJs, and whatever.

And yet, Fox is the only really conservative TV outlet. All in all, I'd have no big problem with the Fairness Doctrine if it affected all media (I don't think it'd be practical, but that's something else), but as long as anyone says it should only be applied to radio, or only TV, or only whatever, it stinks of partisan hate of the other side.

I think the only certain thing is that it won't be heading out of politics any time soon. Sorry.

 

Broadcast radio's dead? Well, it's about F***ing time....

I listen to CDs or Mp3 CDs 95% of the time that I'm in my car. The other 5% is putting up with poor sound quality with a nice touch of RF interference any time I drive under HV power lines.

At work I listen to 90% Mp3s on my phone...and *sometimes* I'll use 1% on internet radio....which sounds worse than broadcast radio does on a perfect day. The rest is pure silence.


Anyhoo...I don't know what Air America is exactly. I know what Clear Channel is, so if AA is anything like CC....then GOOD!
These corporately owned monsters play a single song from an artist's "new" album over and over and over and over and over until no one can stand it anymore, and then they move to the next most popular song on the album, and the cycle repeats.

 

Things political are hard to avoid when you seriously cover *national news* (which is a primary task of a public broadcasting service). There are people who are so polarised in their views that neutral and factual reporting to them is left wing propaganda. Example: For some people reporting that Obama is legitimately president leaves out their own (nutty) point of view that he is a Muslim usurper, and denies them their 'other side of the story'. 'Liberal bias'!

Except that there is no 'other side of the story'. It gives testimony to the marketing genius of outlets like FOX News that they have managed to talk their audience into believing that there always is 'another side of the story'. Is that so? Far too often 'there is no there there' and what is sold as the 'other side of the story' is just sorry BS.

News are called on to call out nuttiness and call it by its rightful name, nuttiness, because very nature of objective reporting requires them to do that. As Drew said, people are entitled their opinions, but not their own facts. But people generally don't like being told that. To them that's just not true and slanderous.

 

Ragusa, you're political fears are legit, but you also have to recognize that the same happens on the other side, just less vocally these days. NPR hosts, when politics come up, often present a liberal spin so extreme it makes me wonder if they're living in the same world as the rest of us. I'm not talking about, 'Obama is actually a US citizen', but rather, 'McCain's opposition to Obama evidences his own racist fears and support of slavery' kind of extreme. I heard one of them call James Harris everything short of race-traitor after he hugged McCain.

 

No, NOG, they are mostly all corporate outlets. MSNBC is somewhat liberal, but it has a sister station, CNBC, which is as conservative as FOX, so GE covered the spectrum. As long as it makes money they don't care if it's liberal or conservative. It's all corporate media, which means "entertainment," and not news. FOX is essentially an entertainment channel for conservatives (and much of AM radio), and I have liberal friends who watch FOX out of pure fascination for how far they will go. When you consider what passes for entertainment, at least here, that can be NO limits. I pity historians who have to go back and figure the accounts, which will be the primary sources, for inquiry and scruntiny of what has gone wrong. The sources are all lies and fabrications. Good luck to them.

We will always have conservative big government. There is no such thing as "small conservative" government. I've never seen it in my lifetime under any president, not even Reagan. America's military-industrial complex is a huge dinosaur and needs to be fed lots of taxpayer $$$$.

Edit: You know it's bad when a comedy channel (Cobert and the Dialy shows) have to go back and point out factual errors in the "News" programming and accounts. As Ragusa says, "reality beats satire," and that's no more evident than here in the US.

Who is James Harris?

---------- Added 0 hours, 38 minutes and 42 seconds later... ----------

See? It's not even corporate "America" any longer. It's any corporation, even foreign ones, that can own a piece of the US government. That doesn't leave much government for the American people. The dream of the Founders is long dead, it would seem.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35293626/ns/business-autos/

 

I hate to do this, as I said I wouldn't, but I just can't let this slide.

