wow. that's unfortunate. even though i consider myself a good liberal, i could hardly stand listing to the left-wing-version of the ditto-heads call up and attempt to harmonize on the radio. but i wish we could maintain some parity with our right-wing brethren when it comes to providing a sanctuary for our obsessive-compulsive followers. oh well - at least we still have NPR.

And blogs.

What a week. Scott Brown, Supreme court action, John Edwards fesses up to be the baby's Daddy and now Air America is boots up. Gosh almost makes one giddy.

What a week. Scott Brown, Supreme court action, John Edwards fesses up to be the baby's Daddy and now Air America is boots up. Gosh almost makes one giddy.

I know, right? John McCain's wife Cindy coming out against the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 in California, leading Republicans severely criticizing the Supreme Court decision, Scott Brown's wife showing up in a music video simulating a hand job while he advertises his daughters are "available", and New Zealand forcibly removing bible references from rifles...all in one week! And that's the short list.

Almost makes a liberal giddy.

I never really listened to it because, while not as slanted to the left as right wing radio is to, well the right, I still viewed it as one sided news. I'll stick with NPR, I've yet to hear a story that doesn't bring both sides, talking respectfully to one another aired. I now many think NPR is Liberal but I feel it's just good, balanced news. Oops, almost said 'fair and balanced'.

"I never really listened to it because, while not as slanted to the left as right wing radio is to, well the right, I still viewed it as one sided news."

Really? Ever try listening to Randi Rhodes or Mike Malloy? They make Limbaugh, Hannity and even Pat Robertson seem like Centrists.

I quote Cartman: "Sweeeet"

I've been a regular listener of Malloy. Maddow too. Ed Schults and Ring of Fire on the weekend.
The hate has long been palatable.
Malloy has been by far the worst.

Mike Malloy after Mass election.
listen here
http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2010/01/2010-01-19-Malloy-9pm-TerrorAttacks.mp3

Transcript:
"You crazy sons-of-bitches, you right-wingers. Do you not understand that the people you hold up as heroes bombed your goddamn country? Do you not understand that Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly are as complicit of the September 11, 2001 terror attack as any one of those dumb-ass fifteen who came from Saudi Arabia? Don’t you get that?"

Rachal Maddow loves the guy.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2010/01/18/msnbcs-maddow-tells-wild-lefty-mike-malloy-we-all-love-you-your-dark-tho

"I love your dark thoughts. We all love you for your dark thoughts."

(Audio here.) So Maddow suggested she deeply loves hateful talk niblets like these:

1. "The Republican Party needs to be executed as quickly as possible."

2. "I have a good news to report. Glenn Beck appears closer to suicide -- I'm hoping that he does it on camera."

and many more

Blogs really are the only place left to get news.

Haven't listened to Air America since Al Franken left. Randi Rhodes or Rush Limbaugh, I don't find extremists on either side appealing. That said, I'd much rather see Rush the Big Fat Drug Addled Idiot go off the air than Air America.

This doesn't impact KPOJ's line up much does it?

I think the only Air America shows on there are Ron Reagan and Ring of Fire.

Malloy is infotainment: His tagline is "Have I told you how much I hate these people lately?"

He makes no claim to being "Fair and Balanced" while pointing out situations and his opinion on them. Vitriol in four syllables...and bumper music from the past century. The perfect lullaby in these trying times. I drift off to sleep pretending that he's transmitting from a pirate transmitter and I'm huddled in an abandoned factory. ZZZZzzzzz....

Canucken, NPR is fair and balanced-like recently on the M67 issue when two women in a discussion said that the new business gross sales tax is not retroactive to Jan 09?? No correction occurred. Fair and balanced?

Folks, If Air America was a ratings magnet, instead of a cash vampire, you could scream about hate radio all day and they would still be on.

But they weren't. So they're not.

End of story.

I abandoned right wing talk radio (thus the screen name) in 2007. Never really felt the need to go for the left radio either. I bought an iPod, filled it with good music, and discovered some excellent blogs (primarily this one) to get a more balanced take on things.

My happiness increased, as did my exposure to reality.

Talk radio must, by design, be controversial, biased, and inflammatory to be entertaining. I don't need that. I also got sick of the crap be troweled out as fact by the hosts.

lw -- I think the NPR correction is scheduled to run the same day Oregonians Against Job Killing Taxes runs their apology for the ads using outdated 2007 budget projections for state employee expenses.

That would be right around the corner, right? Or maybe on Jan. 27??

I love listening to Malloy's invective laced Communist propaganda. Real boilerplate ad-hominems, one after another...what the Comintern has excelled at for nearly a century. He's basically the Left-wing version of Michael "Savage" Wiener. Used to be, he was even on at the same time as Wiener, so you could just flip back and forth between the two master propagandists. HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE. Very entertaining.

Of course, what I really miss is Clyde Lewis's old local show, "Ground Zero." UFO nuts galore, interviews with Alex Jones, that was great radio. It was so weird to hear him working for that godawful 750 KXL.

EDIT: I was just reading that he's back on the air, on KUFO, Sunday nights at 10:00. Had no idea. Coooool !!!!

Man, I can't believe Tensky isn't all over this thread with several 5000 word rants about LIARS yet...

Butch,
Always nice to see you pop in. Arguing with you helped get me through the Bush/Cheney administration.

I wondered what you thought of the "centrist" comments of right wing radio hero Glenn Beck discussing Scott Brown:

"I want a chastity belt on this man [Brown]. I want his every move watched in Washington. I don't trust this guy. This one could end with a dead intern. I'm just saying. It could end with a dead intern."

You guys really should choose your mind-controllers better.

Political persuasion aside, NPR is hard to listen to. Where do I start?

First, Steve Inskeep and Neal Conan, the hosts of Morning Edition and Talk of the Nation, sound as if their nuts have been in a jar for the past 30 years. Inskeep and Conan are little wussies who want to have a "conversation." Well, if having a "conversation" means not taking a stand one or the other to the point where you sound like a wimp, then I can understand why NPR needs taxpayer funding. In contrast, Rush Limbaugh sounds like a general who is just waiting to roll the next liberal who calls in.

Second, the female voices on NPR put me to sleep. If I want a soft, reassuring voice with a hint of malice, then I would enjoy you speaking in my ear at bedtime.

Third, I really enjoyed News & Notes with Ed Gordon. It was a perfect alternate view on the news from a minority perspective that challenged my usual perspective. NPR axing News & Notes really turned me off.

Finally, Ken Rudin, the political junkie on Talk of the Nation, irritates the hell out of me. His voice reminds me of a pimply faced teenager who is slotting in some air time in between his masturbation sesssions with online porn. Ken Rudin's voice and pace of speaking with that giddly tinge of excitement is just atrocious and I find myself fast forwarding his parts and reading the transcript when I listen online.

As for politics, NPR is definitely liberal. Just recently, their 30 minute bit on the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts had one caller and that one caller voted for Coakley. If NPR were centrist, then they would give a Brown voter the exact amount of time, which they did not.

Airhead America? Gone? BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Hope the door didn't hit them on the butt on the way out ... on second thought, I hope it did. They were a bigger waste of air time than NPR, while I thought that might be hard to do - Airhead America did it.

... and the world continues to spin.

No surprise. We resell on Amazon and EBay.

The Bush Bashing, anti-war, and anti-right book sales cratered last year. Obama's books cratered in the second half. The market didn't produce strong left leaning replacements.

And the last time I looked (before Christmas), while everyone was in a hissy fit over Sarah Palin's memoir, Glenn Beck quietly had three books in Amazon's top 100.

What a difference a year makes.

Yes, you still have NPR and other people's money has to pay for your (the left's) house organ. The right wing bloviaters at least pay their own way.

"Air America" was destined to fail from the very beginning. Why? Because radio is the business of selling advertising, and doing so through compelling, entertaining content.

They went at it backwards. The decided that it was going to be a pulpit to eschew liberalism from, and somehow it would all work out. Build it, and they will come; so to speak.

It doesn't work that way. You bring entertaining content, and the audience will bring their ears. Your "Time Spent Listening" numbers as measured by the Arbitron PPM-wearing public goes up, and so does the amount you can charge per 30-second spot.

The other problem Air America has, is that the 'money demo' is listening to other things. Single males, 25-54, making $50k+ a year. They aren't listening to Air America in significant numbers, and they are the demo that actually buys stuff. They are the demo that advertisers care about.

This is how radio works. This is why stations change formats so much: they are chasing the ever-elusive 'money demo.'

Much as I would have loved for Air America to be a success, I was more or less convinced that it was doomed when I wrote a review of Al Franken's show a month after it premiered. I stopped listening to it long ago — not that there was much of anything to listen to in the first place — when they took off their one truly entertaining show, "Morning Sedition" with Marc Maron and Mark Riley, four years ago.

Randi Rhodes was awful. I could never understand what people saw (heard?) in Mike Malloy. Ed Schultz wasn't even on Air America — his show just happened to get picked up by a lot of AA affiliates — so they can't claim any of his success.

But Franken was the worst. I used to enjoy me some Al Franken, but his stance on the Iraq War — which he supported because he never thought that nice Colin Powell would ever lie — was just atrocious, particularly for someone planning to run for Senator.

Airhead's gone bankrupt twice before, so I imagine they'll be back again when they find another sugar daddy. Meanwhile, what Darrel said: Randi Rhodes was awful.

I listened to her for brief periods on several occasions, and in my view, she epitomizes what left-wing radio is all about: spittle and bile. She was a poster-child for failure.

Limbaugh is at least funny sometimes, and makes a genuine effort to entertain as he opines - which is why he's the number one talk-show host of all time. Anybody that can pull down a $40 million contractmust be doing something right. By contrast, Airhead was so bitterly vitriolic that the only surprise is that it's been resurrected 3 times.

I second (or is it third?) the comment, "Randi Rhodes was awful." I, too, stopped tuning in to Air America long ago and Randi was a prime reason.

It got to the point that when she began playing that stupid, senseless "Bounce Your Boobies" song as an intro (with inane inserted comments), I'd not only turn the radio off, I'd have to resist the impulse to drop kick it out the door.

thank goodness for BLOGS, free speech and the OFF button......