I'm sorry, but you're full of sh*t, NOG. I listen to NPR daily and have done for over 8 years. The only reason why is because they're about the only non-sensationalist, non-partisan broadcast journalism organization out there right now. I've never once heard anyone say anything as remotely extremist as what you describe above. Not once. If I ever had I'd have turned them off permanently years ago. You clearly don't even listen to NPR, so I'm forced to assume either you heard/read this somewhere and uncritically believed it, or you just made it up to make a point. Sorry, but I'm calling BS.

The nice thing about NPR is that they go out of their way to be NON-partisan. Rich Lowery and Jonah Goldberg from National Review (two bigger Reaganites you'd be hard-pressed to find, one the author of a book called "Liberal Fascism") are given regular platforms on NPR, as are Fox News' Juan Williams and half the staff of The Weekly Standard. Both sides are given more than a fair shake, I assure you. They've even been dutifully covering the moronic Tea Party convention. But you'd know that if you actually listened to NPR, and I think it's quite evident that you don't. It's a shame - NPR is an exemplary corner of the media and I highly recommend to anyone.

(I will regret this post in 3...2...1...)

 

Allow me, DR:

You mean the "Hate Party" Convention? The only difference between that "convention" of haters and a Klan meeting is that the Klan has the good sense to wear sheets.

 

Chandos,

I don't feel the need to vilify the tea party folks by invoking the KKK. That is stooping to their level. These are the people running around shouting about Obama's fascism and making posters of him as Hitler (how little sense any of this makes, both logically and rhetorically, is why I call them moronic). I'd prefer not to legitimize this kind of political flaming as there's already too much of it in the mainstream media (which brings me back to why I defend NPR).

I call them 'moronic' because they whine about the 'socialism' of big government programs while demanding that nobody lay a finger on Medicare. They flip out about the evil, socialist stimilus while demanding that the administration take action to create more jobs and invest in public works projects like fixing roads. They claim to be affiliated with no party and that their members come from all walks of life, but if the attendance at the convention was any indication, they are almost exclusively white, middle-aged, low-information, evangelical christian hyper-conservatives. I could go on highlighting the logical fallacies with these folks for days. Trust me, this "party" is buffoonish enough without playing the "hate" and "Klan" cards. (I realize you were mostly joking, but still.)

As for Air America: IMO, Air America is dead for two reasons. They had a flawed business model and they tried to do too much too soon. The dominance of conservative views on talk radio took decades to slowly creep up. Rush Limbaugh, for example, love him or hate him, built his audience steadily over many years before he was syndicated nationally. Air America tried to nationally-syndicate dozens of talk radio "stars" overnight. That was supply VASTLY outstretching demand. There are plenty of people out there interested in liberal talk radio. This was not a failure of ideology, but of strategy, market conditions and understanding the media habits of one's audience. Air America blew all three, and in stunning fashion. I'm surprised they lasted THIS long, to be honest.

 

No, I'm insulting the Klan with the comparison.

Did you listen to the rhetoric at the "convention?"

 

Some of it, yes, mostly from scattered reports of those in attendance. Maybe you've heard some specifics that I haven't to justify your opinion (and Tancredo is a racist idiot). But still - I think KKK references are more or less violations of Godwin's law. I wouldn't characterize what I read as anything other than well-meaning, but angry, frustrated, and ultimately deeply misinformed and easily-manipulated people directing their anger in the all wrong directions and for all the wrong reasons. There's nothing well-meaning about the KKK.

 

Good. Write me a ticket. I have more respect for the Klan than I do for those frauds and imposters.

Not really, but I had to say that for effect.

 

I see what you're saying, Chandos. But I think the only way to combat nonsense like this is by logically pointing out all the holes in their arguments. Even justifiably comparing them to the KKK just puts them on the defensive, retreating to the emotional comfort of the "I'm being victimized by the lefties" mentality that likely drove them to the Tea Parties in the first place. It's counterproductive, I think.